Rearview (2025)

"Dreams are nothin' more than wishes, and a wish is just a dream you wish would come true."

From the first lines of this album, I knew Harry Nilsson wasn't fucking around.
They're incredibly silly, but the passion and earnestness of his delivery absolute sell it. I feel like he's innocently batting his eyelashes and clasping his chest while he sings, yet somehow manages to wink at me at the same time.

"We could be happy alone in a tent, think of the money we'd save on rent."

Harry was released in 1969, which feels surprising because it simultaneously feels much older and much younger. The strings, horns, and ragtime piano, paired with the album artwork, suggest a real sense of nostalgia. The lyrics lean heavily into this nostalgia as well, but are cleverly balanced with moments of dark comedy, or just plain darkness, that cast aspersions on his own persona. It gives the striking sense that the nostalgia is really just a way of coping. The batted eyelashes and the wink, both as real as the other.

"Say I'm acting just like a child
But maybe I'm doing what I'm doing
'cause I done what I did when I was kid."

Fave Tracks: Puppy Song, Open Your Window, City Life.

Listening to a (Sandy) Alex G album always feels like a full journey. These journeys have stunning mountain top views that remind you of what life is really about, but they also tend to have stretches of potholed roads you don't remember much of, as well as dense and crowded canopies that you can't fully wrap your head around.

To me, Headlights is Sandy's best work. Not because it's all one big mountain top, that view would get boring no matter how pretty it is. What's so great about this album is that he has kept the potholed roads and the crowded canopies, but molded them in such a way as to make them memorable sights of their own, not to mention making the travel a little smoother as well.

Sometimes a musician breaks into the mainstream and the mainstream breaks them, their unique qualities lost within the formulacra of commercialisation. But in this case, the added resources of working with a major label seem to be have helped to refine and elevate the work. He might have shaved back the (Sandy), but there's no mistaking it's still Alex G in there.

Fave tracks: June Guitar, Real Thing, Afterlife, Far and Wide.

"There's something in the back of my mind
In the back of my mind
Always in the back of my mind
And the front of my mind too."

Fave tracks: Trinidad, Cobra, Half Real.

This album humbled me. All that intricate sonic collage in my own music that I quietly felt were innovative? Turns out they're on display in Vocal Studies and Uprock Narratives in spades. And this album is 25 years old.

Fave tracks: Radio Attack, Black List.

Music of the moment about being in the moment. Tyler has built a reputation as an artist that takes his time and releases high quality, polished, cohesive albums with distinct aesthetics and themes. He subverted this reputation by quickly releasing a high quality, rough-around-the-edges, cohesive album with distinct aesthetics and themes. But this roughness is more than just an aesthetic, it's tapping into incredibly important, and oft ignored, cultural moment.

Imagine the iPhone - the clean design, the fluid interface. This polish makes it feel so natural to use, it's as if we're not using anything at all. It might feel so natural to use, you forget that this luxury item is made from conflict minerals, made from child labour. You might even forget that it's being used to spy on you, sell to you, and manipulate your worldview. Or that it's isolating you from not only your community, but from being present within your own surroundings, your own body. All this for the sake of growing profits for the already disgustingly wealthy few.

Tyler presents us with an album that rejects the polished aesthetics of our dystopian present, while explicitly warning us about our dystopian present. All caps, DON'T TAP THE GLASS.

Fave tracks: Sugar On My Tongue, Ring Ring Ring, I'll Take Care Of You.

A beautiful evolution of bossa nova. From listening to Tanto Tempo, I get the distinct impression that Gilberto holds a healthy amount of reverence for the music of her parents' generation - not too much as to want to keep it trapped as is, but not too little as to lose what made it special.
I cannot abide by that album cover though.

Fave tracks: Samba da Benção, Tanto Tempo

Loss Of Life didn't stand out to me at first, but there were a few moments within tracks that really grabbed me. The next listen led me to find a few more moments. After half a dozen listens, these moments seemed to stretch into whole tracks. By now, half the album feels like a highpoint. And the other half ain't half bad, either.

Fave tracks: Bubblegum Dog, I Wish I Was Joking, Loss Of Life.