Folks familiar with my work and this aspect of my practice are by now familiar with the most frequent playlists I share these days tending to sprout from one of two inspiration seeds: travel companion or project companion. This latest playlist started as one but ended up becoming both; the soundtrack to our trip through France, as well as the musical companion to my newest publication Windows & Doorways, with the complete essay from the book down below the track listing.

Earlier this summer, my wife and I took a trip to France to visit a number of cities less frequented by tourists, especially those from the US, with a rather niche itinerary guided largely by a special interest pursuit of mine to see all of the Marc Chagall stained glass windows. [Somehow, there is no great singular place on the internet with all of them for me to link to, but this guy’s dream itinerary his wife would not agree to is one of the most complete in regards to the European windows] . Those of you who know me in real life will not be surprised to learn that I was very hard on myself for not planning a more intellectually rigorous trip, or having a better reason to see the windows than “IDK, they’re just something I want to see”. Over those two weeks we had countless incredible meals, stumbled into art and collective effervescence, and met and talked with so many people who were at first extremely confused why Americans had chosen to holiday in Metz of all places but eventually turned to conversations of normal people sharing about our lives. This playlist began as songs we heard in bars and restaurants and I would listen to on walks and in galleries. As with all of my travel playlists, once a theme starts to gel, this one existing in a real sphere of funky jazzy ambient admittedly in no small part due to the vinyl collection of the unbearably cool and kind owners of Atome in Reims, I tend to dive in and see what else comes out of the wood work that feels right.

But of course, as happens when you are able to carve away distance from life and spend a little more time in your head, this trip I felt was essentially one of novelty, eventually spun together for me. I’ve spent the last few months thinking a lot about the state of my publishing as National Monument Press, where its been in the last ten years and where its going. The combination of a trip literally to see windows, mixed with my own habit of documenting windows and doorways, began to spark an admittedly simple but meaningful analogy for me of how I see my publishing. Once home, I quickly got to work on a new publication of images from this trip, as well as recent travel to Egypt and Greece along with some other photos from the last few years, paired with an essay that serves as a reflection and a lens of where my publishing has been and where its going. The same soundtrack to a wine bar full of friends served as a companion to the ideas I have been working with for making the difficult more approachable and collaborating on stories that are personal experiences of our shared existence. As I write in the essay, my interest these days is driven by considering how to craft a doorway and making anyone willing to enter it feel welcome.

If you’d like to check out the full publication, you can see more on my website or purchase it from my webstore. Either way, I hope this playlist helps take you somewhere or provides an environment for time with friends.

#28 Joie De Vivre / Windows & Doorways

Listen here on Spotify

1. Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore - Stardust

2. Cosmic Analog Ensemble - Stereogrammes

3. Raffy Bushman - Renaissance

4. The National - Apartment Story

5. Minoru Muraoka - Take Five

6. The Vernon Spring - Mother’s Love

7. The Books - Fralite

8. Django Reinhardt - Swinging with Django

9. Rostam - Hardy

10. Build An Ark - Sunflowers in My Garden

11. Tul8te - El Lahze Di (Jazz Edition)

12. Monster Rally - Lazy Hibiscus

13. Madlib - Stormy

14. Noriko Miyamoto & Isao Suzuki - My Life

15. Harry Styles - American Girls

16. You May - Relovution

17. Oklou - choke enough

18. Bon Iver- Heavenly Father

19. St Germain - So Flute

20. Shabaka - Marwa The Mountain

21. The Doors - Peace Frog

22. Jitwam - Opendoors

23. Orions Belte - how long is… cold pizza good for

24. Tara Clerkin Trio - Movin On

25. Zaoui - Le Piege

26. Dorothy Ashby - Lonely Girl

27. Yelle - Tu es beau

28. M83 - Train to Pluton

29. Gia Margaret - Phone Screen

30. Green-House - Farewell, Little Island

31. Brendan Eder Ensemble - 137 Riddle

32. Adrien de la Salle - Lueur

33. Saint Etienne - Little K

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The following essay was written for the aforementioned Windows & Doorways publication, but I wanted it to also exist in an online, public place, as its a new long mission statement of sorts...

Windows & Doorways

As the world attempted to pivot entirely to online teaching in 2020, I offered to be a virtual visiting artist for anyone and everyone who was interested. As someone teaching online at this time myself, I knew how badly educators needed help filling the time and keeping things interesting and just taking a break amongst the expectation to completely shift their teaching into unfamiliar territory. It was, admittedly, also a self serving act. I found that the more I talked about my practice, especially in relation to the previous five years of artist publishing, the more I understood what I was doing and could speak about it more succinctly. I got very good at explaining how the work I made, both by myself and in collaboration with other artists, aligned with the mission I set out for myself when I began publishing as National Monument Press.

Once the art world returned to something resembling normalcy, I was extremely fortunate that the practice I grieved as being over 2 years earlier had actually shifted into something even bigger and busier than what I thought I lost when the world shut down. A return to academia and a self sustaining publishing and printing practice provided me the ability to create work with greater output and reach than I had ever imagined when I first began to make this type of work. Along with that, the opportunities to share and speak about my work continued to grow. While my catalogue grew and expanded alongside, the way I talked about my work was so tight and rehearsed I could switch entirely to auto pilot when presenting my practice.

Earlier this year, while giving an artist talk to a graduate Book Arts class at the University of Alabama, a student asked, or more accurately stated, something that had been in the back of my mind for awhile but I had been ignoring. They qualified their inquiry by explaining they found all of my work really beautiful and moving, but then got to the point: they couldn’t see how most of my recent publications had anything to do with my declared mission statement for my press. As I remember it, I responded “Yeah, no, you’re not wrong…”, because they were completely correct to point out this quandary. How are aging and ailing parents, harm reduction, protest movements, and natural disasters “uniquely American experiences”? This of course is to say nothing about all of the work I’m creating about travel, meta photography publishing, and my own increasingly esoteric projects about time and memory and the sacred.

The speed of previous years’ publishing had me following projects I was interested in, often juggling multiple at once, without the time to stop and look at what it all meant. In 2024 alone I published 18 projects alongside teaching, co-curating a Risograph publishing survey, and spending four months abroad. While the number of projects sensibly scaled back in 2025, the success of those projects combined with an unexpected museum commission of significant scale and an increased teaching load, the scope of work did not exactly lessen. I had intentionally decided to scale back my publishing commitments at the beginning of 2026, largely to dedicate time to finishing multiple lingering personal projects, but also, to hopefully be able to find the words to explain this thread I have been sewing with.

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I’ve been publishing in some form my entire creative life, from being the editor of my high school newspaper and writing for punk zines in my youth, to putting out music and designing merch for bands in my early 20s, to several years in the early 2010s in which the bulk of my creative time was dedicated to running a collaborative online art publication. In 2015, halfway through my graduate studies, I fully committed to the book as my artistic medium. The small, personal, format for experiencing work combined with the romance of democratized multiple made sense to me for the work I was making.

Equipped with the type and letterpress I acquired in graduate school and, shortly after, my first risograph I acquired with the last $400 remaining from my mother’s life insurance policy after paying for her funeral, I began working under the name National Monument Press. My first attempts at making sense of what I was doing were steeped fully in reaction to the 2016 election. Forced to confront that our country was not entirely on the progressive inclusive track my elder millennial optimism had believed possible, I wanted to prioritize work that was somehow speaking about America, in an admittedly elastic framework, ideally from under-represented points of view.

For the first seven years, I think I succeeded in this mission, publishing work about such topics as the complications of first generation identity, converted military architecture, diversity and assimilation, neighborhood oral histories, and national elections. These projects were primarily by women, people of color, and immigrants, each projects I’m still so wildly grateful to have been trusted with. My personal work tended to be something that existed alongside these projects, as opposed to another side of a completed whole. Many of these projects were also very much my collaborator’s stories to tell, and while I was part of bringing them into a physical world, my personal inclusion was rarely integral to the project and honestly probably would have made the work worse.

2023 is when my publishing began to shift. Nearing the completion of Like things go away with my dear friend and collaborator Alyson Provax, she insisted that my name also be included on the cover, an infrequent act within my publishing. To her, we had been working on the book together for two years at this point and my part in its creation was integral to the work. Simultaneously, Sara Winston and I were at work on a project she had been thinking about for years and asked me to be a part of trying to figure out based on qualities she liked from my previous publications. Projects all began to take more time, often reflecting the years behind those mentioned, and the end result inherently more collaborative.

I think the simplest way to describe the shift in my publishing is that the motivating inquiry has moved from “How can I help you make this?” to “Can you help me make this?”, which is both a question I’m being asked as well as asking more myself. Publishing, to me, has become an invitation into a vulnerable and intimate relationship. This goes both for the making and the viewing, which is also a way of addressing not only “how” the creation of my books has changed, but how the “what” has been reframed. I’ve become less interested in a prescriptive mission for my publishing in pursuit of work that attempts to make the uncomfortable more approachable. Loss, grief, and time have become the driving themes behind so much of the work I’m publishing which, I think at least for the moment, I have some skill helping to share. The specifics of anyone’s grief are always unique, but we have all experienced loss; we all have the capacity for empathy if an invitation is given. My interest these days is driven by considering how to craft a doorway and making anyone willing to enter it feel welcome.

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I recognize that, on the surface, I have not addressed one of the largest categories of work I both collaborate on and produce myself: travel. Those familiar with my work for some time now will be aware of the consistency of this theme, as well as my own self conscious and complicated feelings around it. I published a book in 2022 entitled Tourist Photographs to work through some of my thoughts and grad school trauma around the topic, and yet once again, the vast majority of images within this book you are holding, exist within the vernacular. I think often of a question a fellow student and now accomplished photographer of the Midwest asked me during a critique of my work in undergrad, “These are beautiful photos, but why did you have to travel to Paris to take them? Isn’t Chicago interesting enough?”, a question as valid as the one that began this entire quest to redefine my practice.

