Favorite Movies 2025

- Avatar: Fire and Ash 

- 28 Years Later 

- Bugonia 

- Companion 

- F1  

- Fantastic Four: First Steps 

- Friendship 

- Marty Supreme 

- One Battle After Another

- Sinners 

- Superman 

- Thunderbolts* 

- To A Land Unknown 

- Weapons 

Favorite Shows 2025

Vijay Iyer Trio - January 30, 2025 - New York, NY 

Julia Holter (opener: Discovery Zone and Niecy Blues) - April 4, 2025 - Brooklyn, NY

Mogwai - April 10, 2025 - Brooklyn, NY 

Nine Inch Nails (opener: Boys Noize). - September 19, 2025 - Los Angeles, CA

Skinshape (opener: Sons of Sevilla) - October 5, 2025 - Brooklyn, NY  

Grizzly Bear (opener: This is Lorelei) - October 14, 2025 - Brooklyn, NY

 

Favorite Music 2025

Albums/LPs I liked that came out this year:

- caroline - caroline 2 

- Circuit des Yeux - Halo on the Inside 

- Lord Huron - The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1 

- Cate Le Bon - Michelango Dying 

- Mogwai - The Bad Fire 

- Kelly Moran - Don't Trust Mirrors

- Nine Inch Nails - TRON: Ares 

- Onehotrix Point Never - Tranquilizer 

- Radiohead - Hail to the Thief (Live Recordings 2003-2009)

- Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - GUSH  

- Stereolab - Instant Holograms on Metal Film  

- Sudan Archives - The BPM 

- Throwing Muses - Moonlight Concessions 

- Wet Leg - moisturizer

Duos, Anyone?

In bands that that have two main co-authors, I've always reflexively gravitated to one or the other. There's no logic behind these affinities. I suppose some of it might be something as shallow as how they look, or something they once said in an interview. Perhaps it's something about who I perceive to be the underrated one in the relationship. So here goes:

- Morrissey/Johnny Marr: I think this was generally equal early on, but at some point, Morrissey's various shenanigans ensured the decline of his status, but I think also, as an amateur guitarist, I had always felt awed by Marr, and this awe has only grown over the years, given his all-around good-natured public persona. Morrissey was undoubtedly a true original, a genius, if you will, for the aesthetic he conjured out of discarded British culture of the '60s. But...I lean very heavily towards Marr for reasons that I cannot explain entirely even though his solo career has been mostly pedestrian.

- John Lennon/Paul McCartney: This is a hard one and although Lennon was in the ascendance for a long time, I would have to grant them exactly equal levels of occupation in my psyche.

- Donald Fagen/Walter Becker: Definitely Becker, the more cynical fucked up bitch who seems to have written "Haitian Divorce" and "Time out of Mind," not to mention "Book of Liars." Also, in interviews, Becker seems to be the more biting and entropic one. Walter Becker, king of the fucked up '70s.

- Mick Jagger/Keith Richards: I have a controversial take on this since my affinity is to Jagger -- yes, I know, shocking! Look, I love Keith and his golden riffs, but I find he's a bit mumbly and incoherent, and there's something a bit trad-blues about Keith. On the other hand, there's something oddly interesting about Jagger's total disinterest in wallowing in nostalgia/myth-making by writing a memoir. Also his desperation in the '80s to sound contemporary with those awful solo albums -- there's something admirable about that. Also he wrote the riff to "Brown Sugar" which guarantees a seat at the table.

- Elton John/Bernie Taupin: Bernie strikes me as being a bit weird, and Elton John wrote some of the greatest pop music this side of Smokie Robinson, so I am giving this to Elton.

- Joe Strummer/Mick Jones: Strummer by far. I really can't stand the way Jones sings with that faux-earnestness, although I admire his guitar-playing chops and I think he wrote "Complete Control" and "Stay Free," two killer tracks, and I do love Big Audio Dynamite, at least the first album, and no, "Lost in the Supermarket" was actually written by Strummer completely.

