#yearend 2018
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
Text
When Stocks Are Up Big YTD Before Thanksgiving
S&P 500 is having another banner year up an impressive 25.5% year-to-date through yesterday’s close on pace for more gains today. When stocks logged double-digit gains YTD on the on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, in general market gains continued into yearend.
2024 is set to exceed my 2024 Annual Forecast best case scenario of 15-25% made 11 months ago. I expect more new all-time highs before yearend. I would not be surprised if the market outperformed the average December and ended up tacking on another 4-5% or more, pushing the index over 6200 for the year or upwards of a 30% gain for 2024.
There are a few blemishes in the 35 previous years, but most importantly, there are no major selloffs on this list. The big December decline of -9.2% in 2018 came after the S&P 500 was down -1.2% at this point in the year. After double-digit YTD gains the S&P 500 was up 70% of the time from the Tuesday before Thanksgiving to yearend for an average gain of 2.4%.
Also of note is that the Santa Claus Rally suffered only five losses in these years. But these four down SCRs in 1955, 1968, 1999, 2014 and 2023 were followed by flat years in 1956 and 2015, down years in 1969 and 2000, but solid gains in 2024. As Yale’s famous line states (2024 Almanac page 116 and 2025 Almanac page 118): “If Santa Claus Should Fail To Call, Bears May Come to Broad and Wall.”
9 notes
·
View notes
Text
It’s The End Of The Year As We Know It (And I Don’t Feel Fine)
Wintertime is here, folks, and that means a few things: Christmastime, as well as the various things that are associated with this time of year, and what’s come to be known as “list season.” This is my favorite time of year, because I love looking at people’s lists, since everyone is guaranteed to have such a different outlook on what their favorite albums have been throughout the year. I know that my list is not going to be exactly the same as nobody else, because I listen to a lot of different music at different times, but that’s the fun of it. I love seeing what everyone listened to throughout the year, as well as what everyone hated, too. I’m not as negative as I used to be, but I still love seeing a worst of list. You’ll see mine, too, and I decided to do it this year because I listened to enough bad albums that I didn’t expect or anticipate to be just that.
This list, however, is going to be the stuff I really enjoy! I tried to keep my lists small this year, and challenge myself by highlighting the best of the best (and what really stuck with me throughout the year), so aside from a top ten, I also wanted to highlight a handful of honorable mentions. I only have another 14 albums in my honorable mentions, but when I say these are the best of the best, these truly are the best of the best, folks. I’m going to start with those, and they won’t be in any order, but they’re all still worth hearing, nonetheless.
Honorable Mentions
Rain City Drive - Things Are Different Now
Starting with an album I didn’t expect to have on this list at all, it’s the new Rain City Drive album, Things Are Different Now, and this record isn’t the most innovative or most unique sounding, but they really hit their stride with this one. They perfected their R&B meets Octanecore sound, and if I had to pick a few albums in this vein to check out, this would be one of them.
Green Day - Saviors
Speaking of another band I didn’t expect to highlight here, Green Day’s new album, Saviors, is an album I surprisingly enjoyed quite a bit. It’s also nothing special, but Saviors is Green Day doing what they do best, and coming back to their punk roots by knowing what works within their sound. Now I’m not quite a diehard fan of these guys now, but I really enjoy it, nonetheless.
The Story So Far - I Want To Disappear
Pop-punk seemingly had a bit of a turnout on my list this year, because there are weirdly a lot of pop-punk records, especially when I’ve gone on record to say that I’m not the biggest fan of the genre anymore. With that said, most of the albums on my yearend list are either from bands I already like, or in the case of The Story So Far’s I Want To Disappear, this is their best album (especially for coming out six years after their last). It’s more or less an alternative album with some pop-punk influence, but it’s a lot of fun.
Judas Priest - Invincible Shield
I hate to say this, despite being a big metal guy, but I don’t have a lot of heavy metal / heavy music on my list. One exception, however, is Judas Priest’s Invincible Shield, which is also their first in six years. This record, like 2018’s Firepower, it shows them operating on all cylinders, even if it doesn’t do anything that they haven’t done before. It’s just impressive that these guys are in their 60s and 70s, but they’re still putting out awesome stuff.
Usher - Coming Home
Usher’s back with a new album, too, and this time it’s his first in eight years (six if you don’t count an EP from 2018), but this is a great mix of classic R&B, pop, and hip-hop. It’s not quite his best album, but at the same time, Usher’s voice hasn’t gotten any less fantastic. His voice is what steals the show, and if you enjoy that, you’ll surely love this album.
Fluorescents - Scream It At Me
Another pop-punk album on the list, but this time it’s a debut album from Chicago band, Fluorescents, entitled Scream It At Me, and these guys remind me of the 00s “neon pop-punk” scene, complete with bright synths, catchy melodies, and a 2010s scene aesthetic. This is one of the most fun albums I’ve heard all year, and it just radiates joy every time I listen to it. If you love that kind of sound, you’ll absolutely love this album.
The Ghost Inside - Searching For Solace
Metalcore has had a pretty cool year, and I got a handful of those types of albums on the list, but The Ghost Inside’s second album after their six-year hiatus. Even then, this is their first album in four years as well, but this record is a fun, engaging, energetic, heavy, and catchy metalcore album. Sure, it’s got a bit of an Octanecore feel to it, but at the same time, this album is solid for what it sets out to do. I kept coming back to this album throughout the year, and it’s a great and cathartic album for metalcore fans.
SeeYouSpaceCowboy - Coup De Grace
If I had a nickel for albums released this year with the title Coup De Grace, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice. Too bad one of those albums isn’t good, and I’ll mention it on my worst of list, but the good one is the new SeeYouSpaceCowboy album. I’ve loved this band for years, but this album is the culmination of their sound. This record is an amalgamation of 00s alternative music, including elements of metalcore, post-hardcore, pop-punk, and even dance-punk. If you loved and grew up with 00s alternative music, like I did, you’ll instantly feel like you traveled back in time to that era, but in the best way.
Denzel Curry - King Of The Mischievous South, Volume 2
Rapper Denzel Curry came back this year with one of my favorite albums of his, King Of The Mischievous South, Volume 2, and this reminds me a lot of his 2019 album, ZUU. That album was a love letter to Florida, and the 90s and 00s influences that Curry has from his home state, but this record is a love letter to the south in general. Mainly serving as a bandleader, so to speak, he brings aboard a slew of southern artists, as well as southern adjacent artists, to have a lot of fun and pay homage to the 00s southern hip-hop sound.
Better Lovers - Highly Irresponsible
A metalcore supergroup featuring every member of Every Time I Die, except for Keith Buckley, and Greg Puciato of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Better Lovers’ debut album, Highly Irresponsible, was one of my most anticipated albums, but it delivers. This album is kind of predictable, because if you’ve heard either band, you’ll know what to expect, but at the same time, it’s done well, so I really can’t complain. If anything, maybe their next album will be more interesting and push boundaries, but this debut is still quite good.
Brigitte Calls Me Baby - The Future Is Our Way Out
The debut album from Brigitte Calls Me Baby probably wins for most unique album of this year, especially for its brand of rockabilly meets 80s post-punk meets modern indie rock. Their vocalist reminds me of a mix of Morrissey (without the pompous attitude and racism) and Roy Orbison. It can get a bit messy at times, especially where their sound is a mish mash of stuff, but it has a really cool foundation, so I bet their next album is going to iron out those kinks in their armor. In the meantime, this is a really solid and unique album that surprisingly works really well.
