I, Musical Genius 2020 Music Revue

It feels like I barely got into anything this year, but when I actually stacked all of the stuff I liked together, I was surprised at how quickly I ran out of spots on the list. Is it me actually losing touch, or am I just getting crushed over the complete availability of cool records on the internet? I have no idea. As always, this list is unordered. That shit doesn't matter

Nothing - The Great Dismal

TBH, out of all bands here, I think that Nothing is the one where I'm most sure their record will make the list before hearing it. At this point, I'm not expecting them to change lanes out of melodic shoegaze that's as indebted to power pop as it is grunge, but I pleasantly surprised by this release and enjoyed it more than Dance on the Blacktop. "Catch a Fade" is one of their best songs and seems like a 2020 anthem to me, though I'm not sure why.

Nudie Mag - Our Milk

It's impossible to not check a band called Nudie Mag, right? This band is a Twitching Tongues side project, who I've never listened to. Really great pared-down and synthy power pop that is probably closest to the Rentals. Short and sweet.

field medic - Floral Prince

I actually wasn't aware that field medic, whose fade into the dawn I loved in 2019, was working on a new record, so I was pleased to get this in the summer, even if it is mostly leftovers from that record. This continues with the lofi folk by way of fourth wave emo aesthetic that the earlier stuff has had and I eat it up.

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We're going to take an aside here to talk about the person who did the most in 2020 by a wide margin, Daniel Romano. Already an insanely prolific musician who was putting out between one and three releases per year, Romano went insane during quarantine and released ELEVEN records between March and November. ELEVEN. 11 different records that were all distinct from each over sonically. Most bands can't do that in an entire career. It felt weird to start this list with him, as I don't think any of his records were the A-1 first thing I thought of this year, but he did dominate my listening for all of the summer and keeping track of and checking out what the new shit was was by far the most fun I had listening to music this year. I spent some time thinking on how to incorporate his work into my list and settled on giving him his own sub section. 

Quick hits on my favourites:

Dandelion: His best work this year, but only the true heads know that. Beautiful and personal and among his best work.

How Ill Thy World is Ordered: The biggest studio effort of all is great and a fitting cap on the year of music from him.

Super Pollen: No Ancient Shapes this year, but similar work with Mike and Jonah from Fucked Up is an A-OK replacement.

Content to Point the Way: His friends asked him for a new county record and it rocks.

(What Could Have Been) Infidels by Bob Dylan & the Plugz: In a year where I was in my deepest Dylan phase ever, getting this was a welcome addition.

Visions of the Higher Dream: Modern Pressure 2: 2 Modern 2 Pressure

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Supercrush - SODO Pop

Honestly, I wasn't expecting a full-length from Supercrush (was Never Let You Drift Away an LP? I've heard both opinions?) to engage me much, but this would up being a lot more catchy and interesting than I thought. A million bands are playing boring 90s Britpop and Supercrush aren't one.

Mil-Spec - World House

I really loved the Background-era Lifetime vibe on Mil-Spec's EPs before this record and they combined that with the Snapcase-ish melodic stuff that Fury has been doing here. Friggin' awesome yo.

Blooming Season - Living Feeling

I discovered Blooming Season at the last show I saw before COVID hit this year. They were tight and super energetic and provided the insane rush of when you see a band live and realize that you love them during their set.

Mundy's Bay - Lonesome Valley

In keeping with bands I discovered at shows in Montreal, I saw Mundy's Bay open for Supercrush in summer '19 and realizing how much more vibrant and different the punk scene was here is directly tied to them. This record captures how great they are live 

blink-155 - Been Here For Too Long

I already wrote about my feelings on the pod here, so I won't rehash that. This comp was made to commemorate the end of blink-155 and features a bunch of people who guested covering "Dammit" by the boys. It ranges from well-known entities (Antartico Vespucci) to my friends (Claire) and it all rocks.