- Jimmy Page/Robert Plant: This is a hard one as I think Jimmy Page is a beautiful guitar player but Plant seems a bit more adventurous, unpredictable, a live wire, he was, after all, the one who got Steve Fucking Albini to produce the one and only post-Zeppelin album Plant did with Page. So I think I'll give the slight edge to Plant on this.

- Carole King/Gerry Goffin: I think this is clearly Carole.

- Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller: I don't know enough about what each did to make an informed decision on this, but they did write some good shit!

- Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff: I also don't know enough about their individual contributions so I'll just say, both.

- Isaac Hayes/David Porter: Same as above, some brilliant singles in the '60s, but I guess Isaac Hayes is more name-friendly to me because of Shaft and stuff.

- Nile Rodgers/Bernard Edwards: Ooh, this is a hard one, they were both such geniuses, Bernie gets the nod for the killer bass lines, Nile for the killer guitar, who can really say?

- Don Henley/Glen Frey: Definitely Henley although they both suck so horribly as to almost destroy this listing like a supernova of cringe personalities exploding into a galaxy of boomer worlds.

- Rick Davies/Rodger Hodgson: Rick Davies, although it's clear that Hodgson wrote way more good songs than Davies. So why Davies? See below:

Rick Davies died recently. Now, no one cares about Supertramp. Every other band in the world (including Slipknot, apparently!) has been resurrected from critical oblivion but this will never happen to Supertramp. There will be no Sunday morning review on Pitchfork of a Supertramp album to remind us of their singular brilliance. AOR slop has consigned them to the black hole of '70s music. Unremembered, not even important to be made fun of, occasionally invoked by a 60-year old white man at a bar who has had a few too many drinks.

But let me make a futile and embarrassing case for Supertramp, especially their classic '70s run from 1974 to 1979. Those four albums--Crime of the Century (1974), Crisis? What Crisis (1975), Even the Quietest Moments (1977), and Breakfast in America (1979)--are really fabulous. They inhabit this weird space of producing smart pop (think 10cc), with touches of prog rock (vanilla Genesis), but handled with slightly iconoclastic sensibilities that none of their contemporaries had. That iconoclasm--bordering on nihilism--packaged in slick '70s rock vibes, puts them in a slightly different category than, say, more vanilla '70s rock bands.

Their best album, with ten bangers, is Crime of the Century which balances Davies' iconoclasm with Hodgson's hippie curiosity perfectly. I could write a lot about this album but I'll just post the final and title track which is a monumental achievement in minimalist drama. I have no idea what it's about but Hodgson turns in a brilliant guitar solo. But it's primarily a Rick Davies song -- he sings the crap out of it.

Rest in peace, Mr. Rick.  

Lord Huron - Looking Back

I don't know much about Lord Huron but they've been around since the early 2010s and they are famous enough that people like Feist and Waxahatchee open for them. Basically a four-piece led by Ben Schneider who plays guitar and sings, they have a slightly folk & country vibe but more in the Gram Parsons world than, say, contemporary country. But I would also resist the urge to call them Americana, since they seem to embrace more rock and pop, bits of surf guitar, and even electronic treatments. In any case, a friend clued me into their latest (and fifth!) album The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1 which came out this past summer. For a band that's been around ten years, this is a surprisingly no-filler all-killer album of tracks. One review calls its sound "like a California desert of the soul," whatever that means. There is a deep melancholia here, like Neil Young circa "On the Beach" (the song). A couple of cool guests appear on the album, including Kazu Makino from the great Blonde Redhead and the actor Kristen Stewart.

About this gorgeous song, "Looking Back" that opens the album, Ben Schneider notes:

"The weight of your past can distort your present and future, the way massive celestial objects warp the fabric of the universe like a bowling ball on a trampoline. This song wonders if it’s possible to let go, or if looking back is a fundamental law of existence." 

The Small Faces - Itchycoo Park

This video is not synced with the audio but the video is so evocative and cool, colored footage from 1967, that I thought I'd use this version. Released by the Small Faces in August 1967 as a non-album single at the height of the summer of love, "Itchycoo Park" seemed to capture some of that zeitgeist even as it seemed slightly detached from it. The chords tumble out like an unfolding marionette, just slightly unpredictable. I first heard the song at the end of 1975 when it was re-released as a single (and was quite a hit). It tapped into the whimsy of being a nine year old kid, easily hummable on the way home from school on a lazy Friday afternoon. Always loved this song. Still do.