Neck Deep - S/T
One of the final honorable mentions is the latest album from Neck Deep, which is just a self-titled album. This album came out in January, weirdly enough, but it was something I kept revisiting throughout the last handful of months. I mainly came back to this when it was warmer out, and the weather was perfect for pop-punk. This is one of those albums that isn’t anything super unique, but their sound ultimately goes back to their roots, yet they have a wiser mentality this time around. For that reason, I really enjoy this album, but with pop-punk having a real good year, I didn’t want overload my top ten with nothing but pop-punk albums.
Justin Timberlake - Everything I Thought It Was
The comeback Justin Timberlake album, Everything I Thought It Was, is one of those albums that came and went without much fanfare. It wasn’t hated, but at the same time, JT’s star power has faded over time. He isn’t the big name he was a decade ago, but this new album is still a quite good. If anything, he does what he does best, which is upbeat and catchy R&B, soul, and funk. The album does drag a bit by the end, and the lyrics aren’t very good most of the time, but I’m also not listening to a JT album for its lyrics. This album has some of my favorite moments from him, and some of my new favorite tracks, but it’s a shame that people don’t quite care about him as much anymore.
Now that the honorable mentions are out of the way, it’s time for the meat of the list, but these are the best of the best from 2024. A lot of times, I like to reflect on the year as a whole, and this year is no exception. I think it’s safe to say that this year was full of ups and downs for people, but it was a rocky year full of tragedy, political uproar, and negativity that we just need to escape from (and also fight against). These are my top ten favorite albums of this year, and these are the albums that I either went back to the most, I thought about the most, or that made some significant impact on me this year. There are no prerequisites for genre, sound, style, or type of artists I have here. They range from pop-punk to rap and hip-hop, but I love all kinds of music. With that said, let’s get into this, starting with…
10: Out Of/Into - Motion I
This is the most recent addition to the list, hence why this album is at number ten, but this band is a jazz band featuring some of the brightest and most talented musicians in contemporary jazz today. Specifically on the legendary Blue Note Records, these musicians almost all recorded other albums, but came together for this one. Originally called the Blue Note Quartet to celebrate the label’s 85th anniversary, they changed their name and dropped this banger of an album. This is some of the most fun, energetic, and unique jazz I’ve heard in 2024. A really great album that I wish came out sooner, but an album I needed to mention, nonetheless.
9: Bilmuri - American Motor Sports
Country has had a good year, too, although I didn’t hear too many country albums I loved. I heard a handful that I really liked, but the only one that came close was the new Bilmuri album, American Motor Sports. Bilmuri, known for his work with Attack Attack in the mid-00s and early 2010s, went on to form this band, but this is my favorite introduction to his work. This album is a country and metalcore hybrid, and you’d think this would be a joke or parody project, but it surprisingly isn’t. Bilmuri plays it straight, especially with the lyrics being very heartfelt and quite good for what they’re doing. The breakdowns are crispy, the hooks are catchy, and the twang is great.
8: Lil Dicky - Penith
Lil Dicky dropped his first (and only) album in 2015, and while he was still around, he didn’t release any projects since. I think he should have dropped more stuff, because it would have made his star power even higher, and he would have remained relevant even longer. He isn’t irrelevant, per se, but Penith is his first album in nine years, and it’s also off the heels of his FX comedy, Dave. Starring himself as a fictionalized version of Lil Dicky, the show is a great example of how Internet culture and hip-hop culture intersect, as well as what it’s like to be a viral star trying to be taken seriously (Lil Dicky himself was a viral star when his debut came out).
The album serves as a soundtrack to the show, so the songs on the show are on the album, and that ultimately makes the album better for me, but the album is a lot more poignant and mature than his debut. The songs are also catchier, and more relatable, because they’re more about him as an artist, and who he is, not just the jokes he can make. It’s more introspective, but I can see why people wouldn’t like this; the album does make more sense in conjunction with the show. The show puts a lot of context into these songs, and they hit harder for that, but they’re also really, catchy, and poignant in a few spots.
7: State Champs - S/T
I had a lol of pop-punk albums on my honorable mentions list, but aside from one coming up later, my favorite pop-punk album of the year is the self-titled State Champs album. I loved their last album, Kings Of The New Age, because it had a youthful energy that I hadn’t heard too much in the genre lately, even if it was rather generic in spots. This new album, however, takes that youthful energy and combines it with a world weary and wiser sound, at least lyrically, while also pulling from the 00s. This thing is super tight and catchy, all the while remaining poignant and interesting.
6: Lupe Fiasco - Samurai
Lupe Fiasco’s a rapper that I hadn’t listened to in years before Samurai came out, but this album is a masterclass in making straightforward and easygoing jazz-rap with some fantastic bars and rhyme schemes. Lupe sounds amazing, per usual, but this record is really short and sweet, ultimately making for a memorable listen that I always want to go back to. This record has hooks and lyrics for days, even if it doesn’t do anything that I haven’t heard before. Sometimes that’s all you need, because it rules.
5: Knocked Loose - You Won’t Go Until You’re Supposed To
In the beginning of this list, I mentioned that albums on here will be ones that I went back to quite a bit, that I thought about, or that had some kind of impact on me. The new Knocked Loose album, You Won’t Go Until You’re Supposed To, is one of those albums that I haven’t gone back to much this year, but it falls into the latter two categories. I’ve thought about this album a lot, and when I do go back to it, I love it. This album has made an impact on me, because it’s the one heavy album I heard that really did something unique and different, versus being the same things I’ve been hearing for years. This album is their heaviest and most unrelenting, but it’s also most interesting conceptually and musically. They opt for a darker sound, as well as darker themes, but it works insanely well. This isn’t a super accessible or catchy album, but it’s a damn good one.
4: Childish Gambino - Atavista
Donald Glover, otherwise known as Childish Gambino, not only dropped two albums this year, but he also had a TV come out (Mr. & Mrs. Smith was that show, and it was one of my favorite shows of the year). I didn’t care too much for the second album he put out this past summer, Bando Stone, but I liked the first one a lot. That was Atavista, which was a finished version of a record he quietly put out in 2020, including some new songs and reworked songs, but this thing is a great journey through R&B, soul, and hip-hop. I hate to say this, but this is what Kanye West should be sounding like in 2024, not whatever he’s been doing.
3: Bayside - There Are Worse Things Than Being Alive
My favorite pop-punk album isn’t really a pop-punk album, because it has elements of hard-rock and alternative rock, but that’s the new Bayside album, There Are Worse Things Than Being Alive. I’ve been a fan of these guys for a long time, especially with 2007’s The Walking Wounded, and this album comes close to that for me. It has a diverse sound, the hooks are great, the vocals are top tier, and the guitar riffs are crunchy and heavy, so this has all the makings of a solid Bayside album. The lyrics are a bit lackluster in spots, but they’re fine. The hooks and the vocals really make up for it, especially when this band has gotten on my nerves for making the same album over and over again in recent years, but this is such a step up.
2: Kendrick Lamar - GNX
When I first put together my list a few weeks ago, Kendrick Lamar’s surprise album was only just a couple weeks old. GNX totally shocked people, myself included, but I absolutely love it. This record served as the victory lap for Kendrick, even after the amount of embarrassment he caused Drake in 2024. It’s a good thing that I waited so long to post this, too, because I’ve spent a lot of time with this album, so I’ve been able to let it simmer more. I put it lower on my list for the same reason I have Out Of/Into’s debut at ten, because I didn’t spend a lot of time with it, yet I do quite love it, but I’ve been listening to this religiously. Songs like “Luther” and “Blue Dodger” absolutely rule, and I can’t get enough of how fun this album is.
