changes

Listening to a lot of Jay Som is a springtime tradition for me.

Standalone post link: Listening Log: Everybody Works / Turn Into / Anak Ko / various singles

For some reason my annual springtime Jay Som listen made me think of this album and 90s midwest emo in general, and I’m so glad I dug it out and listened to it. Somehow in the late 90s a track from this album got airplay on X-96 one evening in between “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” and “Loser” or whatever they were usually playing and still I think play 25 years later, and I happened to hear it. It stuck with me; I remembered the band name and that I liked it through two years of Mormon mission, but didn’t find or hear the album until college, when I was in the Graywhale by the University of Utah and found a section I’d never paid attention to with the strange-to-me label of “indie”, and there in that section was this album, with it’s ironic retro colorfulness and white CD case backing. This album was my conscious entry point to the world of “indie rock”, emo, Pitchfork, etc.

Standalone post link: Listening Log: Nothing Feels Good

After listening to Nothing Feels Good a couple of times, I was ready to do a deep dive back into midwest emo. Frame and Canvas is my other favorite album from this era, but I’d seen this playlist a while ago and thought I should branch out. It’s pretty great, and has some nice surprises

like an ATCQ track from that period, and the realization that Third Eye Blind actually kind of fits in with this music. I’ve now added a bunch of albums from this era to my library to listen to; a lot of them I had read about or seen in catalogs back in the day, but didn’t have the money to buy them, library didn’t have them, couldn’t find them on file sharing, had no friends into this kind of music, etc. Had no friends, basically, hence this kind of music?

Standalone post link: Listening Log: Braid 1998 Van Mixtape

I’ve been a fan of Julia Holter for a long time¹. She occasionally creates moments that irritate me, but I kind of love her all the more for them.

This album only has a couple such moments. (With Aviary it was like the whole album. Need to listen to it again and see if that’s still the case. I’d pre-ordered that vinyl and didn’t get into it that much but felt like I should only listen to it on vinyl, loudly, when no one else was home, which is only like once or twice a year.) I should read and write more about this album. Or just listen to it a bunch more. That won’t be hard, I’m already doing that. And get it on vinyl. And listen to all her old stuff again. And. And. And.

Standalone post link: Listening Log: Something in the Room She Moves

This her progrockiest yet?

Surprised/disappointed that “ANNIE, PICK A FLOWER.. (MY HOUSE)” wasn’t included on this (not to mention the two other tracks that were just yanked from the single on streaming services) but I’m hopeful that that work is for her next full album, which this Pitchfork profile says will be “a collection of more conventional R&B songs.” Hard to imagine Gray doing anything “conventional,” but I guess “ANNIE, PICK A FLOWER” is one of her more straightforwardly organized compositions, and still pretty weird. Fingers crossed Saya Gray stays weird.

Standalone post link: Listening Log: QWERTY II

Didn’t realize I needed a new Vampire Weekend album, but it turns out I really did need it. And its the most Vampire Weekendish album they’ve ever made.

Weird how I felt almost giddy listening to this album the first few times. Like, people are allowed to make music like this? “Classical” is everything.

Standalone post link: Listening Log: Only God Was Above Us

Also didn’t realize I needed a countryish sometimes Beatlesish Beyonce album, but here we are.

Standalone post link: Listening Log: COWBOY CARTER

Started drafting out a whole narrative of my thoughts and mixed reactions to this album, but realized probably absolutely nobody needs my take on this and I have plenty of other things to write about and do, things that might benefit from having more written and explored about them.

Guess I might still write and share about this later if I find I can’t let my thoughts on it go away, though…

Standalone post link: Listening Log: THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT THE ANTHOLOGY

Standalone post link: Listening Log: Diary / LP2 / The Colour and the Shape

This really syncs with my recent 90s midwest emo indie rock deep dive. In fact, I listened to this a couple of times, then listened to the first two Sunny Day Real Estate albums, started listening to Foo Fighters' The Colour and the Shape, but wanted to come back to this again over all of that. [2024-04-27]

Standalone post link: Listening Log: Final Summer