I believe my answer then was something about how I had already taken enough photos of Chicago over the years and needed to see something new. An amusing thought for a 24 year old, that he had already seen enough, but I admit that I do still relate with a portion of my younger sentiment. I do need to regularly leave home, to get a new perspective, in order to activate the part of my brain connected to looking and seeing and thinking, and sometimes the best way to be able to see and speak about your circumstances is temporarily leaving them. This is by no means a novel thought, especially when considering the long relationship the US and France, the main visual character in this publication, have shared as back and forth havens for authors and artists of the 19th and 20th century. I am paradoxically both my most critical and my most defensive of my home while away, as if I need to look out a different window to see it clearly.

However, my own personal sensory acuity is only part of why I find travel to be a topic worth sharing and supporting. Leaving home, going somewhere unfamiliar, even on the most tightly planned excursion, is an exercise in vulnerability towards the unknown. For many, it’s the closest they will ever come to being an other, and that in this, we are able to see the ways we actually are similar. Much like the specifics of our grief, the circumstances for our perseverance are individual, but the motivation is shared: to feel safe, to feel secure, to share good meals with friends.

I think this outward view and embrace has only become more essential in our current moment. As previously mentioned, much of my publishing motivation was inward looking at my own country and its political climate. It’s become increasingly clear that our struggles in the US are the world’s struggles, and that our stories are more shared than not. I find Americans right now are especially concerned of how we will be received abroad, but over the last 10 years, I’ve generally found that anyone who arrives with genuine curiosity and care will be met with warmth and acceptance, exactly as we hopefully would receive others in exchange, because class solidarity and relationship building is something we shouldn’t just leave locked up at home. The differences between myself and someone from the other side of the planet are largely related to language and power and politics, and around the world, governments reflect their people less and less these days. As it has ever been, culture and community live within the people, and finding ways to be exposed to that is essential if we’re going to make it.

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10 years into this practice, I’ve published over 60 books and been fortunate to work with over three dozen artists I’m grateful to call friends. These books have been shown at countless book fairs and made their way into private and institutional collections around the world. They were first made in my garage, and now are produced inside Chute Studio, the studio Amy Burek and I began building the day Covid-19 shut down the world and has somehow turned into nearly 1000 sqft of printing, binding, and finishing equipment in Oakland, CA. I began making books because the form made sense to me; the ability to share a long story within the intimacy of the hand held, an alternative to the way work on a wall can shout into a void. I started making books with others mostly as a fun way to do something together, almost tricking people into being my friend. Now it’s still fun, for the most part, and the friendships are even stronger, but the responsibility of it all feels bigger and more meaningful. I honestly had no idea this is how it would turn out, and likely if you’ve read this far, you certainly had some hand in supporting all of it, for which I’m grateful.

I think in the beginning I needed a map or a reason to create the work I was making. The band keeping everything together continued to twist and expand, until eventually I remembered it wasn’t real to begin with. I have decades of photos I’ve taken of windows and doorways, a habit so engrained my wife has learned to just keep walking whenever I stop seemingly without cause. I’ll catch up eventually. It apparently took a trip specifically to look at them to realize this was what I had been interested in all along: entry ways, openings, access to a view…

Windows & Doorways.

Zach Clark

July 2026

[ Listen to Walking The Quiet here on Spotify. More info below, but I suggest putting it on random. I’ve had a draft of this going for almost 3 months now, with plans to write something quite exhaustive about the companion work to the playlist, but have accepted if I don’t just get it out, it won’t get out before the show is over. You can see all the work from that show here on my website, or in person at SMCMOA until June 21st ]

Last fall I was approached to create a collaboratively commissioned body of work for Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art’s permanent collection. Their idea was some sort of publication that would document the past, present, and future of the campus, as well as involve working with student’s from an engaged learning class made up of business students, being taught by a theology professor. Also, it needed to be completed by January. I will admit I was… overwhelmed? I couldn’t see how this was possible, especially with other commitments I had over that time period. If I’m being honest, the biggest reason I said yes was the fact the fact it was Britt Royer, a friend of over 10 years who I went to grad school with and is now the curator of the SMCMOA, who was inviting me to do this.

My first day on campus at St Mary’s, I hiked up to the The Cross. The Cross, a place of spiritual solitude for many, yes, also serves as the single best view one could have of the campus and the entire area for miles, and thus is a very popular spot for those in the community. I tried to shoot a few rolls of film to get inspired by the campus, including one on an old untested Bolsey Jubilee that had recently been given to me. Through various technical difficulties, only a handful of frames from either roll of film were usable.

In my ears however, was Anna Tivel’s Animal Poem. I’m at an age I admit that lyrical content is much less what attracts me to the music that moves me than the days of the cryptic away messages of my youth, but standing on a hill completely lost on what to do in such a short amount of time, the lyrics of the title track of this album hit to my core. I could post the entire song’s lyrics, but will just quote the end of the song:

“Sorry and I’m listening is a poem that’s always been beautiful enough to kill the darkness. You can be someone who loves or you can be somebody else, I tell you kid the first one is the hardest.“

I can not tell you what exactly in these words made the project make sense to me, but I walked back down the hill with a little more confidence, or maybe more accurately faith, that we could make something of this. On the drive home through the redwoods separating Moraga and Oakland, I came up with a plan. Thankfully, Dr Porsia Tunzi, the theology faculty member I would be working with for this project, quickly turned deep friend, had complete unjustified trust in me. The endless cheerleading of Britt and fellow museum staff Désirée Sturrock helped convince me we could pull this off.

I bought a case of disposable cameras, which after dividing the students into theme and location specific groups, I handed out with the extremely minimal instruction of “Go take some pictures”. From there I opened up the cameras, took out the film, and then reshot it in my other cameras a second of third time, in the same location. I had zero idea if any of this was going to work, with the added stress/amusement that I really wouldn’t know until the end of the semester, when it would be too late to try something different.

Through the semester I spent on campus, I would meet with students, drop in to class, attend volleyball games, eat meals, but really mostly walk around alone. In one of our earliest class meeting, a student tripped on his words describing what he loved about campus, and stumbled upon the phrase “Walking The Quiet”. Before the work existed, I knew this needed to be the title of the work.

To most people, walking in quiet means literally taking in the quiet, the solitude. Dear reader, by now you probably know my brain is broken in a way in which “the quiet” means audio stimulation that allows my brain to be quiet. You also likely can assume by now that months of walking around looking for answers would inevitably involve a playlist to accompany me and my thoughts. What exists below is an expansive playlist built largely for contemplation & reflection. If you’ve been here for awhile, many of the artists will be familiar to you, along with a selection of deeper and newer to me songs and compositions largely made up of the classical, contemporary classical, ambient, and experimental jazz I spent much of last year really diving in to. Theres a emphasis on french composers in reflection of Saint Mary’s French Lasallian Christian Brothers foundation, and a huge amount of influence by Derek Sup, music director of St Paul’s Lutheran Church (where I attend), and founder of the one and only Free Key Choir.

Walking The Quiet

Listen here on Spotify

1. Brendan Eder Ensemble - QX2021

2. Claude Debussy - 6 Epigraphes antiques: L. 131: no 6

3. Anna Tival - Animal Poem

4. Kennebec - Leaving The Canyons

5. Alabaster DePlume - Visit Croatia

6. Flock of Dimes - Close To Hoe

7. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - I Miss The Way You Swim

8. Mary Lattimore & Walt McClements - Nest of Earrings

9. M. Sage - Open Space Properties

10. Cole Pulice - Fragments of a Slipstream Dream

11. Maurice Ravel - Trois Poemes de Stephen Mallarme: 1 Soupir

12. Maria Somerville - Garden

13. Denison Witmer - Lost In My Mind

14. Anna B Savage - Big & Wild

15. Mari Kalkun - Palve

16. Gia Margaretv-vLa Langue de l’amitie

17. Florist - Bells pt 3

18. Ross Gay & Gia Margaret - Poem To My Child, If Ever You Shall Be

19. Mark Barrott - Luck

20. Brendan Eder Ensemble - #17

21. Francois Couperin / Khatia Buniatishvili - Les Barricades Mysterieuses

22. Raffy Bushman - Here Today Gone Tomorrow

23. Matthew Halsall - Mountains, Trees, and Seas

24. Steve Gunn - Safety

25. Kennebec - Obstacles/Opportunities

26. Hiroshi Yosimura - Dance PM

27. Free Key Choir, Cole Pulice - After The Rain, Live

28. George Winston - Autum Longing

29. Mountain Man - Bright Morning Stars

30. Vikingur Olafsson - Reflection

31. Claude Debussy / Lang Lang - 2 Arabesques No 1 in E Major

32. Aphex Twin - Girl/Boy Song

33. Laurie Torres - Interieurs

34. Frederic Chopin / Joshua Spacht - Preludes op 28: No 7

35. Four Tet - And The All Look Broken Hearted

36. Bibio - You Won’t Remember…

37. Beth Orton - Friday Night

38. Peals - Tehachapi Loops

39. Clams Casino & Jazztronik - Pine Forest

40. Olivier Messiaen / Hakon Austbo - Preludes: Le Nombre Leger

41. Fion Regan - Turn The Skies Of Blue On

42. Lullatone - Raindrops Plucking The Last Leaves From a Tree

43. Laura Veirs - I Can See Your Tracks

44. Vikingur Olafsson / Jean Phillippe Rameau - The Arts and The Hours

45. Joel Ross - The Sacred Place

46. Trigg & Gusset - The Story of Major Cisco

47. DjRum - Hold

48. Young Jesus & Tomberlin - Ocean

49. Nick Keeling - A Slow Dance With Someone Who Is Leaving You

The body of work and show turned out really to be something quite incredible in my opinion. I feel like I’m able to boast about it more since I’m only partially responsible for any of it. You can see the entire show on my website, or if you are reading this before June 21st and will be in the Bay Area, can see the show in person at SMCMOA.