1: Linkin Park - From Zero
My favorite album of the year is something I never thought would happen. Well, two things, actually: Linkin Park getting back together with a new singer, and said comeback album being something I truly connected with. Linkin Park announced a reunion seven years after Chester Bennington passed, as well as a new album, entitled From Zero. The name represents two things: their name before they became Linkin Park, and the fact they were starting from zero. With new singer Emily Armstrong, of Dead Sara, the band dropped From Zero, and this album is a master class in how to move forward while also honoring your past, and this is the album that truly got me into Linkin Park.
I never quite got into the band growing up, and over the past decade, I’ve struggled to really get a grasp on them, but listening to this and their whole discography showed me that I quite respect and love this band (some albums more than others, but I respect their experimentation). This is the cream of the crop, though, and I absolutely love it. From the razor sharp hooks, the dual vocals that work so well together, and the lyrics that are broad yet relatable enough to get into, and the diverse sound that pulls from a lot of their albums, including Mike Shinoda’s debut solo album as himself from 2018, it just all works so well. It’s also a tight 32 minutes, so it’s such a short listen, and because of that, I want to keep listening to it over and over again.
Worst Of The Year
Something different that I wanted to do this year, and it’s something I haven’t done in maybe a decade, which is a worst of list. I like highlight the good music that came out, but bad music is out there, too. Just like with the best of list, this is personal. Out of everything I listened to this year, these albums were the worst. If you love them, great, but don’t whine to me about it. These albums aren’t good, and whining about how much you love them won’t change my mind. I got a few honorable mentions to kick things off, because I wanted to have a top ten (plus one honorable mention) but I still wanted to highlight a few other albums, starting with…
Honorable Mention: Kerry King - From Hell I Rise
Earlier this year, Kerry King put out his debut solo album, From Hell I Rise, and I enjoyed it for what it was. It was a solid, albeit generic, thrash album with some pedigree behind it. Having former and current members of Slayer, Vio-Lence, and Death Angel is impressive, but at the same time, it didn’t amount to much to when Kerry King wrote the songs. King is a decent guitar player, but this sounds like the last few Slayer albums after Jeff Hanneman passed away.
If I liked this album when it came out, why is here now? Well, in a lot of cases, I end up going back to stuff more and more, but I’ve gone back to this album less and less, although I wouldn’t say this album is bad, per se. It’s just generic and bland, especially when I can get better thrash elsewhere. I really liked it when it came out, but the more I thought about this album throughout the year, the less I was enthusiastic about it, so I wanted to put it as a late honorable mention on the list, versus actively putting it on there, because I don’t think this album is that bad, but it’s really forgettable.
Bastardane - Catatonic Symphony
Bastardane is the brainchild of James Hetfield’s son, and these guys have a pretty cool sound, but this album just isn’t it. Their debut was pretty rough around the edges, but it was an interesting mix of sludge metal and thrash metal, although it was nothing special. It was fine for what it was, but Catatonic Symphony is way too long with no sense of focus or direction, and it just doesn’t sound good. Maybe third time’s the charm, but this album left a bad taste in my mouth.
Capstan - The Mosasic
You can copy and paste the same thing with the new Capstan album, The Mosaic, because this record is a huge mess, as well as being way too long. The difference is, however, I really enjoyed their last album. It was a cool mix between pop-punk, math-rock, and post-hardcore. This album, however, really tries to force in a lot of other sounds that aren’t needed. It has a few cool moments, but there are some genuinely baffling and awful choices on this thing.
Cassadee Pope - Hereditary
Singer Cassadee Pope is a pretty good singer, all things considered, but her first rock album since her time in Hey Monday with the late 00s, Hereditary, just isn’t good. Truthfully, this album isn’t the worst of the year, but it sounds so lazily put together, haphazard, and boring, I just didn’t like it. I wish it was better, and a few songs are kind of interesting, but it sounds so uninspired, this record felt like it was put together by AI.
Okay, onto the list proper, and this is gonna get bad, so if you need to take a break or step away, be my guest. These are the worst albums I’ve heard all year, starting with…
Kittie - Fire
The biggest crime of Fire, which is the comeback Kittie album (their first in 13 years), is that it’s so boring, bland, and forgettable, it has no reason to exist. That sounds harsh, but they didn’t update or modernize their sound whatsoever. It’s straight out of 2004, but in a really bad way that makes me question why I even listened to this in the first place.
Powerflo - Gorilla Warfare
This is the newest album on the list, as it just came out within the last month, but Powerflo is a supergroup with some prominent guys from 90s and 00s rap-metal bands, including Downset, Fear Factory, and Biohazard, as well as a member of Cypress Hill. The pedigree is there, but the quality is not. This is their second album, and while listening to this, I kept wondering why this was made. This is super generic rap-metal, first off, but the lyrics and vocals are some of the worst I’ve heard all year. There are a few cool songs, which keeps it from being higher, but this album was so painful to listen to.
Katy Perry - 143
Katy Perry’s had a nosedive of a career falloff within the last handful of years, especially with her last couple of albums not doing the same numbers her first few did, but 143 is such a massive misfire. This album is another AI-generated album, but it’s so bland, forgettable, boring, and lackluster that it kind of hurt to listen to. Not to mention, there’s a painful “feminist” track on this album that sounds like it’s both ten years too late and trying so hard to pander to women. If anything, this record shows how she’s fallen out of public favor.
Jax - Dear Joe,
Remember that insufferable song with the lyric “I know Victoria’s Secret,” and it was about how men actually control the beauty industry, but it was by an artist named Jax. I forgot all about it until she dropped her debut album, and it’s some of the worst pop music I’ve ever heard. It isn’t the worst album I’ve heard all year, partially because what she talks about here is good, it’s how she talks about it that isn’t good. This is just some of the cringiest pop music I’ve ever heard, especially with how dated a lot of the songs immediately are for their Gen Z slang and meme references. If you needed an example, the album referenced the “hawk tuah” meme right when it first got popular.
Nothing More - Carnal
Nothing More is one of my most hated bands, both because they’re just not good, and because they’re a pretentious band that acts like they’re more interesting than what they are. Their new album, Carnal, exemplifies all their worst qualities, whether it’s throwing in stupid and pretentious samples of speeches that have nothing to do with the song or content, lyrics that are just as pretentious, or a sound that isn’t anything special, but they act like it’s super unique and innovative. Spoiler alert: it’s not. The first third of this album was cool, and it was slightly interesting, but the album devolved into a pretentious mess, and it completely lost me.
Skillet - Revolution
This is another one of the most recent albums on the list, but I hate Skillet. Even aside from frontman John Cooper becoming weirdly Christian and looking like a youth pastor trying to appeal to Gen Z, they’ve almost always been bad. Some of their early stuff is fine, but they’re just the epitome of bad hard rock. Revolution is the kind of album that has no reason for existing, as this thing is 35 minutes of hard rock that sounds like it’s from 2014. This thing sounds dated as all get out, complete with lyrics about revolutions and “rising up,” and generic riffs and choruses that all sound like stuff you’ve heard before. This album isn’t so much outright bad, as it is lazy, but that in turn makes it bad.
Hardy - Quit!!
Look, I liked Hardy’s last album, the overly long The Mockingbird & The Crow from 2023, but even then, I knew how ridiculous some of that was. I liked it, because it had some good hooks, and didn’t take itself too seriously, but Quit? Man, this thing is just awful, whether it’s from the title track that has Hardy complaining about how his haters told him to quit all those years ago, and he, well, won’t, to songs that are obnoxiously terrible and featuring Fred Durst, of all people. This album sucks, and I don’t know how his sound could get any worse, but here we are.