Kill Lincoln - Can't Complain

If I'm being honest, I was a little let down by this release, but it's not fair for me to hold my unreasonable expectations for it against it's actual quality. I've never been shy about banging my "ska is good and all who hate pose" drum and was happy that in the last couple of years (especially those on Kill Lincoln's own Bad Time Records) a new crop of bands has popped up to prove my point. Kill Lincoln is the best of the bunch and this is a great poppy ska-punk release.

Jeff Rosenstock - 2020 Dump

I found that this sort of EP/sort of growing collection of songs vastly better than the Rosenstock full-length No Dream. I love that it's all over the place sonically (as any JR release should be), I love that you need to download it via .zip on QuoteUnquote, and I love that he's finding a new way to work against the music industry and that it is almost somehow the old way he did it.

Classics of Love - World of Burning Hate

I find it hard to be objective about music by Jesse Michaels because all of his bands have been so instrumental to my development as a person. Is it as good as Op Ivy or the Classics of Love full-length? I guess not? I don't care man, I could listen to this for the rest of my life. What a force.

boy pablo - Wachito Rico

boy pablo is one of my favourite discoveries of the last couple of years (in a very 10's world, found through the YoTube algorithm), but their sophomore release really let me down, for no reason at all. They worked past those non-existent criticisms on this first full-length and put out a record that leans more toward songwriting than their past stuff (good!), while still maintaining their weird Norwegian sense of humour.

People Are All the Same

 A comprehensive list of all that have held the "Best Bar in the World" World Title Championship Belt.

Sneaky Dee's

The Toronto youth's first favourite bar. You hear about it from people just older than you and understand that you need to try the nachos. The tables covered in graffiti (latrinaria?) immediately look like something you've seen a million times in movies. You realize that drinking bottled beer in a bar is good. It's the first bar you go to regularly that isn't a Fox and the Fiddle or Firkin and that makes it feel like it's your friends' "place" even though it is everyone's friends' "place".

Jimmy Jazz

Guelph is big enough to have a population of weirdos, punks, hipsters, and art kids (are all of those the same thing?), but small enough that they all convene at the same place. Every person you've seen on campus that seems cool will one day have a conversation with you here. You graduate from bottles of PBR to bottles of Labbatt 50. A bench runs around the perimeter of a backyard patio that is where everyone hangs. The patio is so good that space heaters are installed overhead so that everyone can hangout outside during the winter, which they do.

Abstract

A goth dive bar that simultaneously feels like the intro scene to The Matrix, the Foot Clan hideout in Ninja Turtles, and a small-town watering hole that no one knows about. You discover yet another brand of bottled beer that makes you feel cool to drink in Molson Stock Ale. People watching will never, ever be better in your life. The first time you go, it's ironic, but you truly love it after that. 

Bar Stella

Tiny and dark with two picnic tables outside during the summer. A small menu of Indian food that is surprisingly authentic and hot considering the bar it's served in. Cheap bottles of 50, PBR, and Old Style. A DJ that plays Drake all the time. Never too busy. If you can name a more perfect Toronto bar, then you need to head to the bathroom because you're full of shit. RIP.

Dundas Video

We can all admit that "barcades" are still fun despite the fact that they are little played out. This one sent itself into the stratosphere by playing Raptors games on a projection screen during the playoff run and by accompanying that screen with tall cans of Wellington on special for $5. For a bar that brought people in to watch sports, it somehow had an asshole filter at the door and everyone there was fun and knowledgeable. There has never been a better place to watch basketball than Dundas Video in the spring of 2019.

I'll Bet You Want To

 Is poptimism over?

I mean obviously it is, but I was thinking this earlier while I revisited the albums that I was into during the phase of all snobby music fans getting extremely into major label pop music in the first half of the decade. I gave Teenage Dream, 1989, and weirdly Little Machines by Lights a lot of spins from like 2013-2015, as all of a sudden it seemed like a veil had been lifted from my eyes and I realized that mainstream pop music is actually fun to listen to. It was similar to when you grow up a white rock music fan and realize that you were actually so so wrong about rap music. Poptimism even leaked into other parts of my listening habits, as revisiting those pop albums made me think of West Coast Babes by The Canyon Rays, which I thought was awesome at the time because it merged Katy Perry and the Cars, but in hindsight is a lot closer to average.

