A New Year in Music

2009 was a dis­as­trous year for me and music. I was real­ly turned off to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that I might like any­thing. I revert­ed to old habits, lis­ten­ing to a dis­pro­por­tion­ate amount of met­al, with­out real­ly explor­ing fur­ther. For some­one who in the past prid­ed him­self on catholic taste, it was some­thing of a dis­ap­point­ment. Worse, I’ve not felt a part of the music scene for a while now and that real­ly trou­bles me. I mean, my title is music edi­tor, right?

With­out get­ting bogged down in all the hows and whys, I’m real­ly excit­ed for 2010 already. Two of my favorite bands, Spoon and Liars, have albums out this Jan­u­ary and it’s the time of year where I obsess over these releas­es, often at the expense of ignor­ing wor­thy albums that come along lat­er in the year’s pro­mo­tion­al cycle.

I used to think it was stu­pid for bands to release albums this time of year. Boy, was I wrong! When LCD Soundsys­tem releas­es albums in the dead of win­ter, they cap­ture more atten­tion than they would if they tried to shoe­horn their stuff into the March and Octo­ber gluts. It’s the per­fect time of year to real­ly get famil­iar with a record. You’re trapped in the house or car any­way, so you might as well crank up the stereo.

I cel­e­brate the new year in music by delet­ing every­thing in iTunes and start­ing over fresh. Right now I’m lis­ten­ing to Spoon, but I’ll be check­ing out new music from Yeasay­er, Ted Leo, Liars, Blood Feath­ers, Vam­pire Week­end and Gil-Scott Heron (!) soon enough. What a great way to start 2010!