It’s been four years since this little blog got an update. Reading that last entry from early 2018 feels surreal. We were completely different people back then. It was Jason who started this end of the year music blog. He loved doing it for a while. All year he prepared, making sure he devoted time to each album with potential, editing and re-editing the final list, and I could see the joy in his eyes when he hit publish. But joy has been hard to come by the last few years. Jason has continued to struggle with chronic pain and depression and we both spent the last twenty-two months as mental health professionals during a worldwide pandemic. Shit’s been hard. Jason continues to make end-of-the-year Spotify playlists, but the blog just kind of faded in his rear-view mirror.

Like you, we’ve been stuck inside the house a lot recently. Hobbies that happened in the outside world have been replaced by solo endeavors and quietude. Performance was replaced with writing, concerts replaced with living room jamming. We bought Jason an electric guitar for his birthday- a left-handed Fender Jaguar, in sunburst orange, modeled after Kurt Cobain’s. As hobbies tend to do, one guitar led to another and now he has a mic, and a pedal collection, and multiple amps, and an annoying insistence that 11pm is the best time to start practice. So much for quietude. As for me, a hobby I have quietly fantasized about since childhood became a reality when Jason bought me a drum kit for my birthday. She’s an ombre red Gretch Catalina maple shell five-piece that I named Melody Valentine, after the drummer from Josie and the Pussycats. I love her. Jason and I are working on our first song together- Heart Shaped Box by Nirvana.

All this is to say, I’ve decided- If Jason isn’t going to write his year-end blog, I’m going to do it. So, here’s what got my ear this year.

10) Kanye West- Donda

This is Kanye’s tenth solo album, named after his late mother Donda West. The first track on this album is a serious banger named “Jail.” “Jail” starts with this crunchy bass and right away starts mounting the tension. The energy builds like he is about to drop the sickest beat in history and you’re thinking OH SHIT, IS KANYE BACK?? then the drumbeat explodes at the end of the song, and you are like YEEEEEEEEEEEES!!

But then he doesn’t really deliver.

Kanye isn’t doing anything here that he hasn’t done before and better last time. Both lyrically and sonically, he spends much of the album hyping himself up, but never goes off. The album grows trying, as he leans on this theme of repeating the same word over and over, as though that counts as a hook. Plus, I still haven’t gotten more than halfway through it because it’s two fucking hours long. Kanye needs an editor. But there are several songs that are really fucking good; Jail, Hurricane, Jonah, and Believe What I Say are standouts.

This album won’t stand the test of time, and I probably only gave it so many listens because I knew I was writing this blog. But I think Kanye brings up interesting ethical dilemmas for us. Shouldn’t we stop rubber necking on a human with obvious mental health issues? What is to be done about obscenely rich artists with erratic behavior? Britney Spears has been under conservatorship for the past 13 years, not allowed to make any decisions for herself, her career, or her estate, all because of a nervous breakdown in her twenties. Where is the line between that and Kanye, allowed to act on every whim, taking to talk shows to refer to slavery as “a choice” black people made. How do we look at this through a disability justice lens? And when will we be ready to talk about the ways in which fame is abusive? We crave a train wreck to watch, so celebrities are pedestalized and isolated, confined to a world of paparazzi surveillance and judgement. And the consequences are worst for the most marginalized. Kanye’s mental health issues are certainly influenced by the weight of racism and public scrutiny, but what do we do now? Stop giving him attention and money?

I don’t know the answers, but I know this. I miss the old Kanye. Listen to this album… mostly just to say you did.

9) Olivia Rodrigo- Sour

I love to watch a good girl go bad and Olivia Rodrigo is headed in the right direction, the Disney Channel Princess who turns 18 and reinvents herself with a middle finger. The album starts with “Brutal”, a perfect pop-punk anthem about how much high school sucks. After a gentle opening string melody, Rodrigo kicks on the distortion pedal and vents her frustration at every adult in her life. “If someone tells me one more time ‘enjoy your youth’ I’m gonna cry,” Rodrigo snarls before pouting, “God, its brutal out here.” Rodrigo is a unique blend of pop, punk, and piano songstress. She hasn’t completely gotten rid of her bubble gum upbringing, but she’s moving towards the Lana Del Ray/Fiona Apple, angry-femme artistic lineage.

Rodrigo began taking vocal lessons in kindergarten and it shows. She has range and control that make a lot of her songs obsessively listenable. Much of this album is laser focused on what seems to be her first real heartbreak. Which is a classic for a reason, but I mean laser focused. To the point where it gets cringey. She’s particularly obsessed with the fact that her ex found a new girl in just two weeks.