Another weird thing was that I actually hadn't seen the music videos for a lot of the songs I was into at the time, because I am a serious white music fan. Watching them today made them seem like they were from 20 years ago, even though it doesn't feel like that long. I guess that 7 or so years is enough time for style to change and everyone to stop rolling up the sleeves on their t-shirts, wearing thick-rimmed glasses, and "cute" animal onesies to go out of style. Also a surprising amount of teased male hair?

In hindsight, I think that Carly Rae Jepsen's E•MO•TION was the crest of this whole thing. Even though I never listened to it, not for any sort of reason, it was catnip for dumb music snobs like me and the narrative of her being known for a dumb single but then putting out a "serious independent album" seemed to drive people, but especially men, crazy. 

Maybe men listening to pop music was the reason the whole thing happened? Taylor Swift and Katy Perry had been around for ages already, but pop was finally good because rock was dead and white guys had nothing else to listen to. Maybe we'll ruin something else next.

What a bad ending! Wow! Don't know bro, I just wanted to write and don't have anything else to say!

Unloading Our Minds

Apologies if you're tired of me speaking about my experience moving to Montreal, but I don't really have much else going on these days.

It might just be my Ontario education bias, but I feel like the conflicting cultures of Ontario and Québec make up a huge part of Canadian history and identity. The differences between living in Ontario and in Québec are basically the only thing you learn about in elementary school history classes, so it's something I've thought a lot about since moving here.

There are obvious big differences that go without saying, like the language and not turning right on red lights, so we can skip over those. The biggest cultural difference, as far as I can tell, is that Ontarians deeply love rules and precautions and rarely deviate from them, whereas the Québécois tend to just do whatever and hope it works and ignore rules that they don't feel like following. Both tendencies have their advantages and drawbacks and I'm a little torn between the two as a bilingual anglo who lives in Hochelaga.

The weirdest thing about living here now is that differencing coming out in small ways too. I'm being hyperbolic, but the thing that sums up Québec the best to me is that at the grocery store everyone just leaves the carts unchained and doesn't link them up so that you need a quarter to use them. The lock is still there on the cart, but nobody ever uses it. In Ontario everyone is so anal about people breaking the rules that I've seen people link carts together even it's not theirs, but here everyone just says "No, I refuse this.'

Alright, time for a classic IMU swerve in the middle of a post to another subject. We're po-mo baby.

One of the weirdest things continues to be that the ska-punk band I was obsessed with in early high school turned into one of the biggest and most influential figures in punk over the last decade. I was reminded of this when I searched for Jeff Rosenstock guitar tabs on good old UltimateGuitar.com the other day and found multiple pages of options. Not even Bomb the Music Industry!, just solo Jeff! That in turn reminded me of writing bass tabs of Arrogant Sons of Bitches songs in high school and my submissions making up the majority of the content on their page. They're still there!

Anyways, Jeff Rosenstock put out an EP (I guess?) this year and I find it to be much better than his last couple of albums. It was initially four songs, but he's since added two more and it seems like it will be a collection of songs that grows bigger throughout the year. He's also kept it off of streaming services, so the only way to listen is to use Bandcamp or, as always, download it as a .zip file for free from his website. I think that him purposefully recreating the experience of me downloading Goodbye Cool World and then reading the lyrics in my bedroom is a big contributing factor to me liking it, but I also find that the songs feel more like "classic Jeff" to me, even though I can't really place why.

This is my favourite song on the release, and looking up a bass tab to it was why I ran into the above thoughts in the first place. There wasn't one yet, obviously, and I couldn't learn it by ear because I'm tone-deaf. Such is life.