Eminem - The Death Of Slim Shady
Speaking of artists I hate, Eminem sucks, and let’s stop pretending that he’s still an influential and important rapper in 2024. He isn’t. The Death Of Slim Shady is a record that clearly wants to have his cake and eat it, too, by “killing” his most revered character but all the while revisiting and utilizing that shtick in the first place. What’s the point of killing that character when most of this album features him? There are also a lot of really awful, tone-deaf, mean-spirited, and unfunny bars that make fun of random kinds of people. Yeah, he makes fun of everyone, but he’s 50, so why? This album should have been “okay, boomer,” because Eminem’s age is really showing here.
Falling In Reverse - Popular Monster
If it isn’t Ronnie Radke, the metalcore wannabe Eminem (or Tom MacDonald, depending on who you ask), but I’m not surprised a new FIR album is on the list. Popular Monster isn’t even a proper album, because most of these songs are from the last five years, so he only put this out to appease his record label, and actually give them an album. Go figure, though, this thing sucks. It’s got everything you expect from new Falling In Reverse — awful white boy rapping, generic metalcore, lyrics about how misunderstood he is, as well as lyrics that are about “cancel culture” for some reason, because Radke has turned into a conservative mouthpiece in the last handful of years. This album is just bad, but who am I kidding? I knew that before the album even came out.
Aaron Lewis - The Hill
And Popular Monster isn’t the worst of the year, it’s Aaron Lewis’ new album, The Hill. I knew as soon as I heard this album that this would remain unchanged for the worst of the year. This album is a hilariously sad attempt at a country album from a guy that isn’t even from the south, but has been making bad country music for the past decade or so. Only now, he decided to move into the MAGA territory, and the lyrics on this record are as bigoted, racist, and xenophobic as ever. The music itself is just as bad, but it’s the lyrics that take the cake for me. This album is just pure trash in every sense of the word, especially for its blatant racist ideas and lyricism.
#out of into#blue note records#lil dicky#Penith#state champs#Linkin park#Bilmuri#American motor sports#from zero#Kendrick Lamar#GNX#Lupe fiasco#samurai#knocked loose#you won’t go before you’re supposed to#bayside#there are worse things than being alive#childish Gambino#Atavista#rock#metal#heavy metal#pop#r&b#metalcore#death metal#soul#rap#country
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
My Yearend Techs & Misc. Items Summary - 2024
Hello... My worst year has struck again, as 2024 is not my year when it comes to making topics on my tech items. 😔 Sure, there's ONE item that struck me happy, but then my happy days were ended when my custom PC's Powersupply and GPU went out of commission, which I'll talk about it later... And because of it, I went on hiatus after my final topic on August. To this day... I don't feel well, I have a 'major depression' hidden my rabbit brain hole. My 'slow recovery' continues... 🧠🩹🤕
Anyway, enough for that, let’s talk about my ‘My Yearend Techs and Misc. Items Summary 2024’! And here are my choices per month so far, both ongoing & done topics:
• JAN - Another 90s Camera: Olympus Camedia C-2000 Z: This is an old 90s camera that was owned by my late grandpa, who passed away in 2020 due to the dreaded COVID-19, along with complications. It may have few photos in the past, but we could never forget our last photo before retired for good.
• FEB - My PC Upgrade Part 3 - Revival: The 'Part 3' of my PC upgrade was a success attempt, which consist of two brand new PC parts, and a converter of HDMI to VGA monitor port. Although, the latter was completely useless. Unfortunately, there's something wrong... And I'll get to that later.
• MAR - My BRAND NEW SMARTPHONE BY Tecno Mobile: January 22nd (, 2024) is the date when I struck luck by commenting about the 'Tecno SPARK 20 Pro' smartphone as part of the giveaway, and then it was delivered on Feb 3rd. This is actually my 2nd time winning a brand new phone, since 2019. And while my Honor 8C (which is my previous winning phone, by the way) was retired in Oct of this year, my brand new smartphone by Tecno Mobile became my 'main phone', without equipping any of my old micro SD card (as my expansion after transfer files and reformat). I mind as well planning on getting 1TB version, someday when my problem was solved (one by one).
• APR - My Family's 2000s Digital Camera (Sony Cybershot DSC-T70): From 90s digi cam to 2000s digi cam, you're looking at the latter. This is the 'Sony Cybershot DSC-T70', an old pocket-size digi cam with built-in touch screen on the tiny screen. And unlike the old Olympus cam, our Sony cybershot cam had long history of taking snapshots with a single memory stick (you know, the one that you've always used on your awesome sony PSP), until the camera itself was ended on January 5th, 2017 as my last photoshoot recording. BUT, I believed that the cybershot cam (Model: DSC-T70) will make a comeback with new fresh 3rd-party batteries and a new memory stick adapter for the micro SD card. But when? Very soon.
• MAY - My Family’s 2010s Digital Camera (Canon EOS 1000D/Rebel XS): Liked our cybershot, our fam's Canon DSLR camera had a long history of snapshots from the nearby swimming resort in 2011 to my mom's previous school activity in 2018, and the latter was ended there when our camera is showing it is age, and the occasion of unwanted dusts and a tiny ant that forever stuck, to this day. Yes, yes, the camera itself is still functional, but it needs to be repair and replaced with numerous parts. Unfortunately, even though its old, the replacement camera parts were expensive. So much so, we've ended up using our smartphones as our Go-To camera purpose, aside from checking our SocMeds (Social Medias). But, time will tell if our canon DSLR camera still functional after years of hiatus.
• JUN - R.I.P., my PSU & GPU Card: Okay, we returned to my concerned topic. So as I said, unfortunately it went horribly wrong after 6 months of used, with the first encountered was the new PC power supply, it went blown out from either a fuse or some parts that went malfunctioned. We may never know. And while the PC power supply was fixed by replacing a brand new one (not to mention the RAM was replaced with two 8GB RAM sticks to make 16GB RAM w/ 2666 MHz speed), another encountered has followed! This time is the new 'GPU' (I've purchased from January this year), and the latter was never replaced to this day because I'm insufficient. Thus, my life was ruined, and I'm going back to my mom's laptop to this very day. Although, I've already earned some dough by participating another volunteered job, I have to save and earn it MORE for the authentic, and expensive GPU card. Meanwhile, my custom PC itself remain intact and still functional today, even without equipping GPU card. Which, I've checked it, last Christmas Eve.
• JUL - A vintage Motorola phone (from the 90s; "Motorola d368"): One of the oldest cellular phone that my mom has owned is this Motorola phone. Actually there's two motorola phones, but I can't find the first one. Nevertheless, there was a time that Motorola used to be 'cool', 'active', and 'competitive' against another phone brand who used to have the three aforementioned words, and that's 'Nokia', from the 90s to the early 2000s. Unfortunately, their spotlight was stolen by numerous phone brands, including tech giants like Samsung and Apple, Inc. who were already stolen their marketing thunder. And while both 'Motorola' and 'Nokia' are still active, they don't make innovative smartphones, anymore. And that's sad (like ME).
• AUG - My first ever Android Smartphone - Busted (Cherry Mobile Jelly): And speaking of phones, here's one right here. My first ever Android smartphone I've ever bought, and still in my possession to this very day. Honestly, I really missed that TV antenna with a TV app feature, in which I could go anywhere without needing a On-the-go TV tuner device. However, that TV antenna for android smartphone feature didn't last because I don't think they don't make this feature, anymore. Not to mention, the declined of the older Android Operating Systems, starting from the OG to the recent Android 11 are now nothing more than a relic. And this android smartphone of mine from Cherry Mobile is no exception. Meanwhile, the 'Cherry' brand and their mobile phones are still in-production and selling with their modern specs and android OS, to this day.
