Tag: music

My Top 10 Albums of 2021

Two Sundays ago, I shared My Favorite Books of 2021. Last Sunday, I shared the favorite TV shows and movies that both my wife and I have watched this year. Now this Sunday, I’m sharing my favorite albums of 2021. Finally, next Sunday, December 26, I’ll share my favorite moments of 2021 in photos.

There was a lot of good music released this year, so it was hard to narrow it down to 10. But I did, with the albums I listened to the most. Here they are, listed in alphabetical order by title of album:

  • An Overview on Phenomenal Nature by Cassandra Jenkins
  • Chameleon by Anthony Naples
  • Heaux Tales by Jazmine Sullivan
  • I Don’t Live Here Anymore by The War on Drugs
  • I Know I’m Funny haha by Faye Webster
  • New Long Leg by Dry Cleaning
  • Promises by Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra
  • Space 1.8 by Nala Sinephro
  • Vulture Prince by Arooj Aftab
  • Yellow River Blue by Yu Su

And I’m also including links to a couple of bonus playlists, starting first with the top 20 songs I couldn’t get enough of this year, in alphabetical order by artist. Not all were from this year, and three, with “Rival Dealer” by Burial, “Do I Wanna Know?” by Arctic Monkeys, and “Maggot Brain” by Funkadelic, being among songs that I just haven’t been able to get enough of for several years.

I’m also including a playlist of “The Other 50 Albums of 2021 I Want To Listen To More Of.”

So, did you listen to any music released this year? If so, what were some of your favorite albums or songs? Or what did you listen to musically this year? What was on your turntable, so to speak?

Bonus Play: Even though we ditched Netflix a few months ago, before we did, we watched Bo Burnham’s Inside. And we loved it. It was brilliant. Here’s the music from the…comedy special/show? Experience is more like it, but the music is great too.

Celebrating Go to an Art Museum Day

Alternate title: On grief, and listening to Radiohead and R.E.M.

In the summer I realized I had some time left I still needed to take off work so I’ve had a few random days off. At the time I decided to look at a calendar of national holidays to select my day off. My last one was October 28, National Chocolate Day, even though ironically I didn’t have any chocolate that day.

This Tuesday, Nov. 9, according to the website National Today, is Go to an Art Museum Day, and it is one of the days I chose to have off. Initially, I thought about going to the Corning Museum of Glass, which is about an hour away from where I live. But this past week some unforeseen vehicle repair expenses came up, so now I won’t be going. Instead, I’m going on a virtual tour of some museums around the world that I bookmarked yesterday.

That will be in the afternoon. In the morning, I want to catch up on some meditation podcasts with Niall Breslin on Spotify and journaling.

Last Tuesday, my wife Kim took a creative writing workshop so she could do something special on the birthday of both her mother and her best friend from high school, who passed away within four days of each other in April. This Tuesday, I’m doing something similar as with the meditation podcasts and journaling, I’m remembering not only their passing – and the passing of hundreds of thousands in our country and millions around the world in the last year and half from COVID-19 – but also the passing of a few patrons who have died as well in the last couple of months.

Even though I didn’t know those patrons well, I was used to seeing – and hearing – them at the library, a couple for many of the last 11 years I’ve worked at the library. And their deaths have hit me harder than I thought they would. So I want to acknowledge that grief – and the continuing grief that both Kim (moreso, understandably, her) and I are having for Kim’s mom and best friend – on Tuesday.

If I had gone to Corning, I wanted to listen to music on the way. Since I’m not going, while I am on my virtual museum tour, I’m going to listen to a couple of albums that were released last week by Radiohead and R.E.M., remastered editions of earlier albums. The albums are New Adventures in Hi-fi by R. E.M. and Kid A and Amnesiac by Radiohead.

