About a Year
Dreamsicle lists for long-suffering progressives
Albums and EPs in rough preferential order:
Black Keys, No Rain, No Flowers (Nonesuch)
Unknown Mortal Orchestra, IC-02 Bogotá (Jagjaguwar)
AJ Lee & Blue Summit, City of Glass and Covers Project EP (Signature)
The Beths, Straight Line Was a Lie (ANTI-)
Wrens, Half of What You See (2023 [2025], Out of Your Head)
Maria Muldaur, One Hour Mama, The Blues of Victoria Spivey (Nola Blue)
Mekons, Horror (Fire)
Sunny Sweeney, Rhinestone Requiem (Aunt Daddy)
Dean Wareham, That’s the Price of Loving Me (Carpark)
Buck 65, Keep Moving (Handsmade)
Lily Allen, West End Girl (BMG)
Haim, I Quit (Columbia)
Sabrina Carpenter, Man’s Best Friend (Island)
Hayley Williams, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party (Post Atlantic)
Margo Price, Hard Headed Woman (Loma Vista)
Mavis Staples, Sad and Beautiful World (ANTI-)
Willie Nelson, Oh What a Beautiful World (Legacy)
Mad Honey, I-40 East EP (Deathwish)
Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts, Talkin to the Trees (The Other Shoe/Reprise)
The Chills, Spring Board, The Early Unrecorded Songs (Fire)
Willie Nelson, Workin’ Man, Willie Sings Merle (Legacy)
Lucy Dacus, Forever Is a Feeling (Geffen)
Bruce Springsteen & E Street Band, Nebraska '82 (Columbia)
Bob Mould, Here We Go Crazy (Granary Music)
Joe Ely, Love & Freedom (Rack ‘Em)
Alison Krauss & Union Station, Arcadia (Down the Road)
Molly Tuttle, So Long Little Miss Sunshine (Nonesuch)
Little Simz, Lotus (AWAL)
Wet Leg, Moisturizer (Domino)
FKA Twigs, Eusexua (Young/Atlantic)
Neil Young, Tonight’s the Night (Reprise)
The Nebraska '82 box is the revelation we didn't even need from the guy who had already dropped seven previously unheard albums over the summer (Tracks II). As if to make the superfluous biopic even more inauthentic, this traces the Boss's process as ever-shifting, ever risking failure, constantly renewing and remaking, with several tracks upstaging previous renditions (the rockabilly "Downbound Train") and others simply finding their way as revisions in slo-mo. Now if he would just stop releasing that prefabricated plastic karaoke backing track slop by Ron Aniello, critics feel embarrassed that Landau put his name anywhere near that stuff.
Much respect to Rosalía, she's still gaining on me, it's overwrought in the way that demands more focus. And that Geese singer reminds me too much of Rufus Wainwright, a stripe of preen that gives off the wrong kind of pretense. I still think of C&W Pop out in front aesthetically, although it hasn't had a great year since 2017. Picked up numerous titles as the deadline plowed forward, and jumped happily on Buck 65, the Mekons, and Sunny Sweeney. Across most critics I follow, these entries get more and more diverse, enough to make you wonder whether consensus is overrated, or if streaming isn't a force for good.
reissues
Neil Young, Oceanside Countryside (1977, Reprise)
Furry Lewis, Back on My Feet Again (1961, Bluesville)
The Who, Who Are You (Super Deluxe Edition) (Polydor)
Prince, Around the World In A Day (Deluxe)
Bob Dylan, Through the Open Window: Bootleg Series Vol 18, 1956-1963 (Sony)
The Rolling Stones, Black and Blue (Super Deluxe Edition, remixed and expanded, 5-LP/4-CD box set)
The Replacements, Let It Be Deluxe Edition (Rhino)
Neil Young, Tonight's the Night (Reprise)
If you haven't yet hear the Stones play Eric Davidson's "Cherry Oh Baby" you'll need to go to the back of the line. And while that heinous Black and Blue ad campaign remain oddly quiet five decades later, this may be the perfect place to list my favorite Rolling Stone magazine headline from 1976 (just as Lester Bangs contemplated the end of relevance in Creem): "New Stone Is Old Face."