Oh hello there. I didn’t MEAN to only make 2 of these this year, and in fact made a handful this fall I meant to share but couldn’t find the time to write anything intelligible about, as if thats what any of yall are actually looking for. I’ll share the good ones soon, in the doldrums of winter when there are few exciting new records to share. But for now, the most important playlist of the year, my favorite records of the year. I wanted to write a lot of thoughts about so many of these records, about the number of incredible/unlikely comebacks that happened this year, about the number of incredible early 2000’s sounding emo is being made right now, about how an Aphex Twin song I heard on a sampler CD of my sister’s 30 years ago is probably responsible for my current deep dives into both classical music and EDM, and just how this year was such a great year for music, but the same deadlines and life that kept me from sending out the last few playlists I made is really hanging around right now.

I’ll get to lede I’ve been burying of this whole exercise, my favorite records of this year, below in playlist for. This year, it’s 40 albums, mostly in order, 1-30 for sure, with 31-40 being a collection of records I really enjoyed, but for various reasons had trouble ranking them (some EPs, the few heavy records I actually enjoy, some records I just found out about, etc). This year’s list absolutely runs the widest gamut of recent history, which only supports my belief that while we might be in a terrible time for musicians to make a living putting out albums, we are in a period its easier than ever to make the art, to put out the record, to get them heard. And with that… The playlist/list:

# 26 2025: A Comeback Year

Listen here on Spotify, and here on Youtube Music. (videos for this list are admittedly eh)

1. Oklou - Harvest Sky, choke enough

2. Patrick Wolf - Better or Worse, Crying The Neck

3. Denison Witmer - Confessions, Anything At All

4. Ken Pomeroy - Rodeo Clown, Cruel Joke

5. Gelli Haha - Bounce House, Switcheroo

6. Cole Pulice - After the Rain, Land’s End Eternal (The youtube version is with the Free Key Choir, which might be the definitive version of this song)

7. Anna Tivel - Fluorescence in the Future, Animal Poem

8. Amine - Vacay, 13 Months of Sunshine

9. Kerosene Heights - Waste My Time, Blame It On The Weather

10. Bon Iver - Everything Is Peaceful Love, Sable,fable

11. Dijon - HIGHER! - baby

12. DjRum - Galaxy in Silence, Under Tangled Silence

13. Anna B Savage - Mo Cheol Thú, You & I are Earth

14. Great Grandpa - Task, Patience, Moonbeam

15. Tyler, The Creator - Ring Ring Ring, DON’T TAP THE GLASS

16. Sport - Life, In Waves

17. Snocaps - Wasteland, Snocaps

18. Pool Kids - Last Word, Easier Said Than Done

19. Florist - Sparkle Song, Jellywish

20. Samia - Lizard, Bloodless

21. Earl Sweatashirt - gsw vs sac, Live Laugh Love

22. Kennebec - The First Salmon Flies, The Water Wheel

23. The Beths - Til My Heart Stops, Straight Line Was A Lie

24. Stereolab - Vermona F Transistor, Instant Holograms on Metal Film

25. Geese - Cobra, Getting Killed

26. Horsegirl - Switch Over, Phonetics On and On

27. SACRED PAWS - Another Day, Jump Into Life

28. Shura - Richardson, I Got Too Sad For My Friends

29. M. Sage - Wading The Plain, Tender / Wading

30. Anxious - Counting Sheep, Bambi

31. Cloakroom - Bad Larry, Last Leg Of The Human Table

32. Maria Somerville - Garden, Luster

33. Agriculture - Flea, The Spiritual Sound

34. Turnstile - NEVER ENOUGH, NEVER ENOUGH

35. Rival Consoles - Catherine - Landscape From Memory

36. Shallowater - Highway, Gods Gonna Give You A Million Dollars

37. Kelly Moran - Prism Drift, Don’t Trust Mirrors

38. NOËP - Armasta mind Jaan’kene - Folftonic II

39. Laurie Torres - Interieurs, Apres coup

40. Harrison Gordon - Suits, Spring Break!

My first “professional” writing & publishing gig was writing album reviews, interviewing bands, and taking concert photography for a couple different music publications and zines when I was in high school, altho by professional I mean someone else printed it and I was sent the CDs and occasionally got into concerts for free, not that I was actually paid for any of these words written to page. One of the few constant threads in my life has been listening to and thinking about music more than most people.

I’ve been making this list of my favorite records of every year since at least 2010 when digital music took over and creating playlists as tomes became possible, and certainly to some extent prior to that was making mix CDs and informally declaring my preferences. I listen to far more new music than your average 42 year old, due in no small part to being kidless, working with college students, and having the type of untraditional employment that afford me the freedom most Friday mornings to start by day reading various blogs and scanning playlists to be up on what is released each week.

Each week, I spend time with at least 5-10 new records, with some weeks having double that I’m interested to listen to, genuinely hundreds of records a year. A podcast I listened to earlier this year, one of the guests said they listen to far more music than your average person has time for and as much more of a task than an escape, because it is there job. I do not know what my excuse continues to be, besides the fact that contrary to choosing to leave behind a past life in the music industry and any desire to play music again in exchange for a career in the visual arts, music is still the art that moves me most.

I hope this list is full of records you also loved, encourages you to check out some new records you hadn’t heard of or maybe forgot came out, or maybe even gets you riled up I left something out or you hate something on here. Music is supposed to make you feel something I think. If you want to talk about any of this, please reach out.

I’ve been exponentially less outspoken this time around. Much of this is intertwined with unpacking a lot of thoughts from spending the last 3 months of 2024 abroad and the unique zoom out on the world those times provide that leave me feeling that both the world is way more complicated but also our country does not need to be THIS complicated and dysfunctional. Which is also part of why I’m finding myself less publicly outspoken; The dysfunction, the division, the chaos, its all by design and it’s so much more brazenly so. On the one hand, as a practicing Christian, I’m grateful that this time around the right has dropped trying to co-opt faith as the cover for the terrible things they are doing, but on the other, how do we even begin to have a conversation in this country about the stripping of services and support for people at home and abroad, and illegal deportations and military occupations, and the endless ways our country is at risk due to decisions this president is making when the other side is completely consumed with things like canceling one of the greatest athletes on the planet because she is so radical to suggest trans people should get to play sports. How do you argue the value of human life when your opponent wants to fight about swim meets?

This playlist is another race towards the wind that is my soft activism. They’re the type of songs that love this country and want it to be better, which is why they are critical of it. This is by no means a comprehensive playlist of songs critiquing america, and is in fact probably the most myopic playlist I’ve made. There's also just a lot of songs that channel the form of frustration I’m feeling lately, in the form of 3rd and 4th wave emo and 90’s hardcore. I often say I am more drawn to sadness then anger, but I’m not immune to shouts and rhythmic physical outbursts as a way of working through frustration, I am a scorpio after all.

Frustrated and saddened as I am about the state of the country now and into the near future, I choose to strive for optimism, because I’m not sure what's attractive about the alternative. Hopefully this soundtrack helps you through this weekend and the times ahead.

#25 American You’re Freaking Me Out

Listen on Spotify

1. The Mezingers - America (You’re Freaking Me Out)

2. Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros - Johnny Appleseed

3. Bruce Springsteen - Born In The USA

4. Phil Ochs - What Are You Fighting For

5. Simon & Garfunkel - America

6. Pretty Girls Make Graves - Parade

7. The Hold Steady - Stay Positive

8. The (International) Noise Conspiracy - Up For Sale

9. Snapcase - The Beat

10. Iron Chic - Plane, Chest Pains, and Automobiles

11. Kerosene Heights - Such Great

12. Against Me! - Americans Abroad

13. Billy Bragg - Help Save The Youth Of America

14. Talking Heads - Don’t Worry About The Government

15. Leonard Nimoy - If I Had A Hammer

16. Buffalo Springfield - For What It’s Worth

17. Wilco & Billy Bragg - Christ For President

18. The Weakerthans - Pamphleteer

19. Pavement - No More Kings

20. Bruce Hornsby and the Range - The Way It Is

21. Dillinger Four - Minimum Wage Is A Gateway Drug

22. Good Looking Friends - Jaywalker

23. PUP - Free At Last

24. Yard Act - Fixer Upper

25. Agriculture - In The House Of Angel Flesh

26. Woody Guthrie - The Land Is Your Land

27. Limbeck - Names For Dogs

28. John Prine - Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heaven Anymore

29. Paul Robeson - What is America To Me? (The House I Live In)

I’m prone to lengthy reflections this time of year, but if I’m honest, sitting here in Lithuania, I’m still in the middle of the thing I’ll need to unpack about 2024 for another week or so. But, being a purest who likes to get that best of list out before the year is over, I’ll get straight to the point for once. Below are my favorite records of 2024. Thanks to spending over 3 months in Europe mostly alone and even more than that mentally preparing to be here, my listening habits were admittedly a little unusual, so I probably missed some great records or just didn’t spend enough time with some real bangers. If you think thats the case, please let me know.

This year’s list is some pretty obvious Zach faire, a lot of sad guys, a lot of indie rock, some weird ambient stuff, and as has been the trend the last few years, women generally making what I find to be the most interesting albums on the list.

I could pontificate on each of these records at length, butI’m going to embrace eastern european low context… Heres to a memorable 2024.

