As I usually do this time of year, please enjoy my list of Top 20 albums of 2024, which are all artists I featured last year.

Sam Barber- Restless Mind (Lockeland Records/ Atlantic) -21 year old releases 28 song debut album with as much ambition as early Zach Bryan with a similar set of talents too.

Brigitte Calls Me Baby- The Future Is On the Way ( Read more... )

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The Iowa Wolves are the local basketball team. They are part of the Gatorade sponsored G League- the NBAs developmental league.

Iowa has had this minor league basketball team for over two decades now. For awhile, they were very successful. The crowd seemed small but that could still be a remnant of Covid. Basketball isn’t really analogous to ( Read more... )

The The probably don’t get enough attention but they are a favorite band of mine. I discovered them as a Smiths fan when Johnny Marr joined the band, but my favorite albums are their early ones.

1983s Soul Mining is the peak for me. In fact, it’s a contender of my favorite album of all time. To understand The The, you have to start with 1981s ( Read more... )

While recently binging music documentaries, 2013s Revenge of the Mekons seemed like an obvious choice.

Intimate enough to be more of a story of the bands I rather than a “this happened then this happened” narrative l. It seems a perfect labor of love kind of project to capture the band.

Truly, as the band says, success cause bands to break up, which ( Read more... )

Dream pop is a genre that is huge in the music circles I run in. It’s a genre that really begins in the late 80s and early 90s when you think of bands like Cocteau Twins, Slowdive, Lush and Galaxie 500. The 4AD record label being synonymous with the sound, which surely evolved from post punk bands like the Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees, but ( Read more... )

John Mayall recently passed away at aged 90. Through his group the Bluesbreakers, he fostered some of the best musicians of the rock era- Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jack Bruce, John McVie, Aynsley Dunbar, Mick Fleetwood, Mick Taylor and many others.

I saw Mayall in the early 00s after Coco Montoya had gone solo and Buddy Whittington was in the band.

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88 year old Duke Fakir passed away last month meaning all of the original Four Tops are now gone.

I knew Fakir was still touring the group when I read a review I think from the Guardian a few years ago. Fakir performed up until two days before his death which means he was a Four Top for 70 years

The band will continue led by Ronnie McNeir who took ( Read more... )

This came as a recommendation from an old friend who clearly gets me.

This is a retelling of the Frankenstein story as written through 21st Century eyes. It has been more than a few years since I read Frankenstein but I really enjoyed it. I don’t have enough recall to see how close this is. But for all intents and purposes, I really feel like this ( Read more... )

It’s probably not possible to listen to the new Cody Jinks album Change the Game without thinking how the country radio landscape has changed in the 9 years since Jinks released his well regarded Adobe Sessions and the 3 years since his last new record.

There’s critically acclaimed Zach Bryan, critically loathed Morgan Wallen and rapper turned ( Read more... )