classical
HieYon Choi, Beethoven Sonatas (independent)
Aikiko Suwanai, Evgeni Bozhanov, Brahms Violin Sonatas (Universal Classicals)
Chris Thile, Bach Sonatas and Partitas Volume 2 (Nonesuch)
Guarneri String Quartet, Complete RCA Album Collection (49 CDs, RCA)
Krystian Zimerman, Maria Nowak, Katarzyna Budnik, Yuya Okamoto, Brahms Piano Quartets Nos. 2 and 3 (DG)
Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma, Leonidas Kavakos – Beethoven for Three: Symphony No. 6 “Pastorale” and Symphony No. 8 (Sony Classical, 2025)
Andris Nelsons, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Shostakovich: The Symphonies (Deutsche Grammophon, 2015-2024), including Under Stalin's Shadow series with soloists Daniil Trifonov, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma.
Simone Dinnerstein, Circle of Life: Bach, Goldberg Variations & Philip Glass, Mad Rush (Orange Mountain Music, 2025)
Rachel Podger, Just Biber (Channel)
HieYon Choi recently joined the faculty at Peabody, and her complete Beethoven cycle has all the strong feeling and thoughtful repose that her late sonatas release (Decca Korea) did a few years back. Every transition, no matter how jagged or rash, sounds completely plausible in her hands, and the slow movements all have a coiled inner strength. Violinist Aikiko Suwanai has a deeply personal tone, and her pianist, Evgeni Bozhanov, recreates these familiar piano parts from the inside; this counts as a deeply reimagined Brahms set.
With deepest respect, I think the outdoor tracks on Chris Thile's second Bach album a charming miscalculation. I’m sure he plays these things in the wee hours while hanging upside-down from the attic rafters, but over time the extraneous sounds on Sonata No. 3 and partita in E Major only distract. And nobody accused his first volume of "correctness." Can we turn just slightly from the dreaded formal/informal binary? Vladimir Horowitz conjured thundering wildebeests from a Steinway in a tux, right? The Zimerman Brahms looks like an indulgence but it grows on you, many spins later it still rewards close attention. He should definitely record that first Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25, and the piano trios.
more
Tom Hull’s extensive listening site, mostly jazz but he gets around…
Year End Lists aggregates nearly everything
RateYourMusic (RYM)
Album of the Year (AOTY)
CriticsTop10 and They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? (TSPDT), decent film lists
anna's archive, spotify, and fate-tipping
This Spotify sponging story proves sobering, even philosophical. I’m largely on board for it, especially since they're so transparent. And with the leaders this country gets, only a billionaire’s whim keeps any of this available—just look at public school libraries. It defies even Orange-coiffed “logic” to defend a music ecosystem so thoroughly corrupted and lopsided with middle-men (labels) flogging leverage; if anything, it deserves an even bigger jolt. So don't blame the thieves, blame a system that incentivizes radical archiving on such a scale. And remember, we heard similar anti-piracy arguments around the Napster debate two decades back and look where that got us. For perspective: the UK imposes an annual tax on TV equipment, and they still have ad-supported independent channels.
one last plug
"The Motown Story: The First Decade, or A Star Is Born," American Music Perspectives, Vol. 4, No. 1, SPECIAL ISSUE: MOTOWN, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2025 (Tim Riley, issue editor). With more from Riley, Olivia Davis, Kit O’Toole, and Ben Greenman.
noises off
“Now he’s hit the big time”: Chris Dalla Riva in Can’t Get Much Higher
Coming soon: Peter Richardson’s new book, Brand New Beat, on the history of Rolling Stone magazine
riley rock index: obits, bylines, youtube finds, reference sites, pinterest, beacons.ai, random deep link
drop a dime on good criticism
A damn nice list, my friend. My only edit would be to put Tonight’s The Night at the top of the heap. But that’s just my taste. Neil’s Ditch period is gold to me.