#24 2024 in 24 + 1

Listen here on Spotify

1. Yard Act - Dream Job

2. Mk.gee - Breakthespell

3. Leif Vollebekk - Peace of Mind

4. Fionn Regan - Farewell

5. Charli XCX - 360

6. Middle Kids - Highlands

7. Macseal - Your Door

8. Fred again… - peace u need

9. Nale Sinephro - Continuum 2

10. Laura Marling - Patterns

11. Yasmin Williams - Sisters

12. Adrianne Lenker - No Machine

13. Rosie Tucker - Unending Bliss

14. Sarah Kinsley - Realms

15. Kacy Hill - Damn

16. Zsela - Fire Excape

17. Valley - A Little More

18. Donovan Woods - Living Well

19. Naima Bock - Feed My Release

20. This is Lorelei - Perfect Hand

21. Rosali - My Kind

22. Hovvdy - Bad News

23. Fontaines D.C. - Starburster

24. KNEECAP - I’m Flush

25. Bon Iver - SPEYSIDE

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Hello from Estonia, where I’ve been living for the last 5 weeks. Today the sun rose at 8:50 and was back in hiding by 3:20pm, with a balmy high of 27 / -5 degrees. I’m here as an artist in residence at TYPA, a print and paper making center in Tartu, Estonia’s second largest city.

I came here to use an obsolete printer called a mimeograph, intentionally in the winter. I knew it would be dark most of the time, a thing I was actually looking forward to. The few brief hours of sunlight that occur are typically obfuscated by clouds. I must admit tho, while the darkness does not make me depressed, I don’t think, I did not expect the euphoria I now feel on the rare sunny day. It has made me even more aware of the light and where it isn’t. I’ve been taking photos of reflections from southern facing buildings, the only light northern facing surfaces may get for months. This turned into prints made on the mimeograph, transcribed in a type face I’ve designed. It’s both pretty conceptual, and really not at all I think. Somewhere in the in between. You can see documentation of the entire show here on my website, since I assume you will not be passing through Estonia in the next month.

Anyways… This is the playlist I made to accompany me walking around in the cold/snow/dark, chasing light. It’s loosely ordered but honestly I’ve mostly been playing it on random, and suggest you do the same. It includes multiple contributions from dear friend Emily Tareila’s playlist she made me for this trip. The Estonians all said it was way too sad of a playlist, and while I don’t agree while wearing headphones, it maybe was a little bit of a bummer as background at the opening. I do however think it’s a perfect compliment to when you need a break from Christmas music, which if you are new here, or forgot, and were hoping maybe there would be a Christmas playlist, a few years ago I made what I believe is a near perfect playlist.

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#23 On Reflection

Listen here on Spotify.

1. Mari Kalkun - Leelu

2. The Weather Station - Stars

3. Naima Bock - My Sweet Body

4. Adrianne Lenker - Free Treasure

5. Field Report - Marigolden

6. Coma Cinema - Her Sinking Sun

7. Black Market Karma - Hedgehog

8. The Weakerthans - Virtue The Cat Explains Her Departure

9. Bon Iver - Awards Season

10. Little Wings - Look at What the Light Did Now

11. Laura Marling - Caroline

12. Wild Pink - Track Mud

13. Fred Again - where will i be

14. Joseph Shabason - Broken Hearted Kota

15. Beach House - Take Care

16. Loma - A Steady Mind

17. Leif Vollebekk - Mississippi

18. Bahamas - Lost In The Light

19. Feist - Get It Wrong, Get It Right

20. Frightened Rabbit - Blood Under The Bridge

21. The National - Dark Side of the Gym

22. Clams Casino - Water Theme

23. Mizu - Realms of Possibility

24. Gia Margaret - Mourning Dove

25. Tom Waits - If I Have To Go

26. Yasmin Williams - Virga

27. Curly Strings - Lõpp

28. Jónsi - In Plain View

29. Jon Guerra - Let A Little Light In

30. Damien Jurado - Throwing Your Voice

31. Basa Basa - Love, Love, Love

32. Owen - The Only Child of Aergia

33. Mary Lattimore - And Then He Wrapped His Wings Around me

34. Sylan Esso - Slack Jaw

35. Florist - This Was A Gift

36. Madi Diaz - Weird Faith

37. Deptford Goth - Code

38. Julie Byrne - I Live Now As A Singer

39. Marika Hackman - Blood

40. Fionn Regan - O Avalanche

41. The Dream Academy - Please Please Please let me get what I want

42. Billy Bragg & Wilco - Someday Some Morning Sometime

43. Dustin Tebbutt - (in.)Fading Light

44. Mariah

45. Mark Isham - The Times Of Harvey Milk

46. Nathaniel Rateliff - Rush On

47. Claude Debussy / Fazil Say - 2 Arabesques

48. Gregory Alan Isakov - Light Year

49. The Tallest Man On Earth - Like The Wheel

50. Ethan Gruska - Crowded City Street

51. George Winston - Some Children See Him

52. Pinegrove - Endless

In a little over two weeks, I’m leaving the country for the rest of the year. I’ll be flying to Germany where I’ll be teaching a week long workshop along side my friend Annegret Frauenlob, before heading off to my real destination: Tartu, Estonia, where I’ll be an Artist in Residence at TYPA through November & December. [If you’d like to follow along with this trip, I’m going to try to actively journal on my patreon page, which you’re welcome to subscribe to, but I’ll be keeping the journal free and open]

I’ve known about this trip for over a year now, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t filling a disproportionate about of my brain during that entire period, even with the non-stop nature this entire year has been art and life wise. Unfortunately, this means I’ve let so many things fly by this year, especially this summer, without really taking the time to appreciate and reflect on them. This playlist is an attempt to bottle up the second half of this summer and remember friends and drives and nights away from home. I’m trying, but not doing terribly well, at trying to document and record things that seem important again. Maybe it’s to reignite nostalgia wistfulness, maybe its just that fact I am getting older and I’m busier and I remember a lot less and am generally concerned about the dementia in my future.

For folks unfamiliar with Bay Area microclimates, you may be aware of our notoriously cold summers, but you may not know that September and October are our real summer — it was 102 this weekend, in the shade — so, in my mind we are still in summer, and this playlist reflects that. It’s a pretty accurate take on the records and songs I kept going back to this summer, many of which I’m sure you did also. It might also feature the song central to the drag persona I’ve been crating in my mind for the last 6 months. If you’re sick of all the electronic pop and dance music I keep sharing, rest assured that the cold and dark Estonian winter should probably present something different soon.

#22 Patty O’Pounder

Listen here on Spotify | here for Youtube Music (lots of great videos again here).

1. Dr. Dog - Tell Your Friends

2. Fontaines D.C. - Favourite

3. Macseal - Permanent Repeat

4. Japandroids - Younger Us

5. The Beatles - Kansas City / HEY HEY HEY HEY [Go Royals]

6. KNEECAP - Fine Art

7. Troye Sivan - Rush

8. Galantis - Fool 4 U

9. The Halluci Nation - Sisters

10. Mk.gee - Little Bit More

11. Cassandra Jenkins - Only One

12. Billy Bragg - Levi Stubb’s Tears

13. Vampire Weekend - Mary Boone

14. This Is Lorelei - Dancing In The Club

15. Channel Tres - Need U 2 Know

16. Paul Russel - Lil Boo Thang

17. Tony! Toni! Tone! - Oakland Stroke

18. Sarah Kinsley - Sublime

19. Chappel Roan - After Midnight

20. Fifth Harmony - Sledgehammer

21. Charli XCX - Talk Talk

22. Camila Cabello - Don’t Go Yet

23. NOEP - Head Out Of Water

24. Fred Again… Adore U

25. Nala Sinephro - Continuum 3

26. Shaboozey - A Bar Song

27. Leif Vollebekk - Moondog

28. Donovan Woods - Back For The Funeral

29. Curly Strings - Mind Nad Katte Ei Saa

    Thanks for reading A Mixtape Left Behind! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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When I originally began this project, I had hoped for it to be a collaborative and conversational thing with other artists. The first few worked out this way then it turned in to something else. This playlist is not only a collaboration, but it’s made almost entirely by my friend and collaborator Sara J Winston.

Today, we’re releasing a publication called Foibles & Avoidance. It is a collection of photographs taken in 2020 when she and her family moved back in with her parents due to covid lock downs upending their plans to move to Berlin. They are combined with clues from half finished New York Times cross word puzzles Sara’s father kept for her, the type of confusingly charged objects parents hold on to and pass on as stand ins for the feelings they have trouble sharing clearly. To further attempt to contextualize the project, there is also a booklet of email exchanges between Sara and her father, as well as and a typeface we created from his hand written puzzles included in the publication.

After meeting in the summer of 2022 at ACRE residency in Wisconsin and deciding we wanted to work on a project together, we realized the 3000 miles and 3 hour time zone difference made a lot of that long thinking part of beginning collaborations difficult. So last summer, June 2023, we spent a week in Petaluma together at InCahoots Residency to try to figure out what the project was. That week, we discussed making a playlist that would accompany the book, and a version of this playlist began.

Fast forward another year later, untold revisions and reimaginings of the project, and it’s finally complete, and debuting this weekend at San Francisco Art Book Fair this weekend. Remembering that playlist we began in California, Sara cleaned up the chaotic collection we had created and added in songs suggested by her Father. It’s a slightly moody, atmospheric, sometimes tense, but ultimately tender collection of songs I’m really glad exists. I hope you enjoy.