Tour Water

An embarrassing thing about me is that I went to more editions of the Vans Warped Tour than pretty much everyone I know. I wish I could say that I stopped going once I left high school, but it turned into a weird thing that I kept doing long after that. Here is a list of each time I went, described through the short memories that I have tied to each time.

I
Putting a lot of thought into what shirt to wear and choosing Black Flag. The Casualties being scary. Deville being the best band in the world. Caring so much about seeing Bad Religion.

II
Investing all of my happiness in seeing Big D and the Kids Table play "Little Bitch" and asking them to do so before the set. The only time I saw The Offspring and Dropkick Murphys.

III
Being absolutely over the moon to finally see NOFX. Sheepishly going to buy an Aiden shirt as a fully dekked-out teen ska boy for a girl I liked. Less Than Jake ending the day and being the best band by a mile.

IV
The crew shrinking to just Chris, Pat and I. Gallows hype being at its height. Spending the entire day at the Union Stage watching Ontario ska bands. Being so confused that everyone loved All Time Low.

V
Switching to Arrow Hall in Mississauga instead of driving up to Barrie. Easycore ascending and Set Your Goals, Four Year Strong and A Day to Remember all playing being a "thing". 

VI
Crabcore being so big and obnoxious and bad. Pennywise playing in the rain. Streetlight Manifesto ending their set by saying "Steal our record because fuck our record label". Having nothing to do and trying to give watching A Day to Remember a shot. Them sucking, and leaving to watch Shad by myself.

VII
Starting to get really over going to Warped Tour and being annoyed at the crowd. A guy in line saying "Wouldn't it be crazy if the Chili Peppers came out and played 'Can't Stop'?" Sum 41 putting a really embarrassing easycore breakdown in "Fat Lip". The aftershow by Polar Bear Club at the Bovine being so much better.

VIII
Buying a ticket and thinking "I don't care how much it sucks, I know it will be bad, I'm only coming to see Less Than Jake and it won't be sod bad if I know that going in" and then it being so much worse.

It Means Nothing, Nothing is Changing

 Today (I started writing this on Friday and am now finishing it on Saturday) marked the tend of the podcast blink-155 and I have to admit that I didn't expect myself to get as emotional as I did. This was yet another example of me repeating to myself that something is "just a podcast" or "just a TV show" and for that reason, doesn't carry the emotional heft that real life event does. I was a fan of the show from day 1 and never missed a week of listening, but I wasn't actively engaged in the crazy Twitter community that formed around it and I didn't join the livestreams on Twitch. It was just something I liked, at least until the last episode started and I found myself getting wistful immediately.

blink-155 (yes, their name is subject to the same formatting principles as blink-182) was a good podcast because it was not like any other podcast I have listened to. It wasn't finely produced with interstitial music and heavily edited dialogue, and in fact they often mocked this through the format. It was long and meandering and it was about a lot of things, like media criticism, identity, aging, and evaluating online pop culture, while also managing to be about the band blink-182 most of the time. I think it's silly for me to try to explain the importance of the show any further because I'm underqualified, but I guess just know that it was really funny, endearing, smart, and unique.

I don't know that I can place my relationship to show alongside any other changes in my life (except for moving to Montreal and not knowing people here), so it's a little tough to think of exactly why the show hit the way it did, with my intense interest in the band it was about notwithstanding. Regardless, here's an attempt to do that:

As you aged as a blink fan, the band became this embarrassing from your past that you still carried with you. They were so big that everyone you knew had a frame of reference for them, but knew them as that juvenile fake punk band that everyone in class liked in 2001, rather than the identity-defining thing that you still loved. It was okay to pass off that love when you were 21, but with each passing year, it became less and less okay to still like them so much. Nobody would judge you to your face for it, but you could tell that everyone was taken aback by how much you knew about the members and how you clearly still kept tabs on what was going on with the band. The band wouldn't help your cause either, of course, as they either put out embarrassing radio rock or even more embarrassing attempts to reclaim their Southern California punk credibility in "return to form albums". To pile onto their awful later albums, they would also do sponsorship deals with Doritos and T-Mobile and all have terrible haircuts that signaled just how desperate they were. Then you would go see them, even though you knew that it wouldn't be as good as watching the "What's My Age Again?" video on your family's TV in the basement. They were play badly, as they always do, and it would seem embarrassing instead of charming, because they were almost 40, instead in their mid-20s. The new songs would always suck and you would be surrounded by bros and normies who wouldn't be friends with you while you were in high school, and they would all go crazy for the flying drum solo Travis did to dubstep. You would think about how much money you spent on tickets and how it wasn't really worth it. Then, Tom would start the distorted intro riff to "Dammit" and the band would play it insanely fast as their last song and you would remember exactly why you liked the band and it would feel like they were playing the song directly to you and you would remember that blink-182 was actually a gateway to lots of cooler things for you and that they are fun and they made you feel cool. Somehow blink-155, and especially the last episode, captured that feeling exactly.

Get My Money, I Don't Give a Fuck What You Say

 When I lived in Toronto, the main thing that I worried about was being 'present'. While working at the art gallery and trying to maintain a schedule of writing, this seemed like an important practice to work into my life that would make me appreciative of the good things around me and help me understand the world. I guess that being present is still important, but it's something that I never think about anymore.

It's hard to prioritize that now. Before COVID hit it was already hard to live in Montreal, as we were far away from friends and family and it tough to deal with our social circle shrinking so fast. Rebecca and I were doing a good job of building up a new network of people in Quebec, but then that was taken out from under us as soon as it was starting to gain momentum.

COVID was easy to deal with at first because it was new. Everyone was experiencing it for the first time and people were supportive and flexible. Now it's gotten old and everyone is settling into a routine around this dumb fucking pandemic, so all the shitty parts of the world are returning in a worse form now that we need to navigate both them and a global virus. Watching TV and staying inside all day was a fun change of pace for me in March, but even I, who loves TV more than almost everything, is willing to admit that this shit has gotten old.

I guess that I'm fortunate to have my thesis to focus on during this, or at least that is the way I'm trying to frame it to have a more positive mindset. On one hand, working through a crucial point of grad school from my office in the back of the apartment and over Zoom has been... weird and I wish that I was able to go to campus and the library and my coffee shop and the fine arts student lounge, but on the other I am genuinely thankful that I have a huge project that I can always work on. It's also comforting to know that if people ask what I've been doing during this pandemic, I can say "my thesis" as an easy answer.

I think what sums up this spring/summer/fall the best is that I've never been closer to picking up smoking in my life. That seems like it would be so nice right now.

Anecdotes! Anecdotes! pt. 155

One of my favourite jokes with Rebecca is me doing something strange and then describing it as "random" as a lampooning of 2000's teen/Myspace lingo, when everyone described everything as "random". But if I'm making fun of that use of the word, am I also allowed to have a series on I, Musical Genius called "Random Anecdotes"? I would say no.

Fortunately, we are sharks, not sheep here at I, Musical Genius and we never stop swimming forward in our blogging venture, so we are pivoting and re-branding "Random Anecdotes" as "Anecdotes! Anecdotes!". I need to have some sort of series where I dump small memories that stick in my brain Larry David-style, because a future without that, in addition to everything else that has happened in 2020, seems too dark.

During my first week of classes in my first year of university a few of the new people I had just met and I went to the University Centre cafe to get lunch before we went to our afternoon classes. I definitely ended up getting Taco Bell. While we were there everyone talked about getting Booster Juice because there was one near the exit and I mentioned that I didn't know what it was. They were flabbergasted and insisted that I get one right away and that it would blow my mind and make me feel like I had mainlined vitamins and nutrients. I got one and thought that it was fine and tasted like a regular smoothie. Every time that I see the restaurant (juice bar? kiosk?) I always think of the disappointment of realizing that all of those people were way too excited about a $10 smoothie in a foam cup.

Hey Fuck You, Fuck You Too

Something you may not know about me is that I am secretly a petty and dramatic person. I love to talk shit; it is so fun and great. I also hold grudges much more than I let on.