We all remember the emotional roller coaster of being 17, but Rodrigo re-tells the story for the Instagram generation. In a song that could be the theme music for every news story on the Facebook whistleblower, “Jealousy, Jealousy” shows us the damage social media is doing to the hearts of our young women. “All I see is what I should be: happier, prettier, jealousy, jealousy.” As Bo Burnum said (and we’ll get to him later), “Maybe allowing giant digital media corporations to exploit the neurochemical drama of our children for profit was a bad call by us.”

This album is high quality junk food- you probably don’t want to eat it every day, but its great in small bites. Listen while crying about your high school boyfriend whose wife won’t let him speak to you anymore.

8) Silk Sonic- An Evening with Silk Sonic

This album wins the award for biggest surprise of the year.

Silk Sonic is a neo-soul duo consisting of rapper Anderson Paak and pop star Bruno Mars. The two report the album starting as a joke, two exhausted and probably stoned musicians entertaining each other in the back of a tour bus. Upon hearing the first demos, Bootsy Collins, who makes several appearances on the album, dubbed the band Silk Sonic. I’ve enjoyed some quality Paak content in the past, even seeing him in concert in the Before Times, but Mars has generally been too Top 40 to grab my attention. The promotional material for the release suggested a tongue in cheek throwback album. Paak and Mars donned wide lapel polyester suits, threw sepia tone on their music video, and finger guns-ed their way across the stage. I expected a lot of gimmick but music that was nothing new.

Surprisingly, they managed to take a nostalgia project and breathe new life into it. There are classic Marvin Gaye style ballads, heavily disco inspired dance tunes, and a song made explicitly for the roller rink. The songs feel familiar but new at the same time, a fusion of funk, soul, disco, and 21^st century pop. The lyrics have just enough humor to keep you smiling without tipping over into a parody album. Both singers have buttery smooth voices, and the album is already wracking up awards from BET, MTV, and Soul Train. A Grammy can’t be far behind. Check out this quite sexist but undeniably funky single.

While my first impression was a cynical eye roll about shiny, overproduced pop music, I underestimated how badly I needed fun; a musical opportunity to play. This album isn’t an exploration of isolation or political turmoil, it’s a reminder to leave your problems on the dance floor. It’s an invitation to gratitude and pleasure, both of which become political acts in the face of grind culture. This album makes me feel sexy and carefree, whether I’m cleaning the kitchen or getting ready for date night.

Sing this as you sneak a mask-less kiss with your girl at the skating rink.

7) Dry Cleaning- New Long Leg

Every year there is one addition to my Best Of list that sneaks in at the last minute. Though it was released in April, I didn’t find my way to New Long Leg until December. I had wandered into the kitchen where Jason was blasting it and I said “… what is this??” then proceeded to spend the afternoon listening to it on repeat.

New Long Leg is the debut album by British post-punk band Dry Cleaning. The music is unconventional and bizarre, marrying the dark dance grooves of Joy Division, the chaotic energy of Wire and the wtf art rock of Laurie Anderson. Their front woman, Florence Shaw, isn’t a singer as much as a spoken word artist, writing lyrics in a stream of consciousness ramble. “I’ve been thinking about eating that hotdog for hours.” “Are there llama plushies here in this shop?” “The last thing I looked at in this hand mirror was a human asshole.” It was no surprise to learn that the singer and guitarist met in art school. The simple melodies and up-tempo grooves provide a cheery counterpoint to Shaw’s dry wit and monotone delivery. The music makes you bop, and I keep picturing Joy Division’s Ian Curtis doing his goofy little dance moves along to the beat. Ultimately, these art weirdos took unlikely ingredients and created a magnetic album that you’ll want to stare at like a train wreck.

I’m a sucker for intimidating women. Florence Shaw seems like the cool girl who walks into a party, all acerbic wit and cigarettes, talented, hot, and hilarious. She comes off as mean but really she’s just shy, and all you want to do is follow her home and let her boss you around.

Listen to this from across the room as you try to gather the courage to talk to her.

