Recommendations Posts

Two weeks after its release, Grapes Upon The Vine might be my favorite TV Girl album. [RECORD SCRATCH] You might be wondering how I got here. A month ago, I was in a great place. An infant TV Girl fan, their music soundtracked a new summer romance,…

Each week, Spotify creates a roughly two-hour, custom playlist for every one of its subscribers called, “Release Radar”. According to the company, “Listeners get new music from artists they follow, artists they listen to, other art…

My dad and I co-wrote an alternate version of Too Late To Love You's title track in 2021. We were in a dive bar off I-65, with robot bandmates Johnny and Junebug, playing Kentucky Route Zero. The game is mostly reading, but it's marinated in ambient…

Gorillaz' The Fall is a full-length album recorded in a month, on an iPad, during the band's Escape To Plastic Beach Tour. If that sounds like a good 45 minutes to you, you might also dig this post. If you're unfamiliar with the Gorillaz, I'd recomm…

Okay. I'm going out on a limb this week, I hope you'll join me. In adapting writing for this column from my blog, I've focused the Spotlight On albums that I both had already written about at length, and was excited to revisit in a new context. At …

Chaz Bundick Meets The Mattson 2's Star Stuff was my first exposure to both Chaz Bundick and The Mattson 2 and I think it's gotta be their best work. That album would make for a good post, actually, if we weren't just coming off the heels …

Welcome back to week three of the Spotlight On Blog's Three Weeks Of Toro y Moi Albums Event. That's what it's called I just decided. Two Tuesdays ago, for its birthday, we started things off with MAHAL, the act's latest outing. Then we took it back…

More Toro y Moi this week. Thought I'd dish out some Soul Trash after MAHAL, while he's got the blog's attention. In retrospect, the mixtape's a strange sonic bridge between MAHAL and the very different, less good, Outer Peace (which'll maybe conclu…

Alright, after much deliberating, my mind's made up. Underneath The Pine is my favorite Toro y Moi joint, not MAHAL. Sure, getting into him right at the start of this album cycle made it more special, it's closer sonically to the Mattson 2…

Damn Hiroshi Yoshimura gets me chilled the hell out. Wet Land's got some real solid rainy winter vibes, and I listened to this a lot watching the nasty weather out the window at school. It's still that time of year in Seattle, and Wet Land's&nb…