#25: 24
The last four or five weeks I’ve tried to stay offline as much as I can. I deleted the Instagram and Twitter apps from my phone, accessing the latter only once or twice in the last few weeks to see if anyone remembers Daytrader, a very good emo band from the early ‘10s that left us too soon (yes, I know about Some Stranger, I know you were all wondering). The most obvious thing in the world: logging off is exceedingly good for my well-being. I have enjoyed realizing the uselessness of my phone in the liminal moments when I have nothing to scroll, enjoyed realizing anew that I can actually just sit on the train and look out the window with absolutely nothing in my head, try not to fill every moment with some kind of content.
I struggle to address this in the way that I want without going on forever about it (the point of this post is to talk about some of my favorite albums of the year). What I want to say basically is that it’s not that deep. I’m sure I’ll be back; I’m sure I’ll learn some more self control in the meantime; I’m sure I’ll need more extended breaks in the future. I love social media, in a way, because I love my friends. I love the little cultures I can only access through social media, my friends who live far away, our relationships that live online.
I wish I could take the whole thing in my hands and wash it clean of all the ads, all the celebrities, all of the impulses to needlessly amplify and escalate. I wish for myself that I could deconstruct the notion, embedded in me somehow by boring but influential careerist types in college, that social media can help me get ahead, that social media can get me jobs, that networking online is the springboard to stability in a “writing career” I have never been anywhere close to functionally having. That notion has soured the whole thing in a way for me, has turned Twitter into a messier LinkedIn, has stoked embarrassing feelings of jealousy and notions of constant failure in me, and for what?
Really, for what? Because what I want to do when I log on is talk about the Daytraders of the world (the band not the job, come on now). I want to talk about music and art to a group of people who might know what I’m talking about. Who might remember Daytrader or Young Statues or Pentimento. I want to hear what my friends in far off places are up to, how they’re holding up. I want to hear about their successes and boost them up. I want to be part of my world, I guess in some way. I’m taking some time away to try and learn what that means.
Staying away from Twitter this last month has meant that list season has largely come and gone already, and I’d expect that everyone is already tired of talking about it. I looked at the lists — a task that, on some websites, gets more and more challenging every year. I think the Pitchfork list crashed and reloaded every five albums or so. I didn’t even try the Rolling Stone list. I pay to kill the ads on Stereogum, so that was pleasant.
I don’t know why the whole list thing kind of bugged me this year. Maybe I’m over the competition aspect of it all. The list I was trying to make of my own favorites kept growing and growing beyond any reasonable number. I truly loved so much music this year. It annoyed me that a lot of it was either buried below the 40s or absent entirely. But it was annoying not in a these websites suck kind of way — anyone who knows me knows I love my websites. I’m reading them. I’m reading the comments. I’m having fun. It activated me in the same way that it annoys me when an album I like gets a shitty review or when someone out there in the real world mentions Jimmy Eat World. It rings in my brain like this: I have something to say!
It’s not that I think my opinion is so special. I don’t think that. Everyone knows that, on the publication lists, it’s the same four albums every year shuffling those top spots. It doesn’t really bother me that much and often I think the consensus has a good point. I am not a contrarian by nature. I personally love Brat. And Tigers Blood is definitively my favorite album of the year. What I’m affirming, in adding a bit of an obstacle to my normal methods of communication, is that it’s through conversation with — or against — these powerful taste-making forces that we are given the chance to define ourselves.
This is why I disagree with any notion that music or arts journalism is dead in the water. When we have capital-c Criticism to confront, whether it’s too harsh or too positive or too middling as a whole, we eventually get mad. It eventually rubs us the wrong way. And that’s when we get to express ourselves, get to say that sucks. There’s nothing more life affirming than finally stepping up to the stage, clearing your throat, and saying here I am. That sucks. Sometimes, the way you do that is by trying to redirect enthusiasm a bit.
God would I get to the list already? I have a lot to talk about here so I gotta do it rapid fire. These aren’t really in order btw and it’s not so comprehensive. I’m skipping Diamond Jubilee and Manning Fireworks and some others because I think they’ve been covered enough, but know that I love them too. But here’s some stuff I loved this year:
[Listen along on Apple Music or Spotify]
The Early November — The Early November
I think the only real article I wrote this year was about this band, with which I have a very long and emotional history. That piece coincided with the release of this record, which I adored — it captures the spirit and vibe of their early work in a way I didn’t think was really possible, which is to say that it’s kind of nostalgic on arrival without feeling cheap or boring. And it rocks!