Footnote: The song was largely written by bass guitarist Ronnie Lane but sung by Steve Marriott (who found more fame in Humble Pie which had Peter Frampton). Drums by Kenney Jones (who found more fame with the latter-day moribund Who). Keyboards by Ian McLagan (who played on a bunch of Rolling Stones records in the '70s, including the track "Miss You").

 

Kelly Moran - Echo in the Field

I missed her live show in New York recently but I've been psyched to absorb Kelly Moran's new album, Don't Trust Mirrors. Incredibly talented and bursting with creativity, she's a musician constantly on the move. She is a classically trained piano player but her use of electronics is what usually draws me in, lush but not cliched. She works quite a bit with the Yamaha Disklavier, basically a real acoustic piano hooked up with all sorts of electronics (kind of the mirror image of a synthesizer trying to sound like an acoustic piano). In this recent interview, she explains her process and her debt to the late great Ryuichi Sakamoto, once part of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, but most well-known as the creator of the score for The Last Emperor for which he won an Academy Award.

And like only a handful of artists, she is on the right side of history on one of the most important issues of our day.

 

Caroline - Total Euphoria

I don't know much about this band Caroline, except that they are from Great Britain. They seem to have a lot of people in the band, like 6 or 7 or 8 people of both sexes. They all sort of do stuff. To me, they seem to evoke the vibe of my beloved and long-gone band, the Books, a band about whom I have much to say but have not said a single word on this blog. Truly loved them. In any case, Caroline is sort of indie rockish, sort of glitchtronic, sort of fucked up, sort of shambolic (the drums literally never match up with the beat) but also about joy. Yeah, JOY. They are not a band of sad sacks. I love that. Anyway, this is one of my favorite tracks of the year, a broken, stilted, fucked up track of beauty. Oh, and if you want to read more about Caroline, see here and here.

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Primal Scream - Kill All Hippies

I was a whipper-snapper graduate student in Pittsburgh when I first heard this, sometime in the year 2000. The album came out in May of that year (in the U.S.) and it soundtracked that summer for me. An abrasive turn from Primal Scream, XTRMNTR appealed to me first and foremost because the opening track was called "Kill All Hippies," the idea of which seemed cool to me at the time. Not sure if "kill all hippies" means anything remotely interesting in 2025 but it sure meant something in 2000. I also liked that Primal Scream abandoned (well, paused) their sex-and-drugs-and-party thing to pay attention to the real world for a bit:

"You got the money / I got the soul."

Also, special treat, Kevin Shields showed up out of the blue, reminding us exactly why he was the loudest guitar player in the world, even though we had not heard a peep out of him for years. Shields played guitar on "Shoot Speed / Kill Light" (and also produced it), surely the most thunderous metronome-beat song with a wall-of-electric guitars to pummel you into submission in the year 2000.

Also, did you know lead singer Bobby Gillespie played drums on Psychocandy?

Colourbox - Hot Doggie

My favorite Colourbox song (and probably most people's) is this, "Hot Doggie," the opening track on the compilation (remember those?) album Lonely Is An Eyesore, released by the 4AD label in 1987. An early adopter of using samples to construct songs (instead of using samples to just embellish songs), Colourbox alas, lasted for a very short period of time, from 1982 to 1987.

I guess most people would be familiar with Colourbox, not from one of their own tracks but as part of the collaboration known as M|A|R|R|S, a brief coming together between Colourbox and the great British duo, A. R. Kane, that produced "Pump Up The Volume" in 1987.

They had a whole bunch of (non-album) singles but only one proper album, self-titled, released in 1985.

Still, nothing beats "Hot Doggie": fantastic placement of samples, the build-up to release, the various call-backs during the song to stuff that happened previously, and relentless bass drum-and-snare four-on-the-floor synthetic beat.

"Let's hear some music!"