Music
On Aging In Metal
What I Listened To In 2023
2023 was pretty definitively my year of classical music. This year, I have learned about sonatas, concertos, symphonies, piano miniatures, and vespers. I have listened from Mahler’s First to Mahler’s Sixth. I know that some people are inexplicably very mad at Yuja Wang and Igor Levit. I have attended concerts by both my local orchestra (shout-out to the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra!) and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. I’ve had a great time with all of it. I didn’t just stick to classical, of course. I listened to other music, too. Classical music was, however, the defining musical force in my year, the music that kept me rolling through when things got tough. In the list below, I present to you the classical albums I most enjoyed this year. They’re not all (or even mostly!) from 2023. They’re just the records that captured my attention as I tried to learn about music I haven’t spent much time with in the past.
A Heavy Metal Roundup
For a good while this year, I wasn’t feeling especially jazzed about new heavy metal. This is not to say that good metal hasn’t been released. It definitely has! I come not to criticize, but instead to say that sometimes I just want to listen to something big, ridiculous, and cheesy. I’ve had my somber fun for this year — the new Insomnium and Tomb Mold records are both great — but as a fan of ‘80s trad metal, I like a good time with classic metal sounds, too.
The Discographies Project
In The New Yorker, Colin Marshall writes:
I’ve made a daily habit of listening to “old” music—music by artists who began their careers in the nineteen-sixties and have made the largest, most obvious marks on popular culture. Working my way through their entire studio discographies, I take one album per week and play it once every day, straight through. This method (which I used most recently to navigate the nearly half-century-long catalogue of David Bowie) requires both an obsessive streak and a certain degree of patience: the studio albums of Dylan alone, which number thirty-nine as of this writing, took up most of a year.
I’m giving this a try. Marshall’s version of old music is a little limiting — I don’t think we need to stick entirely to the ‘60s and ‘70s rock canon — but I’ll own that I have decided to start with the Beatles. I’ve heard the hits because they’re impossible to avoid, but I haven’t spent any time with the catalog. So here goes.
Two weeks in, I’m happy to report that the Beatles are pretty good! Ha. I enjoyed Please Please Me and With the Beatles has been fun, too. I’m looking forward, though, to diving into the classic records. I have never heard Revolver, Rubber Soul, or Sgt. Pepper’s, all of which are still up ahead. My favorite song so far? “Please Mr. Postman,” which is not a song by the Beatles. It’s a great cover, though!
I’ll report back on the rest of the Beatles’ discography once I’m done, which I think will be the first week of February. What’s after that? We’ll see! I have Lauryn Hill penciled in, but I might go OutKast instead. I have time to figure things out.
31 for 31
I’m turning 31 this year, a number I have a surprising number of feelings about. In recognition, if not celebration, of the occasion, please enjoy 31 songs from 1992. 31 for 31. No, these songs don’t represent 1992 perfectly. I hope, though, that they capture some of what made that year compelling and complicated musically. I also hope they capture some of what I love about the music of 1992. There’s a little metal, though little of it from bands in their prime. (Bolt Thrower is probably the exception there. Or Darkthrone?) There's a little rap, a little R&B, a little country, one song from a musical. There’s a little bit of everything, I suppose. That’s what I want, I think. A little bit of everything with a solid dose of decent riffs thrown in for good measure. Horns up and, as self-congratulatory as this is, here’s to (at least) 31 more years, to more music and complication and wonder.