I’ve been going through a major The Sea and Cake phase the last two weeks, thanks in part to a great Helado Negro tweet asking for suggestions of which song of theirs to cover. The endless wellspring of 00s indie Ryley Walker suggested Car Alarm‘s “A Fuller Moon”, which was my introduction to this album and more importantly, the track that follows, “On a Letter”.
I realized just recently that despite Suzanne Ciani’s 1982 album Seven Waves greatly impacting my 2021 and its listening habits, I never posted about it aside from my 2021 Retrospective. I’m here to change that today, because some of y’all act like you’ve never listened to Suzanne Ciani before, and it shows.
NYC trio Kill Alters (comprised of Bonnie Baxter, Nicos Kennedy and Hisham Bharoocha, all of whom have dipped their fingers in pools of Black Dice, Machine Girl, Prolaps, Boredoms, Lightning Bolt, etc) have a new album Armed to the Teeth L.M.O.M.M. on the way and boy let me tell you – it’s a lot. It’s coming via trusted freaks Hausu Mountain on February 11th, so you know it’s gonna be something special.
Since 2014, I’ve tried to keep track of songs that have impacted or defined my year (see all those posts tagged in the “Retrospective” section). The songs that I pull into this playlist are usually favorite discoveries of mine that blow my mind (and embarrass me occasionally, as in “why didn’t I listen to this sooner?” Lots of that in this post here), obsessions that I sink into like quicksand (usually new songs that come out that year) or more rarely, soundtracks to true moments that I’ll forever associate with said song. I still have records from 10 years ago that I associate with some mundane or every day happening, but it warps me back there all the same. I spend nearly my entire day listening to music. Mostly in headphones, soundtracking my time on the computer, cooking, walking around the city or in basic leisure time. It’s no wonder I get these things all twisted up in my mind.
As a quick aside, I wanted to say thanks to all the readers of the blog out there. 2021 was by far Warm Visions’ best year yet, cresting past 10k views for the year. I know that’s pretty chump change, but look at it this way: in 2016, Warm Visions had 1,440 views total. In the month of December 2021, Warm Visions got 1,397 views. I realize that an accumulation of posts will help draw more people in in general and I was still reeling from nearly abandoning the blog in 2013/2014, but it feels good to see people coming here to see me write about new music, especially now with so many “dead” blogs out there. Definitely keeps me going! Thank you to the readers, thank you to the musicians! I’ll keep trying my best too.
Check out the playlist of 100 songs that defined my year (in chronological order) and catch my overall listening stats for 2021, as well as my paltry “other” media consumption stats.
Before 2021 ends, I wanted to put up a shout out to something that’s intrinsically tethered to the year: 2011. Many things about 2011 don’t feel like they’re ten years old, but here we are. Ten years ago, this blog was one year old, I graduated high school, my family moved states and I started college. Obviously a big year for me, personally. This was also the year I started really digging into music as it was coming out, marking release days, relentlessly posting on the blog here, training to have my own radio show and engaging in Reddit communities about music. I didn’t think I’d want to have a career in the music biz, but this seemed like a watershed year. It helped that a lot of great albums popped into the mix, making it easy to revisit.
Below you’ll find my original list of Top Albums from 2011. It went up around early December and looking at it now, it looks pretty on par with what I was actually listening to at the time, except at the bottom. In the early blog days sometimes I’d add an album that I thought was cool and would make me look cooler if I listed it, despite listening to maybe one song off of it at the time. Don’t judge me! I’ve done one other Revisiting post in the past, for 2013, because I had grown discontent about the albums that I had listed as my favorite of the year. This time around, I wanted to see how my tastes have changed ten years down the line, as well as highlight all the great albums that people may have forgotten to the sands of time that celebrated their birthdays this year.