���� AND THE REST OF THE BER-MONTHS SAYS IT ALL! 😔 I DECIDED TO GO HIATUS OWING TO MY LIFE PROBLEMS, AND OTHER STUFF THAT I CAN'T FIX! 😭🛑
So, I'm so sorry... All of you, including my trusted friends (who always cheered me up, to this very day). I deserved to be happy and positive person than the opposite side. 😔😞
IMPORTANT NOTE: No 'Honorable Mentions', this year.
Well, that’s the end of my “My Yearend Techs and Misc. Items 2024”. We’ll see you in 2025.
🥳 Happy new years eve to all, and as always, stay safe (just in case)!😷
If you want to see my 2020 to 2023 version of that, then I’ll provide some links down below.↓
• My Yearend Techs and Misc. Items 2023
• My Yearend Techs and Misc. Items 2022
• My Yearend Techs and Misc. Items 2021
• My Yearend Techs and Misc. Items 2020
#GIMP#MyEdit#MyEdited#My Edit#My Edited#Edit#Edited#MyPhotos#MyPhoto#My Photos#My Photo#Photos#Photo#Items#Item#Review#Year End#Year-End
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
Hawaii lodge charges on the rise for 2023
We’ve been monitoring the Hawaii lodge price knowledge since Hawaii re-opened on the finish of March 2022. Now that we’ve had over a yr’s value of information for the reason that reopening, we needed to share and chart our findings. The next chart reveals the information from April 2022 by means of April 2023.
Let’s take a more in-depth take a look at the information. Common Nightly Hawaii Lodge Charges 2022 to 2023 Every blue bar reveals the typical every day fee for a lodge room in Hawaii. The general common is $375 per night time. Least Costly Time for a Hawaii Trip The least costly month was September at a mean fee of $337 per night time. October, November and Might had been all noticeably beneath the annual common, too. So, the long-established, “most cost-effective” months to go to Hawaii, stay the identical. It’s a bit Ironic that the most cost effective months (Might, September, October, November) are additionally among the best months to visit Hawaii for great weather and avoiding crowds. The month of May is a fantastic month to visit Hawaii. It’s considered one of our favourite months for visiting Hawaii for climate and decrease prices.
Most Costly Time for a Hawaii Trip On the flip facet, the current knowledge reveals the most costly months for a Hawaii trip are December and July. Traditionally these months have at all times been costly instances for a Hawaii lodge charges. December has at all times been the most costly month as a result of inflow of tourists celebrating Christmas and New Yr’s Eve within the Hawaiian Islands. July is a busy month for household holidays and Independence Day (July 4) festivities. Are Hawaii lodge charges up in 2022/2023 in comparison with current years? The reply is sure, positively, sure! So, let’s check out 2018 to 2019 knowledge and evaluate it to 2022’s yearend knowledge. Yr Common Day by day Fee 2018 $277 2019 $283 (2% improve over 2018) 2020 – 2021 Irrelevant knowledge 2022 $371 (31% improve over 2019) As you'll be able to see there was a 31% improve in charges between 2022 and 2019. That’s a major soar! Are some Hawaiian Island’s costlier than others for lodge charges? Sure, there are dramatic variations in Hawaii lodge prices by island. Maui County — which incorporates the islands of Maui, Lana’i and Molokai — is at all times the most costly of the 4 main island counties. The posh motels within the Wailea space of Maui and the high-end 4 Seasons resorts on Lana’i are massive drivers that make Maui County have the very best lodge charges. Right here’s how every island county compares based mostly solely on the date of April 2023. This knowledge is listed from most costly to least costly. Maui County – $609 Hawaii (Huge) Island – $430 (which is a 66% improve over April 2019) Kauai – $408 Oahu – $272 — Notes: — Did any of this knowledge shock you? Source link Read the full article
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Broken bodies all the time: Ian Mathers’ year in review
Photo by Paul Husband
Since, let’s say, September, I’ve seen an increasing number of comments from people amazed at just how bloody long 2018 has been, pointing out that events that seem much further back (tide pods! an Olympics! that one political thing in the US, you know, the thing that feels like it was a decade ago!) actually happened this year. I’m no more immune to that kind of horrified, exhilarated realization than any of my friends and loved ones, but I also have a personal one that I can’t believe had fallen so far off my radar that I wasn’t originally conscious of it when I was trying to sum up my year for Dusted.
This past January I went and had surgery to remove a “grapefruit-sized” chondrosarcoma and a section of the three ribs on my left side where it had grown. Other than a noticeable lump in my chest there’d been no other symptoms, one surgery (and about 6 weeks off of work, with pay thankfully) dealt with it cleanly, at least according to the follow-up scans I’ve had and will have twice-yearly until 2022 or so. If you have to get surgery-necessitating cancer, basically, mine was just about the best-case scenario you could hope for (especially here in Canada, where I didn’t have to worry about bankruptcy as a result of medical costs). I don’t want to, and haven’t, made this entire essay about My Cancer Experience (in no small part both because I did have it relatively easy enough that I routinely feel guilty expecting any sort of accommodation for it, even when I was still very much knocked out by the surgery I’d had, and because when everyone wants to know about it you quickly realize it’s kind of boring to talk about), but it does strike that it’d be almost disingenuous to talk about my experience of 2018 without mentioning it. I did allude to it in passing in my 2017 essay here (as well as my wife’s diagnosis of a chronic autoimmune illness, something that honestly effects our day to day lives a lot more), but that was pre-surgery so I was too superstitious to give it a name in such a public forum. Now, when people who know me mention it, I almost have to remind myself that the scariest medical experience of my life to date happened not that long ago.
I’ve been thinking about it a bit more since reading on Bandcamp Daily that, while Low didn’t really make this part of the narrative around Double Negative when it was being released, about eight months of that album’s gestation happened after Alan Sparhawk had a ski injury involving broken ribs and punctured lungs, and that the recovery process was arduous and involved a lot of prolonged pain. And that got me thinking about context. There are positive and welcomed uses of context, of course; personally, to take a few examples from this year, I think both Leverage Models’ Whites and Zeal & Ardor’s Stranger Fruit are great albums that only gain from some of the context around their creations. But, crucially, it seems the creators involved agree with me, which is why that context is presented up-front in the material around those albums. It’s different when it’s something that, while you might acknowledge its real effects (as Alan does above), you suspect people will blow out of proportion to make the only important fact surrounding what you’ve made. It got me thinking about my own resistance to people - people who love and care about me! - ascribing aspects of my behaviour or actions to the cancer and/or the surgery (and it definitely did have some effects… to take a pretty surface-level one I listened to a lot more records in 2018 than I did in 2017, but didn’t write quite as much). It got me thinking about David Bowie not wanting his last record to be received, at least initially, as his last record.
And while Alan doesn’t make a big deal of it in that piece, I can see why he might want people to absorb the startling, abrasively gorgeous Double Negative (along with Whites, which I could describe in very similar terms, my favourite/most important record of 2018) on its own terms rather than our narrative-seeking minds possibly turning it into being just ‘about’ his injury (and, not incidentally, wiping out the contributions of the others who worked on the album). Those listeners who did find themselves responding to the record probably wouldn’t be changed that much by the extra information, but goodness knows that every piece of art that gets released has to deal with some dumb, reductive takes, and how would it feel to have those responses taking on (and inflating the importance of) something so personal and literally painful?