6) Floating Points, Pharaoh Sanders, and the London Symphony Orchestra- Promises

I had never heard of Pharoah Sanders or the genre of “spiritual jazz” before last year. In 2020, the record label Impulse! released a compilation album called Spiritual Jazz 12 that featured a cover photo of a young Civil Rights era black woman scratching the eyes out of a cop. I was intrigued. There was one track on the album I could not tear myself away from, a Pharoah Sanders track titled “Hum Allah Hum Allah Hum Allah,” where the performer does what I can only describe as jazz yodeling. Its beautiful and strange and wrings my heart out. Though the song was released in 1969, I couldn’t pass up a chance to share this find with the world.

Pharoah Sanders, tenor sax legend, has made albums with John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra and numerous other jazz greats. Some consider him the pinnacle of spiritual jazz, a genre that aims for divine transcendence, but the last album he released was close to twenty years ago. Now 81, Pharoah reached out to British electronic producer Sam Shephard of Floating Points, 45 years his junior, and together they created Promises, a late career masterpiece that mixes psychedelic jazz, classical orchestral music, and space electronica.

Promises is a single musical composition comprised of several movements that expand on a central theme. Pharoah’s sax and deep rumbling vocalizations weave in and out, mixing with otherworldly bleep bloops and swelling string sections, creating music that is dissonant and full of unresolved melodies. The mood is melancholy but not morose, full of tension and uncertainty, yet deeply comforting. The movements begin dreamy and bittersweet, then build in tension and urgency, culminating in a desperate flurry of strings before ending on a completely unresolved note.

I think this album is a good barometer of the healing that’s happened in our household this year. 2020 was so traumatic that we mostly listened to calm ambient albums and Phoebe Bridgers. Anything loud or difficult was turned off immediately. This album is beautiful and complex, a push/pull of pressure and release, challenging and well worth the work.

Listen while sitting in the window seat of your Chicago apartment, overlooking the snowy street, contemplating a lifetime of loss and gratitude.

5) IDLES- CRAWLER

It was May of 2019. Our world was about to change in nine months but that night we had no clue. We were deep in the middle of a mosh pit with no edges- if you were on the floor, you were moshing. IDLES singer Joe Talbot started the show with one demand- “Be kind or get the fuck out!” Fitting for an album called Joy as an Act of Resistance. Bruises were throbbing on my forearms from blocking errant elbows, steadying neighbors who were about to fall, catching stage divers. The sweat from the crowd had condensed on the ventilation system and was raining back down on us. I caught eyes with strangers as we shouted lyrics together. We moshed from first note to last, grins wide with sweaty communal bliss.

IDLES are known for their ferocious driving rhythm, uplifting lyrics that combat toxic masculinity, and Joe’s gravelly, Welsh-accented scream. IDLES seems most closely related to a punk band, but they insist “for the last time, we’re not a fucking punk band.” They defy categorization, but they make music that possesses you to throw your body around in crowds of greasy haired, tattooed punks. So… whatever you want to call that genre. CRAWLER is their fourth studio album. The first three are upbeat hardcore albums that give you room to purge your frustration in the bass drum and come away hopeful. But with their 2020 release, Ultra Mono, I thought maybe I had heard enough IDLES. It wasn’t a bad record, but it was mostly more of the same, and one only needs so much feel-good not-punk in their life.

Thankfully, CRAWLER sees the band evolving in a significant way. Where their previous work could verge on saccharine in its positive attitude, this album sees the band exploring the darker spaces, both lyrically and tonally. On the album’s opening track, “MTT 420 RR,” droning, minor-key synths create an ominous, melancholy landscape across which Joe shouts, “Are you ready for the storm?” The album feels deeper, sadder, slower, exploring a broader spectrum of emotions. I’m sure IDLES have had just as bad a pandemic as the rest of us and this album examines sorrow, rage, and grief in a way that feels more personal and vulnerable than their past work. Still, the album never succumbs to despair and is full of their infectious, unbridled joy as an act of resistance. The album ends with Joe reminding us, “In spite of it all, life is beautiful.”

Of all the things I’m grieving from COVID, live performance breaks me most. There is a specific magic that happens when a hundred people worship at the same sonic temple. An artist pours their energy into the crowd and the crowd sends it right back in a spiritual exchange. We had tickets to see IDLES touring CRAWLER last month. When the date arrived, we chose not to go. Two years into a pandemic, I have a very different reaction the idea of being covered in other people’s body fluids. And yet, I still regret my decision.

Listen to this album when you’re tired of pretending everything is ok.

4) Jon Hopkins- Music for Psychedelic Therapy

Psychedelic therapy saved Jason’s life this year.