What better time to talk about LCD Soundsystem, my favorite band of my late teens, than now? The band just wrapped up a monumental residency of shows in Brooklyn (that were probably/definitely super spreader events), they’ve got some holiday special streaming, and they were the only band on Warm Visions to earn the Top Song + Album in the same year “honor” until this year, 2021. Hell yes 2021! I’ve had this list talking about my favorite songs of theirs percolating in my drafts for some time, so it’s time to go.
As previously mentioned, LCD Soundsystem was a band that defined my late teens, primarily my senior year of high school and into freshman year of college. I wore an LCD Soundsystem shirt to my first day of radio show training and my mentor (who had an ambient music show) said “yeah… you can play LCD Soundsystem whenever you want (as a dig)… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that”. The day that the band “broke up”, extended family was over and I couldn’t watch the livestream. Thankfully, I got to see them in Detroit in 2010, where I picked up that shirt that I wore to the radio station. I was crushed about the band breaking up though. Cut to 2017 and they’re back. The 20 shows, the holiday special, a new mediocre record, and all that. It felt like a scorned partner coming back to town with a new haircut, trying to seduce me again after breaking things off.
Aaanyway – here come the hits. (Also spoiler alert there are no songs off their newest album on this list. That album is 100% mid and we all know it).
Putting a bow on 2021’s Warm Visions list week with my final big piece: 100 of my favorite songs of the year. Doing this the same as the last few years, where I alphabetize 90 of my favorite songs and rank my top 10. There’s no way I can rank 100 songs. Plus it’s all arbitrary. This is what it means to me, not what it means for the greater music scene beyond. All based on my taste, not anyone else’s.
That being said, I feel like there were some pretty universally-loved tracks from this year. I scanned a few friends’ playlists before finalizing this one and felt confident I wasn’t in the dark regarding certain hits from the year, and even felt like hey, maybe I got the good stuff on my list here. I really love listing out my favorite songs, especially after posting my albums list, because I get to feature little musical moments that I have fawned over for the whole year but haven’t gotten to place anywhere else. Maybe it’s a rogue single or on an album that otherwise underwhelmed. Either way, we’ve got sounds of all shapes, sizes and colors below. A nice little grab bag of flavor.
I linked a Spotify playlist below for you to check them all out. Check out 90 of my favorites and peep my Top 10 below that. Hope you enjoy and happy listening.
After a year-plus drought, live music came back to the world in 2021. Living in NYC and being addicted to the high of seeing my favorite songs performed live, I absolutely had to dive back into seeing shows. When I started buying tickets, it felt like the fog of 2020 was clearing a bit and things were returning back to “normal”. Ha haaa… but not for long! I continued going to shows despite being stressed, masked the heck up, and trying to not engage with thick crowds as much. Too much good music came out this year, too many artists on tour with songs that I’m hinging emotional ground on hearing coming through the city. Too many artists I’m anxious to support in some meaningful way again.
I ended up seeing 44 performances by 43 different bands (Yo La Tengo being the only double), with a mini festival at Knockdown Center putting up big numbers in terms of artists added to the list. I had a stretch of seeing four shows over four days leading up to my birthday. My legs are no longer conditioned for shows. I’m going to have to regain my strength.
I maintained my concert-going etiquette though. On that note, can I please ask fellow concert-goers to please mask up (don’t just keep it down just cause you’re drinking an $8 Modelo), please go to the back or to the bar area outside if you’re just going to gab the whole time (too many shows this year I’ve been stuck by people who just talk and talk during sets. Where do you think you are?? Just go to a bar!), and if you’re tall as hell and you worm your way up to the front of the crowd after the show starts, I hope you slip on a banana peel. We’re not animals out here.
To the artists that once again braved the conditions and performed for us – thank you! Your work and art are not taken for granted. I saw some of the most mind-blowing shows of my life this year, and I hope that I can continue to do so in 2022. My full list of shows I saw is below, along with ten alphabetized shows that immediately stuck out to me, along with one shining moment I don’t think I’ll ever forget.
Warm Visions 