#21 Foibles & Avoidance

Listen here on Spotify

1. Eiko Ishibashi - Drive My Car

2. Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - The Tracks Of My Tears

3. The Osmonds - I,I,I,I

4. Kyle Green, Aron Kallay - Echoes of Nothing: II. Something

5. Peggy Lee - Me and My Shadow

6. Sean Nicholas Savage - Let Me Out

7. Gigi Masin - Swallow’s Tempest

8. Tess Roby - Up 2 Me

9. Future Islands - Inch of Dust

10. Laurie Anderson - Let X=X

11. Groove Armada - Don’t Give Up

12. Ryuichi Sakamoto - M.A.Y. IN THE BACKYARD

13. Generationals - Elena

14. Kate Bush - Watching You Without Me

15. Ouri - boucles

16. The Foundations - Build Me Up Buttercup

17. MEITEI - Kintsugi

18. Alabaster DePlume - I’m Good at Not Crying

19. Agnes Obel - Familiar

20. Bill Withers - Lean on Me

21. In Heaven - Vulfpeck, Antwaun Stanley

Sara in her studio as we try to figure out the project

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I will be the first to acknowledge that at the moment, I am living an extremely charmed life. As I wrote in the last newsletter, a lot of this comes in tandem with being stretched far too thin due to problems related to overcommitting and a void in my soul I attempt to fill with productivity and output. However the other side of that coin is a life rich with friendships and opportunities and extreme gratitude for the privilege I have to occasionally detach from The Thing and prioritize walking and looking and talking and all of the things that refill my tank. 

I write this just a few days after returning from 3 weeks in Italy and Slovenia where I came extremely close to finding the limit of carbs I can actually consume on a daily basis, thankfully in combination with the 20K step days of a life that just seems impossible in the US, especially in California. I saw art and shared conversations with friends new and old that have greased the gears of my mind in a way that only disconnecting from your daily life and repositioning your perception of relativity can do, even in our modern world where we’re all still online no matter where we are. I’m still marveling in how different the internet experience presented to me because of the time zone and satellite positioning created a completely different offering from the algorithm. I’m chewing on some far less pithy pollyannaish thoughts about all of this, but thats for further down the road once I’ve figured them out. 

Just a few weeks prior to this trip, still thick within the Spring semester, I used my spring break to take a hybrid personal/business trip to New England, where I spent 10 days with cherished friends and collaborators of whom distance and logistics makes meaningful time together usually difficult. 

The playlist below is a capsule of the last couple months of shared meals, aimless meanderings, and aperitivo times. I believe it’s an appropriate companion to a cocktail in the sun as much as a backing soundtrack for work and contemplation. It’s jazzy and weird and more than a little idiosyncratic, as travel inspired playlists often tend to be. 

I hope you’re able to get away this season, even if for a short moment, in whatever form that looks like. The respite is integral to resilience. 

#20 La Vita Dolce

Listen here on spotify.

(no youtube playlist this time because finding many of these specific recordings is a pain and lets be real, minimal good music videos).

1. Gia Margaret - body

2. Khruangbin - May Ninth

3. Etta James - At Last

4. The Avalanches & Leon Bridges - Interstellar Love

5. Buddy Fo & His Group - Girl From Ipanema

6. Yann Tiersen - Les Deux Pianos

7. Lindsey Buckingham - D.W. Suite

8. Tim Fain - Freedom

9. Kacy Hill - Here I Am

10. Triste Janero - Rene De Marie

11. Belle and Sebastian - The Model

12. Taylor Swift - Lover

13. Jon Brion - Phone Call

14. Vikingur Olafsson / Claude Debussy - Preludes Book 2, L. 123

15. Middle Kids - Bootleg Firecracker

16. S. Carey, John Raymond, Aaron Parks - Blood Orange

17. Glenn Miller - Moonlight Serenade

18. The Cooltrane Quartet - The Lady In Red

19. Tori Amos - Silent All These Years

20. Bibio - Patchouli May

21. Rosie Tucker - Lightbulb

22. Jinx - Tamo Gdje Je Sve Po Mom

23. Frankie Yankovic - No Beer Today

24. En Attendant Ana - Black Morning

25. Hovvdy - Jean

26. Leon Fleisher / Johann Sebastian Bach - Sheep May Safely Graze

27. Tobias Jesso Jr. - True Love

28. Yard Act - Blackpool Illuminations

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(Pandreo is a real one)

Hello friends,

Do you feel like you are a tamale husk just barely keeping it all together and ready to be discarded at any moment? Is the reality of whats just a really bleak moment we are in right now make you feel powerless and left struggling to prioritize and complete all the relatively meaningless tasks you have to complete everyday? Yeah, same.

I have this “problem” at the moment, written in quotes because it’s absolutely not a problem in any real sense of the world, where I’m feeling like just talking about whats going on in my life feels like just dream life humble bragging, and to suggest any of it has been exhausting is completely out of touch. Possibly the fact I feel this is a sign I’ve not slid in to complete nihilism, which I believe is a good thing. It’s ultimately not helping anyone directly, but being able to simultaneously hold the complexities of privilege, gratitude, opportunity, labor, and just the chaotic unfairness of it all I think is essential to possessing any kind of empathy for folks around you.

Lately, I’m basking in the gratitude of what several of my artist friends and I call “doing the thing”, the thing being, whatever this life we’ve said we wanted and somehow are cobbling together. The first few months of this year have completely been doing the thing, and feeling the effects of it. I’ve published 4 new books I’m extremely proud of with artists I deeply appreciate (Sara J Winston, tamara suarez porras, Erin McCluskey, and Anna Rotty), and hosted friends from Germany for us all to participate in a very successful Codex, the biggest Book Arts fair in the world. I’m fully in the weeds of curating a show for the San Francisco Center for the Book with my Chute Studio mate Amy Burek that will open in July, while also attempting to be something reflecting a decent instructor for my Spring class load. There are at least 10 more books on the way this year, even with whats going to be me spending 3+ months in Europe later this year, and have a group of folks I am fortunate to send things to every month because they support me on Patreon. This of course doesn’t even touch on my marriage and friendships (going great, I think!) and the existential dread about our election, and Gaza, and Ukraine, and auto-theft (all going extremely poorly, verifiably).

This is all going on and I’m feeling all these feelings (or, on the other end, being completely void of feelings), and The Thing needs to get done. My music habits have been very specific through this period: alot of classical music, the Northern Exposure soundtrack on repeat, SO MUCH Enya… But when I need to really dial in and get the work done, it’s been mostly dance music. So this time around, I present 3 hours of an admittedly idiosyncratic collection of dance music. It’s heavy on electronic beats, big fuzzy baselines, & glitchy bloops. It somehow marries post punk and European EDM & rave pop, ending up with some kind of visceral attitude that is equally appropriate for late night dancing and walking down the street with urgency wearing headphones with a completely stoic facial expression. Productive requires body movement

Once again, for those in to music videos, the Youtube music version of this list has a ton of videos including three of my all time favorite music videos ever made.

I hope this helps in someway.

#19 Disassociation Dance Hall

Listen here on Spotify | Listen/watch here on Youtube Music.

1. Porches - Goodbye

2. Carly Rae Jepsen - Real Love

3. LCD Soundsystem - Daft Punk is Playing at My House

4. Shamir - On The Regular

5. RAC - This Song

6. Serpentwithfeet - Damn Gloves

7. Bonobo - Age of Phase

8. Hot Chip - I Feel Better

9. Ratatat - Wildcat

10. Jam City - Touch Me

11. Kanye West - Paranoid

12. The Go! Team - The Power Is On

13. Foals - In Degrees

14. Yard Act - We Make Hits

15. Justice - We Are Your Friends

16. Joywave - Tongues

17. Viagra Boys - Ain’t No Thief

18. Chai - (A song with a Japanese title I don’t know how to type)

19. Ra Ra Riot - Binary Mind

20. Deorro - Five More Hours

21. Self - Breakfast With Girls

22. Charli XCX - Boys

23. Young Thug - Kanye West

24. Francis and the Lights - Just For Us

25. Felix Da Housecat - Ready 2 Wear

26. New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle

27. Basement Jaxx - My Turn

28. Stars - No One Is Lost

29. The Faint - Get Seduced

30. Sylvan Esso - Echo Party

31. NOTD - So Close

32. Hardwell - Thinking About You

33. Grum - Can’t Shake This Feeling

34. Ookay - Thief

35. Martin Garrix -Don’t Look Down

36. The Streets - Without Thinking

37. Phoenix - Fleur De Lys

38. The Range -Bicameral

39. Fred Again - Hannah

40. Yelle - Completement fou

41. Audiobooks - Burnt Pictures

42. Classixx - Whatever I Want

43. For Those I Love - Leave Me No Love

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Good afternoon friends,

With three days left in 2023, it’s time for me to share my favorite records of the year. I will admit, I spend all year working towards this, my main act of reflection on the year, and have for at least 20 years, and am not sure who this is for besides myself. That said, contrary to how I spend my energy producing, music is the art form that inspires and grounds me more than any other, and it still does to this day. Having these lists to look back to exists as journals, and if somehow I’ve forgotten about songs that exist as time machines, I can always find my way back there.

2023 feels like the year music got back to normal, with far fewer of the weird experimental products of lock down. It’s also a year it seems touring got back to normal, and at least every show I saw, musicians were so full of joy and gratitude to be back to doing the thing. This is also to say 2023 feels like a year my life got back to normal, whatever that is now, and these songs provided the soundtrack.

There are 40 albums here, which I know sounds like a lot, but is truly a fraction of what I listened to this year, and there is still so much I’m sure I missed. The list is in some sort of order, at least thru the top 20, and then it gets a little arbitrary. Because of that, this playlist flows like a dog’s breakfast, but hopefully you find some things you like. I’ve written some brief thoughts on a handful of records below the links.

Thank you as always for indulging me.