Jason’s been diagnosed with “treatment resistant depression.” That means he’s tried at least five different traditional psych meds (though the number is higher) and none of them have fixed the problem. The concept of “fixing the problem” gets messy when you are living through a global pandemic and a climate crisis and a political uprising and late-stage capitalism. By December of 2020, things were the worst they had ever been. A series of disappointments led to Jason breaking apart in my arms, howling “I want to die!” The possibility of losing him felt startlingly close.

Ketamine therapy is one of the few alternative treatments recommended for people who aren’t benefiting from medication. Initially promoted as a general anesthetic, ketamine reduced depression in 70% of cases studied and put an end to suicidal ideation almost instantly. The drug is categorized as a dissociative, and treatment consists of hour-long infusions which results in a psychedelic experience similar to LSD. After watching one of my clients make a staggering turn around with the help of K, we started exploring it as an option for Jason. With the help of his partner, Free, and his close friend Laura, we were able to get him into treatment at the Northwest Ketamine Clinic. He’s been going twice a month for most of this year, and the improvement has been substantial. While he is still a person who struggles with depression, the suicidal thoughts have gone from constant to occasional. My fear of losing him is now a whisper and not an ear-piercing scream.

Jon Hopkins wrote this album with the intention of it fitting an hour-long ketamine infusion session. Hopkins is a British musician and producer who has collaborated with the likes of Coldplay, Four Tet, and experimental music royalty Brian Eno. The album is an immersive ambient experience that wraps you up like a warm hug. Track one opens with repeating synth tones that start low and travel up, up, up in pitch, recreating the feeling all psychonauts will recognize as the come-up; that excitement and anxiety filled click-click-click of the roller coaster climbing into the air. From there, Hopkins fills each song with simple beauty; deep tones that coax you into long exhales, water and birds recorded in the Amazon rainforest, bells that ring out with peaceful clarity. The music is undemanding, a nature grounded focal point that serves as the safe space from which to launch, explore, and return. It doesn’t get in your way or direct your experience, but instead gently exists in the background, the musical equivalent of a cedar wood sauna and a Xanax.

Psychedelic therapy began in the ‘40s, shortly after Albert Hoffman’s discovery of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. Throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s, research on the psychological benefits of hallucinogens was widespread, but in the early ‘70s, government backlash to the hippie movement led to the Controlled Substances Act and eventually the War on Drugs. It’s only been in the last 15 years that this kind of research is happening again. Johns Hopkins University now has The Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, studying how psychedelics could benefit those with PTSD, or those who are dying of cancer. They are exploring everything from micro-dosing psilocybin as a daily treatment to full on tripping balls with a therapist by your side. The field is exciting and promising, a new frontier that changes every day.

This weekend, I did LSD with a small group of close friends and ended my night with this album in my headphones, watching undulating cartoon characters, all in rainbow pastels, bubble up and melt away on the inside of my eyelids. It’s hard to describe the impact a psychedelic trip can produce. It can be simultaneously subtle and drastic, showing you secrets to the universe that seem both obvious and profound. My trip had shown me things I struggle to remember; that I am safe in my own body, that I am the only one who can give me back my crown, that we are all alone but always together. I drifted off to sleep listening to the final track of the album, the only one with vocals, the soothing voice of spiritual teacher Ram Dass.

Everything in you that you don’t need, you can let go of.
You don’t need loneliness, for you couldn’t possibly be alone.
You don’t need greed because you already have it all.
You don’t need doubt because you already know.

Listen to this in a cedar wood sauna on Xanax.

3) Bo Burnam- Inside

Look, it brings me no joy to say that the best art I saw about the first year of quarantine was made by a straight, white, man, but here we are. Let’s get this out of the way: Bo Burnam is problematic. So problematic that he wrote a song about it called “Problematic.” And I don’t believe that publicly recognizing your own privilege absolves you of your responsibility around that privilege. But I do believe that human beings are complex and generally doing the best they can, and Bo reads to me as a guy born with every scale tilted in his favor who is mostly trying to understand how to be a better human about it. And he still reeks of the resentful rage of a straight, white, male. So.

Bo Burnam is a “comedy musician.” This album is the soundtrack to a Netflix special that reads as a hybrid stand-up, one man show, musical amalgam. The premise is that Burnam, who was just about to return to the stage after a five-year hiatus caused by performance induced panic attacks, got sidelined by COVID-19 and ended up isolated in his home for a year with nothing but his recording equipment. The special is written, edited, shot, directed, and performed by Burnam alone. It was released in May, 2021, my first month fully vaccinated, when pandemic PTSD hit me like a wrecking ball, complete with 5 am panic attacks, screaming rage, and very rational calculations about the right dose of opiates to make me sleep forever. Seems like Bo was in a similar place.

