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Pretty Good Hat

Tag: Music

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I’ve just recently began to find that newer releases of Qobuz provide the continuity across devices that I’ve missed from Rdio for years. I think this is because Qobuz Connect creates a link between devices that hasn’t previously existed. It’s great: I can listen in the car, and then pick up at the same place from my desk. It’s a little thing that makes a huge difference, and nothing since the good days of Rdio has done it in such a seamless way.

Several small piles of albums on a wooden dining table.

The rest of the family slept late enough on Christmas Day that I started a Project — the proper sorting of the albums, which had been in a jumble ever since we moved.

A blue and orange graphic, showing the list of new artists in my most-listened to list this year. The list is Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Ken Pomeroy, Tunde Adebimpe, Anna von Hausswolff and Big Thief.

I’ve updated my annual last.fm summary stats app for 2025. I’m really happy with this year’s changes: The app should be faster for most users and it offers a simpler couple of visuals, displaying a shareable card for your top “new to you” artists as well as for your top overall artists of the year. It’s fun to update this year over year. If you’re a last.fm user, I hope you’ll try it out!

deardestiny.shinyapps.io/tuner

Such great reflections on joy and the current moment, in this essay by Lawrence Peryer on seeing David Byrne’s tour:

Depression has a gravitational field. It pulls everything toward itself, including time, attention, hope, the ability to feel pleasure in the moment it’s happening. You can know intellectually that your kids are a source of joy, that your partner loves you, that the music is beautiful. You can know it and still feel the absence of it, the gap between knowing and feeling.

Byrne’s show is not letting the audience hide in that gap. The joy isn’t theoretical. It’s not aspirational content you can file away for later. It’s happening right in front of you, thirteen people smiling at each other with genuine affection, moving in choreographed celebration of being alive together, and the invitation is implicit: this could be you. This should be you.

Josh Ritter on a low stage in a cathedral. A huge pillar rises beside the stage and the stone walls are lit with blue and purple light. Warmer golden color lights up the large window behind the stage. Josh is smiling and singing, with his eyes closed and chin raised. To his right is a grand piano, where Sam Kassirer sits, head down, playing.

Seven years since the last time, I saw Josh Ritter in concert last night. He played from a small stage in a cathedral, flanked by wood and stone and stained glass, giant pillars, and Sam Kassirer at a grand piano. It was a joyful show that made me feel like part of a community in this city where we now live.

Every heart is a package, tied up in knots someone else tied.

Six years ago I saw Darlingside at the Music Instrument Museum. In the time since, many of their songs have become lifelong favorites, and last night I saw them again at this cozy neighborhood venue, captivated once again.1

Three men on a stage singing and playing guitars and mandolin.

Musicians near the back entrance of an auditorium, standing and preparing instruments

They played a couple of songs un-amplified from places in the audience. It was a fun and particularly human few minutes, part of a special and memorable night.

  1. And not just because of Don’s youthful vigor.2 ↩︎

  2. A little IYKYK humor from the show. ↩︎

Listening to this Josh Ritter album after dinner tonight as the sky gets darker. Released for just a few days in Dec of 2020, it’s a wonderful album of live performances of so many favorites. Wish I could tell you where to pick it up. Friends’ll have to come over and listen to it some summer night.

The album cover for Josh Ritter’s HELL YEAH!, in a music player app interface with a play button beneath it. It is subtitled ‘Live 2017-2019’ and features a black and white photo of Josh and the band on a sofa, smiling and laughing.

The back cover of HELL YEAH! The track listing is superimposed on a busy wall covered in graffiti. It looks like a dressing room wall, maybe.

Media diet this week. I’ve been reading:

  • I finished The Tainted Cup, and thought it was fun and interesting. I’ll definitely read more in the series.
  • Listening to Circe. It’s excellent and the audiobook reading is perfect.
  • Started reading Metal from Heaven

And some TV:

  • Season 2 of Severance is here. I re-watched Season 1 a couple of weeks ago and was struck by how tight it was, how specific and articulated its vision and its characters are. The first episode of Season 2 hit all the notes I would have wanted: It surprised me and promises so much.
  • We finished the final season of Loudermilk. It walks a fine line between jokey and sincere, and I think ends as a really moving story about found family and addiction, while managing to frequently be really, really funny.
  • American Primeval is very violent depiction of a violent era in the American West, and centers on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. It’s well done; I don’t know if I’d recommend it.

And some music I’ve liked:

Family are out for an after dinner walk, so I’m listening to some music, sitting on the living room rug in the speakers’ sweet spot, with the volume at Slightly Unreasonable.