I plan on ending the day by watching a movie with Kim that I’ve wanted to see for a while, but just haven’t gotten to. It also fits with the art theme. It’s called Loving Vincent and is about Vincent Van Gogh. Kim already has seen it, but she said she loved it so I don’t think she’ll mind watching again.

September 2021: In the Rearview

So, looking back at the month that was September 2021…

I read five books (in order of favorite to least, although all were good):

  • Invisible Differences: A Story of Aspergers, Adulting, and Living A Life in Full Color by Julia Dachez (author) and Mademoiselle Caroline (illustrator)
  • Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry, collected and with an introduction by Joy Harjo, 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate
  • The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
  • Friday the Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman
  • Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, also by Kemelman.

I think why I liked the graphic novel the best is because I (and my wife) think I’m probably on the spectrum somewhere. While I read one Goodreads review that said the resources offered at the end of the book were superficial, I thought it wasn’t meant to be exhaustive but an introduction. Personally I could relate to a lot of what Marguerite, the main character, experienced in her life. Even this morning, I found myself slightly overwhelmed by a neighbor’s barking dogs.

We watched eight TV shows (in alphabetical order, all are/were excellent):

  • Alice in Paris
  • Archer
  • Brooklyn Nine-Nine
  • Only Murders in The Building
  • Reservation Dogs
  • Schmigadoon
  • Ted Lasso
  • What We Do in the Shadows

Hard to pick up a favorite, but I will: Reservation Dogs. Seek it out.

I listened to a little bit of this:

A little bit of that:

And a lot of meditation exercises from meditation apps (not providing the links, because…Google):

  • Headspace
  • Shine
  • Wake Up/Wind Down (with Niall Breslin)

I also listened/watched folklore: the long pond sessions on Disney Plus, that really enhanced the album. I’ll leave you with my favorite song from the album:

While I know September actually has five days left, how was your September? Read, watch, listen to, do anything good in the last month? Please share in the comments.

In the interim…

So…

…while I was away “fishin'”…

I read:

  • Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry, collected and with an introduction by Joy Harjo, the 23rd and current Poet Laureate of the United States, to which I also listened with the poets reading their own works via The Library of Congress. I highly recommend listening to the poets and also reading the poems with the line breaks they intended as on the LOC website. I had the ebook version and reading the poems in PDFs was especially helpful.
  • Friday the Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman. I’ve always wanted to read this series, but never have. It’s good enough that I already have checkers out the second in the series.

I watched:

  • the final season of both CSI: Miami and Criminal Minds, with the latter being better if only for giving the viewers a better going-away party with the characters.
  • Idiocracy (with my wife).
  • a streaming video of a 2014 concert by Pearl Jam that  marked the 25th anniversary of their fourth album No Code on August 27. The October 17, 2014 show from Moline, IL saw the band perform the 1996 album from start to finish. That day also marked the 30th anniversary of their album Ten.

My wife and I also have started watching:

  • Only Murders in The Building with Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, which has been brilliant thus far.
  • Alice in Paris, which, according to The New York Times, is “a show initially aired in two-minute episodes, but those have been repackaged as eight half-hour installments.” The shows are scripted, but feature real restaurants and cafes in Paris.
  • Britbox and Starz, through 99 cents a month specials on Prime Video.

As for what’s in the reading queue, I have several possibilities:

  • Network Effect by Martha Wells
  • Fugitive Telemetry, also by Wells
  • Growing Old: Notes on Aging with Something Like Grace by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
  • The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams
  • How to Find Your Own Way in the Dark by Derek B. Miller
  • The Turnout by Megan Abbott
  • Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry by Harry Kemelman
  • Angelica’s Smile by Andrea Camilleri
  • The Essential Muriel Rukeyser, with a foreword by Natasha Trethewy.

And last night, I went to Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago…via a livestream. I’ll leave you with a song from Angel Olsen, one of the performers I saw there.

So, how y’all been doing in the past couple of weeks since I have been away? Reading, watching, listening to anything of note? Please share in the comments.