2018 also potentially sees a bigger and less personal loss of context in the music/music criticism world, though. As much as I will maintain all day every day that the more consensus you get when it comes to things like records of the year the more boring you intrinsically have to get, I still felt an absence knowing that the Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll was going to vanish with the Voice itself. The interesting thing about every year’s poll was almost never the top ten most acclaimed albums and singles (not necessarily a shot at the quality of that music, just that we’d all been talking about them all year; inevitably, they were all very known quantities), it was seeing what had placed in the lower reaches of the standings, digging around in the votes of friends and colleagues, tracing odd connections and seeing how your own lesser-known favourites were regarded, if at all, by the larger group. And even more than that, I’d argue, what was fascinating and valuable about Pazz & Jop was the way it functioned as a kind of historical record, so that you could look back at a year from decades past and see, not what were the best or even longest-lasting records from that year but what the people who were engaged in listening to and thinking and writing about music thought was important and engaging. I say “potentially,” though, because I had just enough time to realize I was mourning an institution I’d kind of taken for granted (and to be fair, again, each year’s findings at the top seem kind of ploddingly obvious at the time) when I got a new ballot. It looks like some sort of continuation is happening, although only time will tell if this is a genuine resurrection or a last gasp.
Either way, I haven’t yet tried to narrow things down to lists of 10 (and given that there’s still over 10 hours of music left in my playlist of 2018 releases I haven’t gotten to yet), so here is 25 of the records I’ll be thinking about as I try to figure that ballot out, strictly in order of when I added them to my list, with links to the ones I’ve written about on Dusted. (I didn’t have as much time to go over reissues as I’d like, but probably my favourite was the gorgeous one of the overlooked late Bark Psychosis album ///Codename: Dustsucker, which I reviewed here.)
Xylouris White - Mother
Mesarthim - The Density Parameter
V/A - Black Panther: The Album
Well Yells - Skunk
Tangents - New Bodies
Tracyanne & Danny - s/t
Tove Styrke - Sway
Wand - Perfume
The Armed - Only Love
Low - Double Negative
Let’s Eat Grandma - I’m All Ears
Obnox - Templo Del Sonido
Nadja - Sonnborner
Pusha T - DAYTONA
No Age - Snares Like a Haircut
Zeal & Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Chelsea Jade - Personal Best
Leverage Models - Whites
Aidan Baker - Deer Park
Robyn - Honey
Efrim Menuck - Pissing Stars
U.S. Girls - In a Poem Unlimited
Andrew Bayer - In My Last Life
Abul Mogard - Above All Dreams
DenMother - Past Life
And I can’t manage one of these every year, but this was an awfully good year for the EP, so here’s a top five:
EMA - Outtakes From Exile EP
Underworld & Iggy Pop - Teatime Dub Encounters EP
IN / VIA - Treading Water EP
Protomartyr - Consolation EP
Hatchie - Sugar & Spice EP
#dusted magazine#yearend 2018#ian mathers#low#leverage models#david bowie#zeal and ardor#pazz and jop#context#personal
10 notes
·
View notes
Text
My People
Looking back on the fond memories I made with people from the past year. Cheers to those who made me feel the luckiest person alive, the people who I considered significant in my life, the people who expressed sincere love to me, the people who burst me into laughter over small things, the people who burst me into tears for the deep talk we had, the people who asked me, "hows life, b*tch?", the people to share all the problems with that we started wondering why life was sooo "jahat" (HAHA!), the people who always reminded me to count blessings, the people who'd definitely make me cry my eyes out if they left, the people who gave me enlightenment and encouragement when I was at my lowest point, the people who I could open up to without the fear of being judged, the people who helped me shape my mindset and turned me into a more mature person. Not to mention, the people who taught me to celebrate success and embrace failures. Ily ({})
1 note
·
View note
Text
all the journals and notebooks i used this year. i think they're mostly filled about reflections on boundaries. peep my doggo using them for pillows 😂
23 notes
·
View notes
Text
meeting in the middle
and by middle i mean that part between beautifully [&] broken.
first off, I should say that i have been trying to write this for well over a week. each time I’ve gotten lost in the attempt to form paragraphs or sentences, for that matter, that will make sense to you. today, it seems to be coming together a bit more easily.
beautifully broken is what i have come to realize best explains my 2018. a monumental year in my life, in which everything changed.
trusting in God amidst the wind and waves. even thought he is fully aware that this girl has a deep love for steady waters and still air.
____________
isn’t it funny how beauty and brokenness live so closely together, often sharing edges of land and pieces of our stories?
this year the lord asked me to say yes to many things. most of which I felt in no way prepared for. but, I knew it was Him, and that I was meant to say yes.
“Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts.” Isaiah 26:8
it was a big season of transition:
churches
friendships
3.5 jobs
relationships
more travel than previous years combined
i feel like i’ve traveled through the end, the beginning, the middle, the end and back to the middle again. something i didn’t even know was possible in such a short span of time.
so here I am, ending 2018 very much in the middle.
more unknowns than I am comfortable with
a heart still trying to make sense of a lot of things
still in search of a “new” normal
in the midst of all my doubt, frustration, confusion, blessing, triumph and excitement, God has been so sweetly nudging me to remember the right things.
To remember Him.
He is there through it all.
He hears.
He knows.
He guides.
He provides.
He delivers.
He opens.
He closes.
He is good.
6 notes
·
View notes
Photo
Best nine 2018 ✨ #2018 #bestnine #bestnine2018 #yearend #newyear https://www.instagram.com/p/Br2skMtHt5X/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=ucg22ackknac
3 notes
·
View notes
Photo
Después de tanto tiempo por fin decidí agarrar un lápiz y papel. . Estos meses han sido un ciclo de cambios para mí, todo como una montaña rusa divertida y que me da miedo a la vez pero me alegra estar viviendo todas estas cosas, he aprendido mucho y conocido gente cool. . Espero seguir creciendo el próximo año, feliz fin de año para todos. #draw #drawing #color #feelings #cry #planet #face #sketch #sketchbook #illustration #ilustracion #illustrator #illust #hair #shorthair #symbol #yearend #2018 #newyear #2019 (en Antioquia, Colombia) https://www.instagram.com/karlycond/p/BsEHdCKls6m/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1w9ngg2h0oxzz
#draw#drawing#color#feelings#cry#planet#face#sketch#sketchbook#illustration#ilustracion#illustrator#illust#hair#shorthair#symbol#yearend#2018#newyear#2019
4 notes
·
View notes
Photo
YEAR END FUNCTION CELEBRATION TIME Celebrate with Afrique Group Make it a Night to Remember. Contact us: 011 918 8001 / [email protected] #Godisgreat #function #venue #2018 #yearend #celebrate #memories #party #afriquegroup #dance #champagne #theme #dressup (at Afrique Boutique Hotel O.R Tambo & Conference Centre) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bnnsa7KBoEY/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=5qdj9vjcqbmd
#godisgreat#function#venue#2018#yearend#celebrate#memories#party#afriquegroup#dance#champagne#theme#dressup
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
What if i had told him how i felt?What if i had helped that boy with dexterity issues but couldn't because i was too afraid of what people would say what if i had told that girl who was anorexic that she was beautiful the way she was what if i had told the girl who committed suicide this afternoon that break ups dont mean anything because what has yet to come will be better than what has gone by what if i had told my mom and dad i loved them but couldnt because i was busy with my career and life and now its too late what if i wanted to compliment some stranger because he had nice eyes or a great talent and i did what if i had told my teachers that i was inspired by them because they helped me become what i am today what if i had told that one boy that i could see past his past and mistakes and still adore him for his pure heart what if i wanted to help someone overcome their loneliness and fall in love with themselves but couldnt because society would think it was strange what if I had told my siblings i am glad they exist because even though they are a mess sometimes but still they are my mess and mine what if i had told those men that degrading women wont make their thing any longer what if i had told those women that not all men are trash and that everyone is different what if i had thanked the comic book writers and movie makers for making my imagination more versatile what if i had thanked those poets who helped me get back my hope in humanity
What if......all these 'what ifs' are what i am going to take to my grave and with my last breath i say 'what if i had said it all and made the world a little brighter and better because of the pure love and reality....."