#18 40 x 2023

Listen here on Spotify or here on Youtube music

1. The Tallest Man On Earth, Henry St - Bless You

2. Sun June, Bad Dream Jaguar - Washington Square

3. Fred Again & Brian Eno, Secret Life - Secret

4. Ben Howard, Is It? - Moonraker

5. Cut Worms, Cut Worms - I’ll Never Make It

6. Matthew Halsall, An Ever Changing View - An Ever Changing View

7. Julie Byrne, The Greater Wings - Moonless

8. Ratboys, The Window - The Window

9. Young Fathers, Heavy Heavy - Rice

10. Madeline Kenney, A New Reality Mind - Red Emotion

11. Gia Margaret, Romantic Piano - Cicadas

12. Holly Humberstone, Paint My Bedroom Black - Ghost Me

13. Jessie Ware, That! Feels Good! - Free Yourself

14. Loma Prieta, Last - One-Off (Part 2)

15. Good Looking Friends, Wasted Now - Jaywalker

16. En Attendant Ana, Principia - The Cutoff

17. Buck Meek, Haunted Mountain - Where You’re Coming From

18. Gregory Alan Isakov, Appaloosa Bones - Miles to Go

19. Agriculture, Agriculture - Look, Pt 2

20. Matthew And The Atlas, This Place We Live - Record Store

21. Girl Scout, Real Life Human Garbage - Do You Remember Sally Moore?

22. Slaughter Beach, Dog, Crying, Laughing, Waving - Summer Windows

23. Slowdive, everything is alive - alife

24. Generationals, Heatherhead - Waking Moment

25. Feist, Multitudes - Calling All The Gods

26. JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown, SCARING THE HOES - Garbage Pale Kids

27. Jam City, Jam City Presents EFM - Wild n Sweet

28. Spanish Love Songs, No Joy - Pendulum

29. Skinny Pelembe, Hardly The Same Snake - Same Eye Color

30. Avalon Emerson, & The Charm - Karaoke Song

31. Young Moon, Triggered by Sunsets - Dance Yer Sadness

32. Billy Nomates, CACTI - Blue Bones

33. Truth Cult, Walk The Wheel - Unstoppable

34. Lowly, Keep Up The Good Work - Keep Up The Good Work

35. M83, Fantasy - Us And The Rest

36. Superviolet, Infinite Spring - Big Songbirds Don’t Cry

37. Nickel Creek, Celebrants - Celebrants

38. Cindy Wilson, Realms - Realms

39. Sampha, Lahai - Dancing Circles

40. Wilco, Cousin - Meant To Be

Some expanded thoughts on some of the records above….

The Tallest Man On Earth, Henry St: I admit, I’m a bit of a Tallest Man shill. I heard this record for the first time live, a month before it even came out, when on his second show ever touring with a band, he played the entire record. It was a bold move that I would normally hate, but the warmth and joy with which they played these songs made them feel familiar from the first note. Luckily, the recorded album captured that same joy and this is easily my most listened to [new] record of the year.

Sun June, Bad Dream Jaguar / Gia Margaret, Romantic Piano: These are both records that were just listened as honorable mention type things in blogs I listen to and I do not know what made me decide to put them on with zero context, but both of them had that same effect upon first listen: that feeling in the back of your heard and then down your back when your whole body feels a record because its exactly what you were looking for. They both feel like an overhead view of young adulthood.

Fred Again & Brian Eno, Secret Life: My TRUE record of 2023 was “Fred Again’s entire discography”. There is not an artist I listened to more in this entire year. This record came out the same day I had a rainy morning flight to Seattle where I both saw lots of friends, and it turns out, had covid, which I couldn’t have asked for a better soundtrack than this sparse, melancholy masterpiece.

Ben Howard, Is It? / Slowdive, everything is alive/ Feist, Multitudes / M83, Fantasy / Nickel Creek, Celebrants/ Wilco, Cousin / Cindy Wilson (B-52s), Realms / : All of these records are by artists who are deep in to their careers and you probably know and love(d). Each of these records exist as examples that no matter what stage you are in a career, you can mix things up and still catch the magic. This is easily Ben Howards best record, Slowdive and Nickel Creek haven’t missed a step getting back together, Feist got even weirder and quieter at the same time (?), M83 figured their shit out, and Wilco worked with an outside producer (Cate LeBon) for the first time in 20 years unsurprisingly made their best records in 20 years. If you walked away from any of these artists at some point, I highly recommend diving back in.

En Attendant Ana, Principia: If you like Alvvays and want a french version that also kind of sounds like Belle & Sebastian, here you go.

Gregory Alan Isakov, Appaloosa Bones: Gregory Alan Isakov is one of my favorite musicians, but I admit I did not get this record when it came out. I’m still not sure I get what he’s doing in this moment of writing songs that feel more like short memories of an idea, but much like Tallest Man, seeing this record live made it sound so big and beautiful and full of something, and it’s kept me coming back.

Loma Prieta, Last / Agriculture, Agriculture / Truth Cult, Walk The Wheel: For whatever reason, I returned to metal and hardcore quite a bit this year. While there is A LOT of great stuff out there at the moment, these three records are the ones I kept going back to when I needed shouting and shreding.

Spanish Love Songs, No Joy / Skinny Pelembe, Hardly The Same Snake / Avalon Emerson, & The Charm / Lowly, Keep Up The Good Work: These records as all by bands that are new to me and contained certain songs good enough I kept coming back to the records hoping to find more. Avalon Emerson’s Karaoke Song might actually be my favorite song of the year.

Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, & Tomorrow, & Tomorrow: Not a record, but a book, an audio book rather, and genuinely the best thing I listened to all year. Easily the best depiction of collaborative relationships and how it feels to make things with people I have ever absorbed. I cry just thinking about moments in this book, and wish I could go back to the week I walked around Boston listening to this.

I turned 40 this week. I’ll admit, I expected to feel more reflective in this moment or for this milestone to seem more significant, but the fact everything feels the same as last week I’m going to chalk up to a healthy self awareness of some kind. I have a strange relationship to birthdays in that I’m so bad at remembering other’s and gift giving is absolutely not my love language, I then feel absolutely horrible when other people remember my birthday and possibly the most awkward you could ever make me feel is giving me a gift in person. But I’m also a person with an ego who’s love language IS quality time, so most years there is something organized to celebrate my birthday, but the invite is delivered so casually and couched with caveats about how busy this time of year is and that I’m aware you are likely already being asked to spend at least 2 other weekends this month with us thanks to other birthdays and holidays, so like, don’t even worry about it…

I have learned by this point in life, I desire recognition, but also lets not make a big deal about it ok? I’ve really come to appreciate winking and the knowing glance that follows; the silent understated moments of connection that come with knowing someone or being present enough to pick up the vibe.

With new decades, it’s appropriate to more assertively request people’s time and attention, but in the spirit of my aforementioned neurosis, for my 40th birthday we asked everyone to bring a pizza which we then ate in the backyard with amaros and oysters and pie. Begrudgingly accepting that only playing vinyl thru out the party was impractical, I made a playlist mixing songs from 1983 with songs that sound like they could have been made in 1983, tossed with a collection of idiosyncratic sentimental tracks. It ended up nine hours long and in my humble opinion, somehow works. Below is a condensed version that I think paints a pretty good picture of how music has shaped me. If you’d like the full nine hour version, help yourself, just put it on random.

#17. 40 toppings

Listen here on spotify.

1. Bombay Bicycle Club - Turn The World On

2. New Order - Your Silent Face

3. The 1975 - Paris

4. Matthew And The Atlas - Record Store

5. Dennison Witmer - Further On

6. Madness - It Must Be Love

7. Jens Lekman - A Postcard To Nina

8. Carly Rae Jepsen - Bends

9. Dismemberment Plan - You Are Invited

10. Stars - Hold On When You Get Love

11. Rubblebucket - Donna

12. Bruce Springsteen - Dancing In The Dark

13. John Mayer - Last Train Home

14. Noah And The Whale - Now Is Exactly The Time

15. Pretenders - Back On The Chain Gang

16. Lali Puna - Faking The Books

17. The Good Life - Don’t Make Love So Hard

18. Bruce Hornsby and The Range - The Show Goes On

19. Ben Folds - Sentimental Guy

20. Wilco - A Magazine Called Sunset

21. Lionel Richie - All Night Long

22. The New Pornographers - Sing Me Spanish Techno

23. The Rentals - Please Let That Be You

24. Madonna - Holiday

25. The Smiths - This Charming Man

26. Born Ruffians - With Her Shadow

27. The Clash - Straight To Hell

28. Taco - Putting On The Ritz

29. Monster Rally - Lovely You

30. Billy Bragg - A New England

31. Rilo Kiley - With Arms Outstretched

32. The Band / Van Morrison - Caravan

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We spent much of August in Alaska, a place of such beauty, words struggle to form adequately. It’s a place of deep solitude, pride, contradictions, and a population whose best and worst qualities may be one in the same. It’s also a place where the background music will make you think you’ve time traveled a decade or two as you are eating better pizza than you would have imagined. With this, I have now been to all 50 states, a goal I had before turning 40 (which happens in about a month?).

I returned the same way I tend to every fall, over scheduled professionally and in what feels like a foreign social landscape. If you are a well read intellectual, or like me just have a well read intellectual friend, you’ve seen that article about if friendships can survive after children appear, or the one about how we’re apparently becoming bad friends because we are overly focused on our significant others and families, and apparently big feelings about friendship and how we spend our time together are just in the zeitgeist. 

I had begun to write an essay about all of this and how somehow this physical place and this emotional place form a neat metaphor, but I think I’ve accepted that for the next few months, if I wait for these ideas to be articulated to my satisfaction I won’t send out another playlist for awhile, and these feel like really meaningful things to send out to the ether as sonic status reports.

This playlist is about Alaska; about glaciers and mountains and jumping salmon and fireweed. It’s also about cancellations and maybe spending too much time with only one person no matter how much you love them and friendship and loneliness and the way fall in California continues to destabilize me 12 years in. 

