The start of every year leads to a hodgepodge of music listening. There isn’t much new to listen to for the first few weeks and then it picks up speed. There are albums you missed or didn’t give enough attention to from the previous year. It also frees you up to listen to anything from any era, to take a deep dive maybe. Did I start one with R.E.M. after reading the great new biography of them by Peter Ames Carlin (The Name of This Band is R.E.M.)? You bet, but I also petered out. Did I want to start one with Bob Dylan after seeing A Complete Unknown? Absolutely, but I didn’t gain much traction. I had 115 album plays in January and heard 85 individual albums. Did I think about writing about some of them? You know how this rhetorical questioning works by now, right? And yet, I could never quite get my fingers to the keys. It’s definitely a weird time right now. However, I’m going to try to let all of my scatteredness go and start getting back into the business at hand…
20/20//Back to California - The classic early-80s power pop band (“Remember the Lightning” is an all-timer) is back with a new album for the first time this century. It kicks off with the title track, a minor-key feast of arpeggiated chords, a hint of jangle, and surf rock guitar splashes supporting a chorus that will quickly get stuck in your head. “The End of the Summer” is sunnier, offering harmonic “aahs,” an active bassline, and an instrumental bridge that lifts it to a new place. I really like the guitar lick on “Lucky Heart,” which has a rockabilly flavor in its underpinnings and some great drum fills as it rolls along. “Laurel Canyon” might be the best song on the album; it comes in with chiming guitar, crisp drums, and bass counterpoints to the melody and crescendos from there. They bust out a harmonica for “King of the Whole Wide World,” which is a bouncy pop tune. The whole album is a good listen and it’s always nice when a band comes back from a long hiatus and delivers.
Dropkick/Primary Colours - I have to stop myself from just listening to this album over and over; it came out 2 weeks ago and this is my 6th listen. They are a Scottish power pop band, in the mode of Teenage Fanclub, and I was a fan of their 2023 album, The Wireless Revolution. This one is even better. It starts with “Left Behind,” which is brimming with ringing guitars, wonderful harmonies, and a melody to sing along with. It’s followed by “Snowflakes,” where they turn up the power, add some organ accents, and rip a great guitar solo. The title track has the perfect mix of jangle and power with more fantastic harmonies. After that, they change up a bit with “Highs and Lows” which features a different lead vocalist and a more straight-ahead rock feel with the bass providing a lot of movement and some more great guitar soloing. “Too Much of the Same” slows everything down with acoustic guitars and plaintive vocals. The second half of the record yields just as many songs to love. At this early date, it’s my album of the year.
Elephants and Stars/Under the Earth and Above Heaven - This band has been putting out great EPs for a number of years and have now delivered an album that’s just as full of great songs as their shorter work. The band is in the business of melodic rock and the opening track, “The Ceiling” is proof; it’s a driving song with a soaring chorus, meaty guitars, and appealing lead line and solo. The next song, “Letters,” cranks up the intensity, layering even more guitars and pounding those drums harder. “The Worst Part Now” is moodier, with the bass playing a more prominent role, but also (successfully) reaches for the heavens on the chorus. Next up is “Strangers on a Train,” which adds piano, background vocals coming ahead of the verse, a chorus that will get stuck in your head, and a great guitar solo. “Come up Shouting” reminds me of early Def Leppard and is also my current favorite. Here I am repeating the trick of writing about the first 5 songs on an album, because it’s that good. This came out on Feb. 14 and I’m currently on my 5th listen on the morning of Feb. 23. I’ve been blasting it in my classroom when my students are elsewhere and it’s a great accompaniment to getting work done. I think it’ll be a race between this and Dropkick to see which one hits double digit plays first.
The National/Rome - This came out in mid-December when I was in the middle of listening to every from 2024 to determine my year-end album rankings. So, I skipped it. After listening to it a bunch of times in 2025, I’d like to go back and add it to my live album rankings, just below Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit’s Live from the Ryman Vol. 2. I’ve had the opportunity to see The National in concert twice and they put on great shows in both 2010 and 2023 - Rome is no exception. The set starts off with a stately “Runaway” before crashing into one of their newer songs, “Eucalyptus”; the song has more bite than the album version, capturing Matt Berninger’s intensity, adding horns to the mix, and letting Bryan Devendorf loose on the drums. In fact, all of the newer songs here mix well with the established classics, reminding me to go back to the pair of 2023 albums (which I already liked pretty well) at some point. “Don’t Swallow the Cap” comes right after that trio of newer songs and Devendorf’s drums get the pulse racing immediately while the guitars sting and everything surges to the finish; it’s always been one of my favorites and sounds fantastic here. It amuses me the “Lemonworld” and “The Geese of Beverly Road,” with a lyric about a big slice of lemon, are sequenced together. Another song that has more bite in this live version is “Humiliation,” which also benefits from a long guitar solo that is not part of the studio version. It seamlessly transitions to “Murder Me Rachael,” which previously appeared as a live track on the Cherry Tree EP (which if you haven’t heard before, do so). The final five song run is fire, starting with the propulsive piano of “Fake Empire” and continuing with the histrionic tension of “Smoke Detector” then the pummeling perfection of “Mr. November” then the drum-fueled acceleration of “Terrible Love” before downshifting into the stripped-down sing-along finish of “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks.” This music geek doesn’t mind the songs that aren’t here (alas, “Pink Rabbits”) because there’s plenty to love over almost 100 minutes.