Burnam is a great song writer. The music glides from R&B sex ballads to Taylor Swift Folklore simulacra to an Avenue Q style puppet duet. The songs are catchy, his lyrics are witty, and his voice is getting better with age. But really, this special is a dark musical about the end of the world, and how we cope with being stuck in it. With humor as honey for the bitter medicine, Burnam dives into the depression, isolation, and existential dread of quarantine, saying, “I hope this special can do for you what it’s done for me these past few months- distract me from wanting to put a bullet into my head with a gun.” I’m not sure he achieved that goal, but I think he achieved something I needed more. To see reflected back to me my own grief and impotent rage at the reality the pandemic exposed: that humans are too selfish and short sighted to care for one another, even when our own survival is at stake. It’s been a bitter pill to swallow.

As the show unfolds, you watch his hair grow long and greasy, see him stripped down to his boxers, and witness scenes recorded under the covers in his bed. He ponders, “Can one be funny while stuck in a room?” You play the role of witness as he hyperanalyzes his whole career, turning the show into a long form essay on self-awareness as a gateway to madness. The human brain tends to turn on itself when confined to isolation and the denouement shows Burnam hitting rock bottom. With circles under his eyes, he says a sentence I remember saying often in quarantine. “I am… not well.” He sobs as the camera pans in. Several friends told me they found this moment disingenuous, put on for the camera. All I saw was a mirror. For all the weeks when I didn’t see another human being, when the depersonalization became so intense that my self-image warped like a fun-house reflection, when the sorrow became so constant that I worried I had permanently damaged my brain, I was not alone in my utter and complete devastation.

The crowning jewel of brilliance in the special is a two-part synthesizer jam called Bezos (I and II). The keyboard solo in part one has no business being as good as it is and the sarcasm is delicious in part two as he sings with a crazed grin, “Jeffery Bezos! You did it!! Congratulations!!!”

Listen to this album as you board your million-dollar space craft to Mars after the Earth becomes uninhabitable.

2) Lil Nas X- MONTERO

God damn it, the kids are alright. This album is so beautiful it brings a tear to my queer-elder eye. Let’s start at the beginning.

Lil Nas X got his break in 2018 with an independently produced single called “Old Town Road.” The song, one of the few in the niche genre of “country rap”, first gained popularity on TikTok. (God, the future is weird.) As the song went viral, Lil Nas X made a remix featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, with an over-the-top video celebrating black cowboys in the ‘hood. White country folk were confused. Was this supposed to be a joke? The song reached #19 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs before Billboard showed their blatant racism and pulled it, saying it “didn’t count as country music.” Fuck you, Billboard. But Lil Nas X got the last laugh when the single became the longest running #1 in Billboard Chart history. And all of this was before he ever put out his first album.

This year, not content to break just one barrier, Lil Nas X decides to come out of the closet. He’s been teasing the upcoming release of his first full length album, which promises more rap and less country, and drops the bomb of his first single, “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)”. In the most unapologetically gay video I’ve ever seen, Nas, dressed in viny thigh-high heels, pole dances down to hell, gives Satan a lap dance, and then kills him for his crown. With the single, he releases a limited edition run of Satan Shoes, Nike lookalikes that feature a pentagram holding a single drop of blood. Now the entire world is losing their minds. Conservative pundits rage about the defiling of our youth, the rap community insists a line must be drawn somewhere, Nike sues for trademark infringement, and Lil Nas X gleefully skips off saying “mischief managed.”

Reminder, this kid has still not released an album.

Fast forward to September, 2021. After much anticipation, Lil Nas X releases MONTERO. The twittersphere is abuzz with the question- can this album really deliver on all its promise? With an impressive list of guest stars, (Miley Cyrus, Elton John, Megan Thee Stallion), and pre-release promo pics of the artist pregnant with his first album/baby, the world is hopeful. And I have to tell you, he delivers.

This album is full of hit singles- upbeat tracks with driving hooks that are catchy enough to get your ass shaking but not so saccharine that they become torturous ear worms. But the surprising part of this album are his slower, confessional tracks; beautiful, sorrowful explorations of the trauma of growing up a young, queer man of color, in a family rife with addiction and abuse. In “Sun Goes Down,” he sends a message to the other lonely baby gays and sings “I know that you want to cry, but there’s much more to life than dying over your past mistakes and people who threw dirt on your name.” With wisdom and sincerity, the album lets you watch the journey of a hero set up to fail who never stopped believing in himself.

