A Weird Exits

Well, here we are, three thousand, eight hundred and thirty-two entries later, give or take - a thought or two about every album I first heard in my thirties (plus a few extra months on the front). And hot goddamn we did it: an album a day, plus a few! But as I'm officially stamped Middle Aged, a baby on the way, a dozen other demands becoming more demanding, I do think this old lark's run its course.

It was fun! The last decade got me thinking more deeply about music, and the thousands of retroactive reads keep me painfully aware of how much I'll always have to learn.

And, look, I have no illusions about having any special talent as a writer, or the value of my increasingly-halfhearted wordplops to the random internet passerby. But if I led any of you four readers out there to a just one well-liked album you'd otherwise not have found? Well, that'd make me pretty happy.

And who am I kidding, I'll probably pop up here with an enthusiastic word or two when I find something especially fine to listen to.

Until then, may you chase your own idiot idea for longer than's remotely reasonable.

Best,

A

#3832 Richard Swift - Dressed Up for the Letdown

3.5/5 soaked in music of a bygone era, jaunty and morose notes from across an ocean of time, spiked with these rare moments of pure joy, but often repeating himself just a bit too much. What must that be like?

And I fear friend, this could be the last song
But we're all good to go

#3831 No Age - Goons Be Gone

3/5 melodic, propulsive, enjoyable, but toothless, all the noisy edges sanded off. As Randal and Spunt creep up on 40, they just don't have that fire anymore - what must that be like?

#3830 1 Trait Danger - 1 Trait World Tour

3.5/5 deeply dumb, just loose as hell, two dudes having a hoot. Those early skits and intros are rough sledding, but you get Clap When I'm Dead and Multiple Computer Mark, and man -- you just don't get hooky, actually pretty funny shit like that to stick unless you're throwing whatever you got. This wouldn't have been better if it was better. be glad it exists exactly as it does. bonus, kinda helps explain Making a Door Less Open's quirky energy

#3829 Car Seat Headrest - Making a Door Less Open

3.5/5 what a mess! what a glorious, stupid, shitty, wonderful album, the most 3rd-album-feeling album I can think of, it's actual position in the discography (19th?(?)) aside. Impossible to critique - all the worst things about it are the best things about it - the disjoint structures, the uneven pacing, the clumsy performances, the weird lazy asides. At times it feels like forced roughness -- how do you make a ramshackle album this deep into a career this newly huge? Others it feels impossibly true and brave. And man Hollywood is an awful song. Like the twin peaks dougie arc - I'm not sure I even like any of it but man it's in my head

#3828 Run the Jewels - RTJ4

3.5/5 as explosively catchy as they've ever been, beats bang and slap and all that. Mike and P sound pissed off and playful beyond all reason, this'd be a lot of fun if it wasn't just impossible to have fun right just fucking now

#3827 Golden Retriever, Chuck Johnson - Rain Shadow

4/5 the opener's a tough one, endless and dissonant, horns and Johnson's pedal steel running against the grain of the ambient hums. But its a rite of passage, earning you a drink from the album's exploding heart. First, a stop through Lupine, a spacy dispatch worthy of late Sigur Ros -- and then you arrive at Sage Thrasher, as unknowable as they come, gorgeous in every phase of its descent into chaos, with Creosote Ring as a fitting closer, that 13-6-13-6 song length cadence subconsciously tying it all together

#3826 Gaussian Curves - Clouds

2.5/5 doesn't work as ambient, there's too much attempt at melody, too much human hand, to reach that magic moment where the music disengages from time. And there's not enough heart in it to work any other way. You're left with something awkwardly approaching new wave, like an instrumental bonus track from a Sting album

#3825 VA - Focus On: Metroline Limited Volume 3

2.5/5 wow this is two hours of very samey music, even as house goes. may you connoisseurs out there derive some subtle note that I cannot

#3824 Sheep, Dog and Wolf - Egospect

3/5 SD&W's got a novel sound, all those lilting affected melodies over hyperbusy clattering rhythms. But it's the same basic trick for 45 minutes, and it's impossible to be delighted by it for more than a few songs

#3823 Moon Diagrams - Lifetime of Love

4.5/5 about as deeply atmospheric as electronic albums come. Lifetime of Love is a blend of styles, but it's ambient at heart, with a transcendent sense of pacing, with vocals early so that their absence is felt for the next half hour, the importance of beats ever-evolving, ending on the only traditional song. Blue Ring // The Ghost and the Host are the centerpiece and the destination, an endless embrace that the whole album approaches and recedes from like breath in repeated listens