Life's too short,dare to say the truth and believe in yourself
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
Kacey Musgraves - Deeper Well
Kacey Musgraves seems to be at a crossroads in her career, but I can’t blame her. Her last album, 2021’s Star-Crossed, was a pretty good album that really leaned into pop, and she seemed to have strayed too far from her country roots. A lot of people noticed that, and that album didn’t do as well as 2018’s critical darling Golden Hour (which also had pop in the mix but it wasn’t the focal sound of the record). It makes sense that her new album, Deeper Well, has a stripped back and sparse sound to it. Instead of going back to a purely country sound, this record is more or less a singer-songwriter and folk-pop album. I’m getting a lot of 1970s Laurel Canyon vibes from this record, but with a modern production sound. This record also shows Musgraves as a “cottagecore” girlie, because this album has a lot of themes and imagery of nature, crystals, wellness, and that whole thing, but it’s told in an interesting way. This album is more or less about healing, and from the looks from it, Musgraves is very burnt out by the spotlight, so this is a quaint back to basics album.
I’ve gotten into more into folk music over the last few years, especially starting to appreciate what it tries to do. Deeper Well is ultimately focusing on Musgraves vocals and lyrics, and like with a lot of folk, the sparse instrumentation is merely a backdrop for it. Truth be told, a lot of folk music can get kind of derivative, especially with how songs can start to sound the same and blend together. It also has a tendency to sound really nice, whether in its production and/or presentation, but not have much of anything else to say or do. Thankfully, Kacey Musgraves has a bit to say, and this album has some wonderful melodies to boot. This album has a lot of lyrics about healing, removing toxic people from your life, and even some existential questions. There’s a song on here where she asks to speak to God, or like the title of the song, “The Architect.”
Musgraves’ voice sounds great within this album, and some of these songs have gorgeous melodies. Songs like the album opener “Cardinal,” the title track, “Sway,” “Heart Of The Woods,” “Dinner Party,” “Lonely Millionaire,” “Heaven Is,” and what may be my favorite song on the record, “Anime Eyes” are ridiculously catchy and have some solid lyrics to boot. There are a few songs that blend together, and don’t do a lot for me, but even those songs are good, whether it’s for her lyrics, vocals, or both. Even when the instrumentation is slightly lacking, the song is still good. If anything, I really appreciate her further retreating into a different sound, versus course correcting and making a country album, because she could have easily done that and people would have loved it.
There was a time when a lot of music fans acted like she was the second coming of Christ, and she was the only good country artist, but times have changed. Not only is country more widely accepted, but there are tons of good country artists out there. I’m glad that she’s switched up her sound over the years, and this album is a nice folksy and bare bones album that shows she has nothing to prove to anybody. It’s a very pleasant record with some solid lyricism, wonderful vocal performances and melodies to match, and instrumentation that may not blow your mind, but in terms of folk-pop, it’s good stuff. This album may end up somewhere on my yearend list, because I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit.
#kacey musgraves#same trailer different park#pageant material#Star crossed#deeper well#rock#country#folk#pop#golden hour#anime eyes#lonely millionaire
1 note
·
View note
Photo
So yeah, we went to Cavite just to celebrate the yearend party. Hahaha 🤣
2 notes
·
View notes
Photo
My #topnine2017 surprised me a bit...lots of OLIVIA TWIST and friend's books! 😁 I'm very much looking forward to #2018 and the release of the epic love story that is #OliviaTwist 🎩🌂♥️ 🌹What are you looking forward to in 2018? 🎉#yearend #2017bestnine #2017 #authorlife #booklover #author #authorsofinstagram
#author#yearend#2017bestnine#authorsofinstagram#booklover#2018#2017#authorlife#topnine2017#oliviatwist
1 note
·
View note
Text
“1, 2, 3, 4!”: Jennifer Kelly’s 2018 review
Jennifer Kelly is a frantic romantic.
Rock and roll forever, sure, but it’s hard to avoid the fact that the guitar/bass/drum idiom has been pushed way off to the side in the cultural conversation. Mainstream sites list “best rock records” as a weird, subcultural genre, with a slightly bigger audience, perhaps, than best cumbia records or top Hawaiian slack key recordings (but not much). Worse, to come up with a reasonable size list they include all kinds of things that don’t belong. I mean, really, is Mount Eerie rock by any definition?
Rock isn’t dead, but it’s been made to sit in the corner. The only time in 2018 when everybody thought at once about a guitar band was when Pitchfork’s Jeremy Larson dropped his scathing, hilarious review of the Greta Van Fleet. For a moment, we all snickered as one.
Big rock was terrible in 2018. It almost always is. Yet there’s something disingenuous about the genre of year-end write-ups that laser in on the absolute worst and most bloated of rock bands to make a point about the art-form as a whole. Sure, Imagine Dragons suck. Yes, “Africa” is a soul-destroyingly awful song no matter who sings it. No, I’m not wading into the whole 1975 thing. Who has time? Who has the heart for it?
Because this year, against a tide of commercially viable horse shit, against a backdrop of monolithic indifference, rock bands of all configurations, from all countries (but really especially Australia), continued to make great punk and rock records. And, I, for whatever reason, heard more of them than usual, and it made me happy. And maybe that’s the secret to being happy in music, in any year…find your niche, listen to the best in it, forget about what the mega-corporations are trying to sell.
Also see it live. My big highlight this year was seeing the Scientists in October (with Negative Approach, too!), but it was a pretty great 12 months for live music. It started with a fantastic show comprised of Mike Donovan, the Long Hots, J. Mascis and his Stooges cover band and Purling Hiss (with J on board for one song) at the Root Cellar, a venue I’d never heard of before that show, and that ended up putting on a string of great events. I saw Marisa Anderson, Paul Metzger, Speedy Ortiz, Howling Rain, Trad Gras Och Stenar with Endless Boogie, that Scientists show and Gary Higgins at the Root Cellar this year, and I missed a lot of shows I would have liked to see. Other great shows happened outside the Root Cellar – The Thing in the Spring in Peterborough with William Parker, Bonnie Prince Billy and others, Amy Rigby and Wreckless Eric at the Parlour Room, Messthetics at the Flywheel. Western Massachusetts has been in a commercial chokehold for years, with one organization controlling most of the venues, but there were a lot of options this year.
So, here’s to the drummers with their sticks in the air, counting off the four. Here’s to the guitar player wrecking his knees jumping up and down as he/she furiously slashes away. Here’s to the sweat and muck and black humor of $10 shows with four bands on them, two of them still in high school. And here’s to the people (me at least and possibly you) who like these things. Eddie Argos of Art Brut, who used to top these lists and now merits a footnote, spoke for this tiny, beleaguered sub-cult when he urged “Wham! Bang! Pow! Let’s rock out.”
Indeed. Let’s.
Amy Rigby—The Old Guys (Southern Domestic)
The Old Guys by Amy Rigby
Let’s just set aside the fact that the first and best song on this album is an imagined email exchange between Philip Roth and Bob Dylan on the eve of the Nobel ceremony or that Rigby namechecks three of my favorite ever TV characters in “New Sheriff.” Let’s forget, too, how rare it is for a woman of roughly my age to be making her own music and controlling her own destiny even now in 2018. No, let’s focus on the songs which are sharp, smart and full of hooks, the clean, romantic chime of Rigby’s electric 12-string, the viscous pleasure of the arrangements. This is the very best kind of rock record, one that doesn’t attempt to remake the genre but somehow makes it bigger, brighter and more necessary. The songs sounded great, live, too, with the great Wreckless Eric in tow, and the two of them bickering like old married couples do, and Rigby glowing with triumph by the end of the show.
