new Lorde album (but good this time)

there's a sort of weird slowed-breakbeat-ness to the drums on this track, right?

just thinking about how if we got new music from both sadurn and cartalk this year that'd pretty much be all I need

https://durante.bandcamp.com/album/enter

the "You Could Make a Case For" series is for albums that did not spring to mind for me immediately, but when reviewing the stuff I did actually listen to this year, I noticed them as things that I definitely did find myself pressing play on during the course of the year.

I first learned about Durante via the 2019 Fabric DJ mix by electronic artist Bonobo, an album I listened to constantly both by myself and when putting on music for other people. His track "Maia" swoops in beautifully and while he didn't have many tracks released at that point, I was excited eventually to discover his 2021 song "Thread Tension", a driving, hypnotic track. There were some releases here and there but it was this year's Enter and the accompanying February and May DJ mixes that I could tell there was something special he was doing, creating a sound I'm really glad to have had available to me this year.

https://vegyn.bandcamp.com/album/the-road-to-hell-is-paved-with-good-intentions

I dunno what to say about this one, it just is the mood I felt in the most this year. I felt ready to put this on just about any time-- as a plane was landing, when I couldn't sleep, when I had a quiet afternoon sitting around peacefully with my parents in my new living room, when I was walking around a new part of San Francisco I had never been in before (near the Moscone Center? lol), just any time really. I guess that makes it the next in a series:

2024 - this one
2023 - overmono - good lies
2022 - sadurn - radiator
2021 - ross from friends - tread
2020 - cartalk - pass like pollen
2019 - glass beach - the first glass beach album

https://us.7digital.com/artist/vampire-weekend/release/only-god-was-above-us-explicit-39422357

I had very complicated feelings about Father of the Bride, though ultimately came out pretty positive about it. I do feel like this is a return to Modern Vampires success but also I feel a little bit guilty about feeling that way because of the signifiers

https://saeph.bandcamp.com/album/verdant

Listening to this album does make me feel alive-- alive because I can hear the influences from Porter Robinson and Madeon, from chiptunes to blasted out VHS copies of anime series you've never remembered the title of recovered from a friends of the library table sale. Listen to this album if you're a little goblin in the forest in an RPG Maker game