My Musical Comfort Food

Now that I’m not mon­i­tor­ing news feeds across the web for the lat­est break­ing music news, I’ve been set­tling in with some old favorites. They’re beyond pre­dictable, but I find it so refresh­ing to tune back in with music I was lis­ten­ing to non­stop when I first start­ed get­ting inter­est­ed in music crit­i­cism. Let’s just say I find it more reward­ing than try­ing to fig­ure out what peo­ple find so amaz­ing about, say, Best Coast.

What am I lis­ten­ing to now? Here’s a quick list:

• The Byrds. There was a stretch there in the ear­ly part of last decade that I thought they’d get a crit­i­cal revival from the freak folk crowd, but it did­n’t real­ly mate­ri­al­ize. They opt­ed for Cros­by’s amaz­ing solo work instead. Fair enough. Love the Byrds in all man­i­fes­ta­tions. Feel like they’re the Amer­i­can ver­sion of anoth­er of my favorite bands.
• The Kinks! Love this band so much and real­ly haven’t lis­tened to them much at all late­ly. Guess the last time I went total­ly crazy for their stuff was right around the time I caught Ray Davies at Irv­ing Plaza in 2005. Going to see him in a few weeks. Can­not wait.
• The Rolling Stones. Watch­ing Char­lie dance to Exile on Main Street remind­ed me how much fun this band is. I know it’s quin­tes­sen­tial dad-rock, but what can I say? I’ve been going back and check­ing out albums like After­math and Between the But­tons and lov­ing every minute. Real­ly need to pick up these reissues.
• Bob Dylan. Have to admit that Dylan’s a tremen­dous blind spot for me. I have a bunch of his albums, my favorite being Bring­ing It All Back Home, but I’m not exact­ly con­ver­sant. Now I can spend some time!
• Neil Young. It’s high time this old man took a life at his life, too. Have always loved Neil, not that that’s any­thing spe­cial, but feel like I was always scram­bling to hear some­thing new that crowd­ed out my fur­ther appre­ci­a­tion of this liv­ing legend.
• Kate Bush, Vic Ches­nutt, so many more. Long overdue.

There are plen­ty of oth­er acts I’m leav­ing out. I’m not rul­ing out new music entire­ly, mind, but I’m so hap­py to have unplugged from the non­stop music PR circuit.