#16 An Inner Passage

Listen here on Spotify | [Are you listening on Youtube music? If so let me know]

1. Alaska - Teen Daze

2. Kyle (i found you) - Fred again…

3. Superficial Conversation - Madeline Kenney

4. Richmond Avenue - Ben Howard

5. Electric Feel - MGMT

6. Wait - Cindy Wilson

7. But We Love Each Other Still - Ski Lift

8. Big Star - Mipso

9. Portrait Of A Clear Day - Julie Byrne

10. Magnetized - Laura Viers

11. Winter Song - The Head And The Heart

12. Give A Little Bit - Supertramp

13. Haunted Mountain - Buck Meek

14. You Are The Woman - Firefall

15. Still The One - Orleans

16. Living Inside - Cut Worms

17. Dream Dating - Superviolet

18. Dance Yer Sadness - Young Moon

19. Field Of Vision - Matthew Halsall

20. Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space - Spiritualized

21. Free Translator - The Books

22. The Big Rock Candy Mountain - Harry McClintock

23. Foggy Morning Breaking - Alison Brown & Steve Martin

24. Mountain Dove Song - Annie Bartholomew

25. Feed Your Horses - Gregory Alan Isakov

26. All Your Favorite Bands - Dawes.

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Hello from Steuben Wisconsin. I write this from the side patio of ACRE Artist Residency, cleansed (but actually probably haunted thanks to mysterious fire alarm malfunctions) by last night’s super moon basking in nature. Thanks to the dream summer I’m living, a week ago I was at another residency in Petaluma, CA (In Cahoots Residency) where we formed a printmaking coven for the Solstice.

This playlist was born on the longest day of the year as a sporadic group text and turned into something I really enjoy, and possibly is a nice alternative to your typical July bbq playlist. Enjoy it during long days touching grass and bright nights creating mischief.

This playlist is a collaborative effort with Emily Tareila, Ginny Van Dine, Faith Sponsler, Sara J Winston, & Breslin Bell. For music video fans, this playlist includes some truly amazing videos. It also breaks my rule of one artist per playlist, but Stevie Nicks deserves the exception given the context (even tho she is still my least favorite member of Fleetwood Mac)

#15 Sacrificed Boyfriends

Listen here on Spotify | Listen/watch here on youtube music

1. Spud Infinity - Big Thief

2. Heart of the Country - Paul McCartney

3. One of These Days - Bedouine

4. Cherry Jerry Citrus - Hey Cowboy!

5. Habits - Barries

6. Witches - Alice Phoebe Lou

7. Wild Honey - The Beach Boys

8. Ladyfingers - Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass

9. Always Something There to Remind Me - Alejandro Bravo

10. Sunshine - Asake

11. Shimendoka - Haroumi Hosono

12. Black Memories - The Growlers

13. Sun Was High (So Was I) - Small Black

14. Everybody Loves The Sunshine - Roy Ayers Ubiquity

15. Ideas of Space - Tess Roby

16. The Tower - Pure Bathing Culture

17. All Your Yeahs - Beach House

18. Kiko And The Lavender Moon - Los Lobos

19. I Put A Spell On You - Annie Lennox

20. My Body’s A Zombie For You - Dead Man’s Bones

21. Rhiannon - Fleetwood Mac

22. Crucify - Tori Amos

23. Dancing Barefoot - Patti Smith

24. I Can See Your Tracks - Laura Veirs

25. Gypsy - Fleetwood Mac

26. Pass - Squirrel Flower

27. Look At What The Light Did Now - Little Wings

28. Walking - Flock Of Dimes

29. Lost Somewhere - Bibio

30. Into The Mystic - Van Morrison

31. Crystal - Stevie Nicks

32. Road - Nick Drake

33. The Ghost on The Shore - Lord Huron

34. Days Like This Keep Me Warm - The Polyphonic Spree

35. Ebudae - Enya

36. Rooftop Dancing - Sylvan Esso

37. Supermoon - Case/Lang/Veirs

38. Western Wind - Carly Rae Jepsen

39. Astrology Poisoning - Avalon Emerson

40. Sun - Emma-Jean Thackery

41. Spellwork - Austra

42. Gypsy Woman - Crystal Waters

43. Little Man - Little Dragon

44. Be Sweet - Japanese Breakfast

45. Why Why Why Why Why - Sault

46. Earth Worship - Rubblebucket

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Hello friends/readers/listeners,

This “monthly” project has definitely turned into a “as it happens” project, but this time it’s at least somewhat back on its original intent of being a project related to conversations with artists about music. The following playlist sprouted from emails with New York based artist Sarah Moody.

Sarah is a print and book artist who holds one of the greatest niche pun social media handles out there (@noreglets), and makes incredibly beautiful and smart work. Sarah also shares the experience with me of having a past life in the music industry around the same time period, but within an entirely different wing of independent music. I could have drawn some really interesting lines about how these mutual past lives reflect how we make work today and how our current practices resemble a similarly shaped venn diagram in our shared book worlds. Instead tho, listening to the music we emailed back and forth about, I succumbed to the feelings of nostalgia and sentimentality that music so often produces and so many of the songs I was putting together were love songs or break up songs.

What follows is a playlist that is really heavy on 90’s vibes that reflect the rollercoaster of emotions one feels as a college aged young adult. It ran a path extremely far from anything about Sarah, but it couldn’t have been made without her in a way anything gets made and is a product of conversing with others I guess.

#13 No Regrets

Listen here on Spotify or here on Youtube Music

1. The Cranberries - Dreams

2. Amber Arcades - Odd to Even

3. Lower Dens - Ondine

4. Big Thief - Mythological Beauty

5. Dear and the Headlights - Happy In Love

6. Selena - Dreaming Of You

7. Annie Lennox - Why

8. Lowly - Keep Up The Good Work

9. The Smashing Pumpkins - 1979

10. Death Cab For Cutie - All Is Full Of Love

11. Aphex Twin - Windowlicker

12. Hum - Why I Like The Robins

13. Slowdive - Sugar For The Pill

14. Pink Floyd - On The Turning Away

15. Modest Mouse - Paper Thin Walls

16. Hunx & His Punx - Lovers Lane

17. Green Day - Redundant

18. Elliot Smith - Somebody That I Used To Know

19. The Microphones - The Moon

20. Songs: Ohio - Just Be Simple

21. Fleetwood Mac - Songbird

22. Gregory and the Hawk - Boats & Birds

23. Fiona Apple - Oh Well

Thanks for reading & listening & sharing. If you want to support this sporadic project and receive not so sporadic physical mail, head on over to my Patreon.

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2022 is the year life got back to “normal”. Society seemed to get back to full speed, but to me it felt like double speed. Sitting here on the second to last day of the year, reflecting on the 22 states and 6 countries I moved through, the 12 books I released, the 15 shows I was in, and the 2 residencies I attended, I’m not sure this year reflected anything close to sustainable. And even still I have to admit I regularly wonder if I’m doing enough or any of it matters. Of course, I put normal in quotes because while I’ve returned to in person teaching and can plan parties without too much anxiety about indoor spaces, the first time I left home this year was for a wedding that had already been rescheduled twice and was happening when things seem still iffy because of familial urgency, and my final travels of the year turned into an unexpected 3 week cross country journey including 7 airports and an 11 hour drive home from Phoenix thanks to The Great Southwest Meltdown of 2022. 

This year in music felt similar. The music industry is crashing down to earth and being a working musician is becoming as precarious as being a visual artist, yet the ease of home recording possibilities and the democratization of distribution means more music is being released than ever before. After a few years of new music being ground zero for urgent and earnest reflections on living through a global pandemic, artists I’m sure were sitting on nearly completed records until they knew they could confidently tour and promote their new records seemed to release them all at once. Narrowing down to even 35 records I want to share and remember from this year was incredibly difficult, as there are at least 100 records from this year I actively listened to and enjoyed. 

With this much music having been released this year, my list is far from definitive and exhaustive. I was gone almost as much as I was home this year and when I was home I was almost always working in the studio. I saw a lot of beautiful things this year but also experienced a sizable amount of loss. These are the records that stuck with me the most this year, many largely due to coincidence. There are alot of great records that came out that I just didn’t give the time or they didn’t stick because I wasn’t in the head space for them. If you have some favorite records from this year I didn’t include, I’d love to hear about them. 

This year I once again drifted towards female fronted indie and folk, with heavy doses of post punk, nuevo country, and electronic house music. The top 20 are ordered, with the final 15 some sort of ambiguous honorable mention of records I enjoyed but in such specific contexts it was hard to quantify. In lieu of an essay this time around, I’ve opted to write about each record to provide additional context. 

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#12 2022 Year In Review 

Listen here on Spotify

1. Florist - Sci-fi Silence / Florist

2. Alvvays - Velveteen / Blue Rev

3. Carly Rae Jepsen - Surrender My Heart / The Loneliest Time

4. TV Priest - It Was A Gift / My Other People

5. The 1975 - Looking For Somebody / Being Funny In A Foreign Language

6. Orville Peck - Lafayette / Bronco

7. Harry Styles - Daydreaming - Harry’s House

8. Yumi Zouma - In The Eyes Of Our Love / Present Tense

9. Tomberlin - born again runner / i don’t know who needs to hear this. 

10. Fontaines D.C. - How Cold Love Is / Skinty Fia

11. Carly Cosgrove - The Cooliest? Don’t Ruin It / See You In Chemistry

12. Caroline Spence - Clean Getaway / True North

13. The Beths - Best Left / Expert In A Dying Field

14. Sylvan Esso - How Did You Know / No Rules Sandy

15. Tess Roby - Eyes Like Babylon / Ideas Of Space

16. Hot Chip - Not Alone / Freakout/Release

17. Widowspeak - Everything Is Simple / The Jacket

18. Donovan Woods - No Time Soon / Big Hurt Boy

19. Mitski - The Only Heartbreaker / Laurel Hell

20. Frontperson - Fastest / Parade

21. Living Hour - Middle Name / Someday is Today

22. Trentmoller - No More Kissing In The Rain / Memoria

23. Wild Pink - Hold My Hand / ILYSM

24. Los Bitchos - Pista / Let The Festivities Begin

25. Lil Silva - Backwards / Yesterday is Heavy

26. Danger Mouse & Black Thought - Cheat Codes / Cheat Codes

27. The Comet Is Coming - PYRAMIDS / Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam

28. George Fitzgerald - Passed Tense / Stellar Drifting

29. Kaitlin Butts - she’s using / What Else Can She Do

30. Pinegrove - Habitat / 11:11

31. Young Jesus - Ocean / Shepherd Head

32. Pale Sketcher - Rollercoaster / Golden Skin

33. Rubblebucket - Cherry Blossom / Earth Worship

34. Phoenix - Season 2 / Alpha Zula

35. Bibio - Lost Somewhere - BIB10

1. Florist / Florist

 It’s difficult to put into words how special this record is. I have always enjoyed Emily Sprague’s sparse, folky Florist albums in the past, but mostly in passing. This record was released the day I arrived at ACRE, a residency on a farm in rural Wisconsin, and these 19 tracks of atmospheric interludes and gentle field recordings will forever be my time machine to Stueben Wisconsin. I would put this record on and just listen on repeat for the entire day. It’s a truly perfect record. 