Toe — Now I See The Light
My go-to record for reading this year, although I’d often find myself drifting away from the page as I sunk into the subtly unpredictable contours of these songs. This is Toe at their most pensive, which is saying something, but it never failed to move something unexpected in me.
2nd Grade — Scheduled Explosions
Nobody writes a charming little ditty like 2nd Grade. This record makes it feel like it has sprung a vast well of charming little ditties, although many of them seem to position their fun attitudes against a backdrop of apocalypse. Play “I Wanna Be on Your Mind” and get a little dance in as it all goes to shit.
Tierra Whack — World Wide Whack
This album is so fun — just as snappy and enticing as Whack World without having to limit itself to 1-minute track times. And a lot of sadness sneaks in with the punchlines here (“I might die tonight but before I go want to let you know I didn’t pay the light bill this month”).
Anorak! — Self Actualization and the Ignorance and Hesitation Towards It
A really eclectic emo album from the Tokyo band that makes some stylish choices in incorporating electronics and vocoders. It’s a mix that feels really original, keeps you on your toes. Maybe this is annoying to say, but it’s kind of like The 1975 + Algernon Cadwallader. I love it.
Oso Oso — Life Till Bones
A lot of people say that Life Till Bones sounds like Phoenix. I think that rules. I love that for them. This record feels quite a bit more calculated than Sore Thumb, clean and polished in a way that the previous record rejected. Everything here feels so locked in, each melody so detailed and perfect. But it still feels quite adventurous for them when you think about it, and every bit as effervescent.
Macseal — Permanent Repeat
Power pop at its absolute finest. This album is undeniably sweet and so much fun. I put “Easily Undone” on the other day and I swear my eyes turned into little stars.
Liquid Mike — Paul Bunyan’s Sling Shot
Power pop at its absolute finest again. It’s amazing to hear something that is so wearied and over it by virtue be so energetic and springy. I like to listen to this when I’m trudging through the bitter cold — powering through the everyday slog.
Armlock — Seashell Angel Lucky Charm
I wrote about this record over the summer, when I swore I would be less afraid of my own newsletter and then refrained from writing one for 7 months. It still moves me in mysterious ways, makes me feel strange and refreshed.
Another Michael — Pick Me Up, Turn Me Upside Down
The messier, stranger counterpart to last year’s Wishes to Fulfill. It’s a joy to watch this band, usually so crystal clear and refined, let loose a little bit, go long at certain moments. The opener, “I’ve Come Around to That” is possibly their best song, churning and shockingly abrasive, but embedded deep in all of the chaos is that ecstatic ear for melody.
Ceres — Magic Mountain (1996–2022)
I was floored by Magic Mountain when I first heard it. Kind of like if Los Campesinos! Really leaned into the anthemic side of their sound, turning their attention to all-encompassing memoiristic narrative. I’m a bit surprised that this isn’t a record that everyone is talking about — it feels like it bridges a gap between indie and emo in a way that everyone said Harmlessness did a decade ago, it feels representative of a possible way forward for the genre. Side note: I got hit by a car riding my bike while listening to “1996” on my speakers. I’m fine tho lol.
A Place For Owls — how we dig in the earth
The closest thing to endserenading I’ve heard in a very long time. A very high compliment from me. What I said earlier this year about Gulfer, about awe being an important element of the emo blueprint, something akin to spirituality and an encounter with something beyond, reads a little bit more literally here. “Help Me Let The Right Ones In” has one of the most powerful finales of the year.
Spirit of the Beehive — You’ll Have to Lose Something
Spirit of the Beehive decided they can write something like a pop song on this record. It works so well. It’s been hard, up to this point, to describe a Beehive record as beautiful. Usually, they kind of revel in the jagged edges of their collage style and provocative energy. But this record is utterly gorgeous, and concerned with rethinking provocation in favor of connection, in a way (“What if I need people?”).
Foxing — Foxing
Chaotic, dense, and often deeply heartbreaking. I am the type of Foxing fan who cannot get over Dealer, so I’m drawn most to the more subtle tracks on this wide-ranging record, like “Hall of Frozen Heads” and “Cleaning.” But that doesn’t mean I’m not losing my shit to “Secret History” or “Hell 99.” Or the darker synth-pop of “Barking” or “Gratitude.” This album has the DNA of four or five different albums. It rules.
Los Campesinos! — All Hell
Could be their best record — it feels like the most comprehensive document of their whole deal. I listened to this so much when I had covid over the summer. Something about clamoring for a better life at a low moment…that feels like Los Campesinos! to me.