In addition to all of that, I have strong opinions on music, seeing as I am a straight white man who weighs under 150 lbs. Though I try to expand my music tastes, discover new things, and re-visit things I used to hate to see if anything has changed, there are some bands that I will just never like because if I've come this far in hating them, I can't just roll back on that and admit they might be good.

The Bands I Will Never Like:

The Beatles

The Beatles are #1 with a bullet. Fuck this band. I deeply love power pop, so people are always like "You would like the early stuff" but the early stuff is either 60% of a good song or Motown covers that are worse than the original. John Lennon has a nine inch nail stuck in his head vibe. Paul is good at bass but sucks. Worst of all is that everyone says they are the best band of all-time, a true sign that they are a band for jabronis.

Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin is the worse version of every good band from the 70s. Less heavy than Sabbath. Rock less than Thin Lizzy. Worse solos than Cheap Trick. Less groovy than the Stones.

Nirvana

I actually liked Nirvana a lot when I first started listening to rock music. Since then I've come to find the hardcore/metal riffs with throaty crooning so obnoxious. I always get this idea of Nirvana being really heavy and thrashy for a mainstream rock band, but then they're always the same boring butt rock whenever I try.

Why?

One of my ex-girlfriends always put down my taste in music and was always trying to change what I listened to by giving me terrible recommendations. She loved the band Why? and for that reason I will never even consider listening to them.

50 Cent

Unfortunately, I was a "rap is crap" kid growing up and 50 Cent got the worst of it. I've gotten into lots of different types of rap since then, but G-Unit stuff still sounds so shitty to me.

Meet Me at the Turnstile

 What do you think about dreams?

I think about the dreams I have a fair amount. It's one of my more hippie-ish qualities. I think that I used to be a more vivid dreamer than I currently am. I would wake up and the feelings of what I had just experienced would be so real. I knew that what happened wasn't real, but there would be about 10 minutes where my body still believed it was. Crazy and intense feelings that felt lived in. That led to me learning a bit about lucid dreaming, which I thought would be an amazing skill to master.

One of the things recommended to get better at lucid dreaming was to keep a dream journal, which I guess helps you to realize the things that recur in your dreams. That worked a bit, and I've lucid dreamed (dreamed lucidly?) a few times, but it's never been something that I've really worked at or something that I coveted. A result of this though, is that I've kept a dream journal, with varying degrees of upkeep, since my early twenties. I started this journal with the goal of working towards lucid dreaming, but what I found much more rewarding about it was being able to revisit dreams I've had and getting, what seems to me to be, a window into my subconscious.

I took an intro psych class in my undergrad and I didn't retain all that much from it. The two things I do remember was my weird hippie teacher explaining Pavlov with a story about béarnaise sauce (and that he said it as sauce béarnaise) and a tutorial discussion about dream interpretation. The TA explained that ultimately dreams don't really mean anything and you can't draw any serious conclusions from them. At first that didn't make sense to me, as to me my dreams felt significant, but in hindsight I understand what she was saying. You can't draw any serious conclusions about a person or their situation from the content of their dreams. If someone was a suspect in a murder case and confessed to having a dream about being guilt-ridden and hiding a secret, it wouldn't mean shit. It would be suspicious, but it wouldn't mean anything concrete in regards to the case.

I still find them interesting to myself though. I find that small occurrences or worries tend to show up in a central way in my dreams. In that way, what happens in my dreams does two things. 1. It helps me to see what I'm worried or anxious about, because that tends to pop up regularly. 2. It can be reassuring to see events from my life re-happen in the dream.

I don't really speak with people about dreams, at least aside from Rebecca sometimes, but I think it's a nice idiosyncrasy of mine that helps in making my personality unique, even if I don't share that with other people. My interest in my own dreams, which I guess is an interest in introspection and self-awareness, has to bleed over into other parts of my personality and existence, right?

Duff recommended Horses by Patti Smith this week. It's great.