My favorite track, produced by none other than Kanye West, is #3- “Industry Baby.” In response to the lawsuit and controversy, Lil Nas released another unapologetically gay video that includes a dance sequence of naked black men in a prison shower and one of the best misheard lyrics in rap history. I doubt its an accident that the line “I ain’t lost since I began” sounds so much like “I ain’t lost since I been gay.”

            Lil Nas X was born in 1999. He is the generation of queer kids born not only post-Stonewall, but post-AIDS crisis, coming of age during the era of PrEP and social media. As awful as the internet is, and as rampant as homophobia still is, young queers have the ability to find and support each other in the private spaces of message boards and Queer TikTok. It’s inspiring to see this generation of youth, burdened with less shame, protected by the power of strangers on the internet. They’re all queer, gender fuck, polyamorous, and don’t give a shit what anyone thinks about it. It’s beautiful. I want to pinch their cheeks and give them a standing ovation.

            Listen to this album when you need to hype yourself up for a big, brave, scary jump.

1) Low- Hey What

What does the apocalypse sound like? Drums bounce off the shores of a misty lake. Machinery grinds to a halt in a screech of metal. Voices scream through a boggy marsh. The album that made #1 on my list this year is a stunning sonic landscape, echoing and distorted and crumbling. The music hits you like a brick wall of sound, all overdrive and fuzz pedals, reverberated and modulated until the sound is breaking apart. It refuses to let you go, driving forward with unrelenting momentum, towards what you know in your gut is the end. If your speakers don’t sound like they are disintegrating into the universal void, you’re not playing it loud enough.

I’m not sure any other band this year truly understood the assignment of writing towards the end of the world. Low is a two-person band; Mimi and Alan, a married couple who began writing music together in 1993. Though they had some success in the alternative scene starting in the 90s, Low started making the best music of their career in the last five years. Hey What is their 13^th full-length album and a shining example of how a long term art partnership can work.

Low is a band that defies categorization. Some call them dream pop, others say indie drone. With haunting vocal harmonies and minimalist arrangements, the band creates concept albums in an era of Spotify singles. Some of the most impressive textures and landscapes on Hey What are created in the spaces in-between songs. Instead of clean endings, each track flows seamlessly into the next. The opening track, “White Horses”, ends with a computer glitch, the track skipping, stuck in a loop. The harsh noise sustains, long enough to be curious, and then longer, mounting into dread before releasing you into the gorgeous opening of “I Can Wait”. As “All Night” moves in to “Disappearing,” Mimi’s final note rings out, then is slowly contorted and looped until her voice begins to sound like a bomb siren. Though Low did release this album on vinyl, you have to give it a first listen in digital format, as the record shortens all of the transitions and ends up removing some of the best moments of the album.

This summer, I was listening to a dharma talk by Martin Aylward called Leaning Into Collapse. I’d been finding myself unable to stop thinking about the climate disaster, the deterioration of the social fabric, the question of how much longer life would be worth living. I wasn’t sure how to make peace with all I was witnessing. In the talk, Aylward said something that stuck with me. He noted how fortunate we would be, how beautiful it would be, to witness the final day on earth, to see the final scene in the big play and watch the curtain drop. Hey What is that day. You are standing on the edge of a cliff watching your city crumble in the distance. The bombs have gone off, the meteor has hit the earth, the tsunami is at your shore. It’s beautiful and terrifying and there is relief and joy and grief and awe all at the same time, and there’s nothing you can do but watch.

Listen on the shores of a lake at midnight with really good headphones.

Well, we’ve made it through another long year. 2021 started off really very bad but I have felt her boot let off my neck a bit with every passing month. While we still haven’t experienced the cathartic release of live music, there are gatherings with friends again and less fear that I’ll accidentally kill my loved ones. Covid again taught me how important art and music are for my wellbeing. You can learn a lot about my mental health by my end of the year playlist and I think this one is telling. Bo Burnam’s bitter pessimism is all swirled together with Silk Sonic’s joyful relief, creating a playlist, and a year, with a roller coaster of emotions.

I don’t know what’s going to happen with this blog. I still have hopes that Jason will return to writing it one day. Or maybe I’ll become a rampant blogger and post more than just once a year. Time will tell.

Thanks for listening, friend. And as Jason would say- here, I made you a mixtape.