Pedro the Lion — Santa Cruz
Dave Bazan! Dave Bazan! Dave Bazan! A little more synth sneaks into this third entry in his long memoir series of records, all of which have been stunning. This one balances the kind of devastating groove of Havasu with the energy of Phoenix, it makes for the most accessible record in the series. Difficult to describe how much it has meant to me to hear Bazan sing “it’ll all work out” over and over again this year.
Hovvdy — Hovvdy
A 19-track, 54-minute Hovvdy album? I’m all in. This is the kind of music — soft and close and kind of warmly optimistic, caught between indie/bedroom pop and slowcore — that I want to sink into for a while. And I have — this is by far my most listened-to record of the year.
Friko — Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here
Why isn’t this band on Saddle Creek? I want them to be on Saddle Creek. This feels like an old (2002) indie classic. It is so confident in that mode, I really question whether it wasn’t recorded back then and shelved until now. The weather’s cold again and it’s the perfect time for this warm but nervy record.
Young Jesus — The Fool
Now here’s a band on Saddle Creek. The Fool is kind of a reset for Young Jesus, who moved deeper and deeper into long-form, jammy, philosophical stuff on their 2017–2020 records, and shrunk into minimalism on 2022’s Shepherd Head. The Fool is full of more tightly composed, narrative rock songs, stories of lonely, misunderstood, misguided souls that revel in the surprising connective moments of these stories. “True love is a little bit of earth,” John Rossiter howls at the apex of “Two Brothers,” in one of the most powerful indie rock moments of the year.
Sinai Vessel — I Sing
Part one of my “in memoriam” section. We lost a lot of Jordy-core bands this year folks. One day this year I listened to “How” about ten times while walking in the rain. That feels like a really sad image, but I remember it as a beautiful, illuminating experience, totally personal, the magnitude of it difficult to communicate. That’s kind of what listening to I Sing feels like — both intimate and a bit unknowable at once.
The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick — The Iliad and the Odyssey and the Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
This is the springtime counterpart to this unbeatable slowcore band’s winter opus Ways of Hearing. These two records are some of my favorites of the last few years, sweet and detailed and patient. It’s a joy to hear some of these songs bloom into surprising new forms, just when you think you’re settling in. I’ll miss them terribly.
Gulfer — Third Wind / Lights Out
God I HATE that we lost Gulfer this year. I get it but UGH. I wrote a lot about Third Wind’s encounters with the sublime earlier in the year, but we also had the pleasure of one last dispatch from this mathy emo band before they departed. Lights Out is possibly just as worthwhile as the full-length, and “Holosenic” brings tears to my eyes, the sound of them driving away into the distance, still in wonderment, at a loss: “speaking words I don’t understand / and I can’t guess.”
Wild Pink — Dulling the Horns
Like Young Jesus, Wild Pink also took a turn toward directness this year, and it simply rocks. Have you heard “Cloud or Mountain?” Oh my god, I could listen to these guitars forever, these textures, they feel like a miracle. I think John Ross is one of my favorite poets — I have returned again and again to this line from “Eating the Egg Whole,” which Ross states with a kind of muted reverence: “my stupid ass is always searching / hoping for a pearl when I open up my fist.”
Waxahatchee — Tigers Blood
People are right about Waxahatchee — Katie Crutchfield is one of our greatest living songwriters. It has meant so much to me this year to have this album about settling into happiness, about claiming and owning your own life. About knowing yourself a little better. “Crowbar” is the best song of the year, shapeshifting, yearning for self-discovery, engendered by a fearful closeness. This song is all of those things, but it’s also a blast. I’ll never get sick of it.
Literally, there is so much more music that I loved this year, and I wish I could keep going, but I am tired and I have to stop somewhere. I feel I am missing something important. I’ll let you know.
I miss complaining about mundane things in the shortest, most efficient way possible, throwing my grievances into the ether of the timeline like a cursed object into a lake. Here’s a few things I’m mad about at the moment:
I think that ChatGPT is absolutely ghoulish. It produces ghastly writing. It’s not really funny to me how off putting the stuff it produces can be, or the implications it has for literacy.
I’m cold! I’m being a baby this year in the cold.
My eyes are a little fucked up from grading papers, staring at a computer screen for four straight days. Any typos in this newsletter should be attributed to this.
I’ll end on a recent thing I loved. This is a Tiny Desk for the ages:
My name is Jordy Walsh, and I’m a writer based in Philadelphia. I Keep a Diary is a newsletter about music, books, and writing.