What a year, what a year of music. There were drone attacks, midnight surprise drops, the 1990s, earthquakes, tsunamis, low-flying panic attacks. Although I have to say, and this may be apparent by the fact that it's going up on December 30, this year has been among the least prepared I’ve felt going into a best of music list. There was a lot of music I liked a ton for sure, but there was also a lot out there I feel like I didn’t get to. Maybe a sign of busyness, or the slow-motion trainwreck that the year was. I felt more distracted from art in musical form than in other years. (I swear I'm going to get back to my podcast)
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Best Music of 2014
I was kind of down on 2013 in general when I did a roundup last year, but I have to say that 2014 is the best year for music I can remember, since maybe 2007. Which makes me think maybe there’s some kind of math thing that creates a surge of great music every seven years, although more likely it means I have some kind of brain disorder. But the striking thing about 2014 is how deep the bench was. There were some standouts, but the list of great music that I liked was really long, and consistent. And there was so much I just never got to. I have a long list of music to catch up on and I’m finding all kinds of great stuff buried in others people's lists.
Read MoreBest Music of 2013
in Arts & Culture, Blog
When I look back at my 2012 list, and how great that year in music was, it’s probably not surprising that 2013 seemed to be a year of disappointments. That’s not to say it was a year of bad music. But while making this list, I found myself remembering music I really liked and looking it up only to find out it was from 2012. Or even worse, scrolling down a list of music releases and coming across records I completely forgot about. That phenomenon is the main reason I say it was a year of disappointments, because those records I had completely forgotten about, in many cases, were from artists that I really like, if not love. Kanye, Fuck Buttons, Daft Punk, Nick Cave, Boards of Canada, Mount Kimbie, James Blake, My Bloody Valentine for god’s sake, and on and on. They weren’t bad records, exactly. I just sort of forgot about them. They never dug in. (Okay, some of them were bad records)
The upside is that, all those records were bumped out of my listening attention by a lot of totally out of the blue stuff, which may say something about my tastes shuffling about, or about the ongoing splintering of musical genre and variety. In any event, only 4 of my the 15 favorite records of 2013 were by musicians I had ever listened to before this year. That’s pretty cool. And before I completely write off my standby favorite artists, there were a few that delivered well beyond my wildest hopes.
Read MoreBest Music of 2012
in Arts & Culture, Blog, Writing
This year I made a Top 15 List instead of a Top 10 list, a decision I stand by because of the sheer volume of great music this year. Not only that, the Top 5 was crowded by the same big guns across so many people's year end lists. As a result, the 6-15 for most people are a lot more interesting than the top five. For example, it's impossible to ignore Frank Ocean, but it would also be a shame for me to not mention Neneh Cherry and The Thing. So 15 it is. It was a really great year in music for me, best I can remember since 2007 and 2001 before that. And there are so many that I had to leave off that I’m considering making a second wild card list, because there were about a dozen amazing records that weren’t favorites but were just weird or interesting or thought-provoking in ways the music listed here is not. Dan Deacon, Dirty Projectors, Converge, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Death Grips, Miguel, on and on. But here are my favorites.
Read MoreCan playlists ever replace mixtapes?
From 2001 to 2004, I created one mixtape every two months, compiling the best of the music I had been listening to at the time. The idea, inspired by a Cameron Crowe interview, was to make a diary in music that you can look back on years down the line, and be transported back to the period of your life through the songs you were listening to. And it’s fun listening, and you can share with friends, etc. My rules were pretty basic: I would pull together 10 songs from each month and load them on to one 80 minute CD. I usually started with an audio or comedy clip and bisected the mix with another to mark the start of the second month.
Read MoreMRCHAIR'S BEST MUSIC OF THE DECADE
in Arts & Culture, Blog, Writing
MRCHAIR'S BEST MUSIC OF THE DECADE
in Arts & Culture, Blog, Writing