Nick Piunti/Trust Your Instincts - You may have noticed I ranked Piunti’s album with The Complicated Men, Up and Out of It, pretty highly on my year-end list. It continues a streak that started with 2020’s Downtime and continued with 2022’s Heart Inside Your Head. In the wake of Downtime, I also went back to 2018’s Temporary High (billed as a solo album), which was also great. I hadn’t yet gone back to this 2016 effort and after giving it a number of listens, I wish I’d gone back sooner. Piunti is a purveyor of power pop goodness, always ready with a hook and a chorus for your pleasure centers. “One Hit Wonder” opens with chiming guitar and some programmed drums before kicking in, delivering a soaring chorus and a sharp guitar solo, and featuring lyrics related to music ideas (see the song title). “Blame in Vain” offers twin guitars on the solo and a sticky bass to counterbalance. The bass does some great work in “Vaguely Familiar” as well, ascending and descending under the melody. If you want just a taste of the album to see if you’d be interested, I suggest “Dumb It Down,” which adds some steel guitar and female vocals to the proceedings and feels like it should have been played by Casey Kasem on the American Top 40. “Stay Where You Are” ends the album in fine fashion, with yet another chorus that’ll linger, great bass, and a nice little guitar solo at the end. If you want a great couple hours of music, start here and work your way forward through his catalog; it certainly was a fun day for me…and after writing this, I’m tempted to do it again.
Chuck Prophet/Wake the Dead - I made passing reference to this album back in December, admitting that I basically missed the boat on it. January afforded me time to really listen and had I listened enough in 2024, I definitely would have found a spot for it on my year-end list. Prophet teams up with the cumbia band ¿Qiensave? for a set of Latin-flavored songs that adds a new wrinkle to his sound while also making total sense. The title track opens the album and works as proof of concept, pasting a classic-sounding Prophet tune on top of Latin percussion. “Give the Boy a Kiss” is lilting and playful, adding background vocals in Spanish. The one/two punch of “First Came the Thunder” and “Sally Was a Cop” is worth the price of admission alone; the former built around the bass and percussion and the latter (co-written by Prophet and Alejandro Escovedo and first appearing on Escovedo’s Big Station album in 2012) an absolute tour-de-force with biting lyrics and a twin guitar leads. Actually, you could add “Red Sky Night,” a ballad with some strings and plaintive vocals, as well. The album ends with “It’s a Good Day to Be Alive,” a tender acoustic ode to the beauty in the mundane and a reminder that’s much needed right now. Prophet has been making music for decades and this album is proof he hasn’t run out of ideas yet.
Rose City Band/Sol Y Sombra - I’d heard a song or two here and there by Rose City Band, but had never listened to an album. The reviews were pretty strong for this album when it came out, enough for me to give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised. It feels like a summer album, one to play with the windows down and driving into the sunset or sitting on the porch with a beer as it turns to dusk. Opener “Lights on the Way” sets the vibes perfectly, strummy and bouncy with plenty of pedal steel. The pedal steel is the real star, whether it’s erupting into a full-fledged guitar solo on “Evergreen” or painting all over “Sunlight Daze” or working as a counterpoint to the harmonies of “Radio Song”; those latter songs also feature some sweet electric guitar solos. One of the best songs is “Seeds of Light,” which leaves space for plenty of guitar before transitioning to the disco-fueled instrumental “La Mesa.” They are followed by another contender for best song in “Wheels,” which follows the formula of the album without being formulaic. I was pleasantly surprised with Sol Y Sombra and look forward to that summer listening a few months.
If I may, I'd echo your sentiments on 20/20's record. I went in with the worry that nothing here would match Remember the Lightning--and it doesn't. But that's because time (and the band) have moved on and grown. It's not the same record they would've made 40 years ago--and in hindsight, it shouldn't be. It absolutely delivers, though.
Yes, it’s absolutely a weird time right now. As it so happens, I read those same two books, and I, too, didn't go too deep on R.E.M., Dylan, or Seeger afterward. You, however, still made time for new music. I went through a good month or two when I barely listened to any music at all. I've had this overwhelming sense of foreboding—the people in charge don't know what they're doing, and something disastrous is going to happen. What that is, I don't know. There are at least a half-dozen possibilities. So I've been doing a lot of reading, trying to figure out the dangers, looking for glimmers of hope, and trying to make sense of things that seem totally counterproductive. It's been a stressful time.
I've been trying to get myself to a better balance, so I'm thankful for this post giving me something new to listen to. I'm not sure I have a favorite or a standout yet, but I really like these songs: "Seeds of Light," "Dumb It Down," "Left Behind," and "It's a Good Day to Be Alive." Also, I just realized that I skipped over the Elephants and Stars album—will listen to that tomorrow.