Shopping—The Official Body (Fat Cat)
The Official Body by Shopping
Bubbly in a hard way, strict and minimal in a manner requires body movement, this album arrived early and stayed on my go-to list all year. For Dusted, I wrote, “You could bounce a quarter off the bass lines in this third Shopping full-length. They’re pulled hard and tight against minimalist syncopated drums, the leaning, waiting, anticipating space between the thwacks as important a character as the beats themselves. The London-based trio harks back to the funky, stripped down post-punk of bands like ESG and Delta 5, with hints of the boy-girl bubble and pop of the B-52s and Pylon.
Salad Boys—This Is Glue (Trouble in Mind)
This Is Glue by Salad Boys
Always weak for NZ lo-fi and equally a fan of the early R.E.M., so of course I fell for this buzzy daydream of a record. “Psych Slasher” bursts with immoderate, glorious joy in the chorus, then cuts back to uncertainty in the verse, the ideal blend of rambunctious rock and wistful pop. “Exaltation” is a gentler sort of classic, just as radiant but moodier, its murmur-y vocals disappearing into cloud banks of fuzzed guitar tone. The whole record sits on the knife edge of rock and indie pop, leaning one way and the other, but never falling over.
Patois Counselors—Proper Release (Ever/Never)
Proper Release by Patois Counselors
I went all in for “So Many Digits” in my Dusted review this year, but the two great punk songs on Proper Release are “The Modern Station” and, especially, “Target Not a Comrade.” This latter song chugs and lurches on guitar and bass, trembles with wheedly keyboards and crests in a massive, hummable refrain. It’s a catchy, twitchy punk tune that’ll hit you in the part of your brain where you keep Wire and the Buzzcocks, hooky as hell in a weird, distorted way.
Bodega—Endless Scroll (What’s Your Rupture)
Endless Scroll by BODEGA
Flipping the gender cliché, Bodega is an all-woman band with a male singer. Its tight, nervy, jangles wrap around themes of internet-age dislocation and movie references. Smart, sarcastic, ironic, sharp, Bodega bristles with what you want from a garage punk band but reveals a surprisingly soft heart uncovered round about “Charlie,” a wistful song about a boy who died too soon.
Bardo Pond—Volume 8 (Three-Lobed)
Volume 8 by Bardo Pond
The eighth in a series of improvised albums, this year’s Bardo Pond record towers and surges with monumental heaviness. I wrote at Dusted that, “The sound, vast and muscularly monolithic as ever, seems more like a demon summoned periodically from a ring of fire, than the product of any sort of linear development.”
Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore—Ghost Forests (Three Lobed)
Ghost Forests by Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore
This year’s most beautiful album, Ghost Forests undergirds lyric folk melodies and angelic pizzicato harp plucks with roiling, violent darkness. My Dusted review observed “The best and most interesting [tracks] juxtapose the muted violence of electric guitar with a harp’s serenity. A guitar howls from a distance throughout “In Cedars,” pushing a simmering turbulence up under sun-dappled lattices of harp picking. Later “Painter of Tygers” does the same trick of joining muscle to fairy dust, the electric guitar raging from far away, while harp and voice spread delicate magic over the tumult.”
Seun Kuti & Egypt 80—Black Times (Strut)
Black Times by Seun Kuti & Egypt 80
Fela Kuti’s youngest son inherited his dad’s fierce political commitment, his rhythmically unstoppable Afrobeat style and a few of his band members, but this wonderful album is more alive and present than a tribute. “Struggle Sounds, “ with its hard-bounce of a beat, its blurting sax, its ecstatic backing chorus, its swagger of horns and fever-dreamed keyboards dances through history right up to the modern day. “Last Revolutionary” enumerates past African heroes and connects them to the now. I wrote, “Kuti extends his father’s legacy, its tight rhythmic interplay, its fervent political engagement, its relentless exhilarating uplift, while bringing it a bit further into the present.”
Ovlov—Tru (Exploding in Sound)
TRU by Ovlov
I first noticed Ovlov at the Thing in the Spring Festival, on an eclectic Thursday night in a book store, where the sweet surge of guitar sound felt solid enough to body surf on. Later, for Dusted, I said of Tru that “Ovlov churns a monumental fuzz, a wave of surging, undulating, feedback-altered sound …. You can almost poke it with your finger, this onslaught is so palpable. It stirs your hair like an oncoming breeze.”
Speedy Ortiz—Twerp Verse (Carpark)
Twerp Verse by Speedy Ortiz
There’s something so bendy and unpredictable about Sadie Dupuis tunes. They hare off in unexpected ways. They stop and start. They interpose weird little intervals of pop and noise. They refuse to behave, and end up exactly as they should be, though never what you’d expect. Twerp Verse takes more pop turns than other Speedy joints, but in the tipsiest, most eccentric way, with acerbic asides in the lyrics that catch like fishhooks and stay with you. “Speedy Ortiz offers a serrated sort of pop pleasure, full of rhythmic complexity and gender confrontation,” I observed in my Dusted review.
Had enough rock? Me neither
Here are some more punk rock and garage records that I couldn’t squeeze into the top ten overall, mostly in the order that I thought of them, but Constant Mongrel and Richard Papiercuts are pretty great and that’s probably why I thought of them first.
Constant Mongrel—Living in Excellence (La Vida Es Un Mus)
Richard Papiercuts— Twisting the Night (Ever/Never)
GOGGs—Prestrike Sweep (In the Red)
Hank Wood & the Hammerheads—S-T (Toxic State)
Obnox—Bang Messiah (Smog Veil)
Zerodent—Landscapes of Merriment (Alien Snatch!)
Sleaford Mods—Stick in a Five and Go (Domino)
Ethers—S-T (Trouble in Mind)
IDLES—Joy as an Act of Resistance (Partisan)
Bad Sports—Constant Stimulation (Dirtnap)
Lithics—Mating Surfaces (Kill Rock Stars)
Art Brut—Wham! Bang! Pow! (Alcopop)
Whoa, slow down!
Also a shout to the musicians who made more than one really excellent album this year. Ty Segall made five, I think, but I didn’t love all of them as much as Freedom Goblin and Prestrike Sweep.
Obnox—Sonido del Templo/Bang Messiah (Astral Spirits)/(Smog Veil)
Mount Eerie—Now Only/(After) (Elverum & Sons)
Ty Segall—Freedom Goblin (Drag City)/GOGGs—Prestrike Sweep (In the Red)
Ryley Walker—Deafman Glance/The Lillywhite Sessions (Dead Oceans)
Nevertheless, they persisted
And finally, hats off to the bands and artists that have been going forever and continued this year to produce great music.
Kinski—Accustomed to Your Face (Kill Rock Stars)
Low—Double Negative (Sub Pop)
Loma—S-T (Sub Pop) (Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg plus Cross Record)
Oneida—Romance (Joyful Noise)
Wreckless Eric—Construction Time and Demolition (Southern Domestic)
Messthetics—S-T (Discord) (The great Fugazi rhythm section plus a young guitar ripper—one of the best live shows of the year for me.)
Charnel Ground—S-T (12XU) (This is Kid Millions from Oneida, Chris Brokaw and James McNew from Yo La Tengo, and as you’d expect, it’s really good.)
#dusted magazine#yearend 2018#jennifer kelly#amy rigby#shopping#salad boys#patois counselors#bodega#bardo pond#meg baird#mary lattimore#seun kuti#ovlov#speedy ortiz#scientists
10 notes
·
View notes