2. Alvvays / Blue Rev

Blue Rev is probably the best record released this year. It’s steeped in fuzzy 80’s jangle pop ala The Smiths and The Cocteau Twins, but in my belief these 14 tracks mostly ranging between 2.5 to 3 minutes in length is a punk record at its core, while sounding nothing like a punk record. It’s a record that makes me want to start making music again.

3. Carly Rae Jepsen / The Loneliest Time

If you know me in real life, you know my deep allegiance for Carly Rae Jepsen. While I think Call Me Maybe is still a perfect pop song, I’ve come to resent it’s cultural ubiquitousness because of how it has pigeon holed her music to the casual observer. Emotion is arguably the best pop record of the last 10 years and she is so confident in what she makes. However, I was incredibly nervous about this record. The singles were bland out of context and the art direction for it’s promotion was concerning (which is saying something, because Carle Rae is so painfully Canadian and sweet and normal but wants to be sexy and fashionable and is just lacking in anything resembling aesthetic taste, a trait I genuinely love about her). Then The Loneliest Time was released (the same day as Taylor Swift’s newest album), and I got it. This record isn’t the pop banger I expected it to be. It’s an introspective record by a pop artist who’s main venues were spaces we couldn’t inhabit for two years, while living in a city it appears she hates. This is her best record as a complete package, even if it’s not as jam packed with bangers. 

4. TV Priest / My Other People

My Other People is hands down my favorite Rock and Roll record of the year. It feels like if The National made post punk music, but were UK expats living in Seattle in the early 2000s. If those references make an ounce of sense to you, you will also love this record. 

5. The 1975 / Being Funny In A Foreign Language

I have loved The 1975 and their brand of 80’s inspired indie pop rock since they began making music and only feel shame about it when I listen too close to the lyrics. That said, even the most casual listener could probably deduce this band is fronted by folks with self destructive tendencies and substance abuse issues who has zero interest in being told what to do. 20 song albums that meander through nearly unlistenable territory highlighted by moments of absolute pure genius are have been the norm for The 1975. However, on Being Funny In A Foreign Language, the lads deliver 11 songs across 43 minutes that never even tempt you to skip a track. This is another record the time to slow down, get clean, and be more intentional really paid off. This is easily The 1975’s best album, 5 albums in. 

6. Orville Peck / Bronco

I put this record on for the first time as I was landing in Dallas, and proceeded to listen to it almost exclusively for the week we were in Texas for the first of two trips this year that lead to unexpected familial health emergencies. Orville Peck’s dramatic nuevo western crooning seemed like the perfect enhancing (or maybe escapist) companion. Once back home and listening more seriously, I understood more of the beauty of this record in it’s counter culture effort to create a collection of earnest western gay love songs. It’s a record that is simultaneously a ton of fun and constantly heartbreaking. 

7. Harry Styles / Harry’s House

I knew nothing about Harry Styles before Harry’s House besides the fact he was in an English Boy Band and had a penchant for taking out smaller indie artists as openers for his arena tours. I didn’t really give this record a chance until a lot of convincing from members of the Tipping Pitches Slack channel (a baseball podcast about labor economics?) that Harry does infact turn out some jams. You likely exist in the world and have heard these songs, and if you have not listened to this complete record of indie, 80s, soul, pop jams, take the time to do so. Hot Tip: If you collect vinyl, the Target Exclusive is the best pressing of this album in the US, which I still don’t fully understand myself. 

8. Yumi Zouma/ Present Tense

Yumi Zouma has become one of my favorite most consistent bands of the last 5 year. This New Zealand quartet creates breezy albums featuring songs made for a contemporary John Hughes film. 

9. Tomberlin / i don’t know who needs to hear this. 

As mentioned in the intro, I spent a lot of time traveling, having clocked more flights this year than in probably 5 years. I’ve become a nervous flyer, and have a collection of records I retreat to to relax and escape. IDKWNTHT has become my go to flying record, a collection of beautiful minimal indie folk songs dealing with faith and love and life. 

10. Fontaines D.C. / Skinty Fia

I didn’t get Fontaines DC when they first arrived to critical acclaim. I admit I only listened to Skinty Fia as an obligatory “maybe I’ll get it this time”, and dear reader, I now get it. It may admittedly be because they have completely chilled out and their brand of post punk seems exponentially sadder than before. A friend described this record as “a more boring radiohead” which I completely resent, but find humorous. 

11. Carly Cosgrove / See You In Chemistry

The deluge of Emo revival waves usually wash right past me, sounding mostly like the bands that came around right as I stopped touring and I felt resembled pop punk more than what I had considered emo. But occasionally a band like Carly Cosgrove catches my ear and restores my faith in the next generation that they’ve found many of the same inspirations I had at that age, and figured out how to make their own version thats even better than what existed before. This record covers it all from angular to punk to shoegaze indie. 

12. Caroline Spence / True North

True North is one of the first records I truly loved of this year. It’s 90’s americana (this Sheryl Crow) indie folk was the soundtrack to the first trip of the spring up to Mt Shasta with a collection of friends and has maintained repeated listening as a companion for exploration. 

13. The Beths / Expert In A Dying Field

The Beths are another band from New Zealand just churning out incredibly consistently strong and enjoyable records. Expert In A Dying Field takes their power pop songwriting into a more mature and experimental direction with more songs that stretch out into the atmosphere and push forward introspective lyrics that seem to resonate with the same emotional plane I find myself in these days. 

14. Sylvan Esso / No Rules Sandy

This record was basically shadow dropped after the band loved the record so much they just decided they wanted to get it out there and do the PR for it later. It’s their most experimental record to date, with a lot of the beats existing in a space similar to glitchy jungle, but with an undeniably beautiful through line. Far from their easiest listening record, I think the effort pays off with some of their best songs to date. 

15. Tess Roby / Ideas Of Space

Ideas Of Space is another of those go to flying records for me, especially around hour 2 of the flight when my edibles have really kicked in. This record is expansively spacious while general only involving Tess’ voice, a keyboard or two, and some extremely light percussion. It sounds like what I imagine the best hypnotic guided meditation must feel like. 

16. Hot Chip / Freakout/Release

I’ve been a fan of Hot Chip’s awkward electronic indie dance music since being ultimately flummoxed the first time I saw the video for Over & Over in an Old Navy somewhere on tour in 2006, but admit their new music fell off my radar a few years back. Freakout/Release is another of the records that benefited from the slower process Covid allowed, being the first record they wrote fully as a band over an extended period of time, and it allowed for what i believe is a complexity and depth to their songwriting that makes this record feel more like a work by a band, not a project, which is incredibly satisfying.

17. Widowspeak / The Jacket

The Jacket is one of a few records that came out in March while I found myself drifting through the midwest after my grandfather’s death. It’s somber tone and guitar jangle that sounds like its coming from the corner of a dark dive bar was a perfect companion for driving through agricultural regions in late winter. 

18. Donovan Woods / Big Hurt Boy

Big Hurt Boy is the second record that came out during the aforementioned period after my grandfather’s death. It’s only 6 songs, but Donovan Woods has a gift for creating alt country / pop folk songs  that feels instantly familiar and relatable that you can listen to on repeat, stretching out an economic 18 minutes. 

19. Mitski / Laurel Hell

It may have had something to do with this record releasing around the same time as the Winter Olympics, but this record was made for Ice Skating. Mitski’s brand of sleek dramatics is begging to be accompaniment to choreography, and the smooth upbeat 80’s new wave inspired tracks on Laurel Hell would fit Johnny Weir or Alysa Liu like a costume pear of leg warmers. 

20. Frontperson / Parade

Frontperson includes the keyboardist from the New Pornographers and sounds like if the New Pornographers wrote slightly more straightforward songs with a little less ego, because only two people are involved instead of a super group of contributors. Parade is easily my most “why isn’t everyone listening to the record?” record of the year. 

21. Living Hour / Someday is Today

This record is great entirely in spite of itself. What begins as an admittedly impressive attempt to be a Beach House tribute band opens up into a really interesting low key indie rock album of beautiful hooks, but weighed down by lyrical content made up of mostly stream of consciousness the band is apparently young enough to think is groundbreaking. I love this record but also find myself really wondering if it’s a “good” record, but if I’m enjoying it I guess that doesn’t really matter.  

22. Trentmoller / Memoria

Trentmoller sounds like the soundtrack to my most scorpio fueled fantasies of urban European winter nights. Think early/mid M83 expansive darkwave. 

23. Wild Pink / ILYSM

Wild Pink’s A Billion Little Lights was my favorite record of 2021, by a mile. Shortly after releasing that record, songwriter John Ross was diagnosed with cancer. ILYSM is a record about fighting and ultimately recovering from that diagnosis, full of songs about fear, relief, and reprioritizing whats important in life. The opener of his last record was about someone plotting to jump off the golden gate bridge, and this record is still a heavier and more somber journey. 

24. Los Bitchos / Let The Festivities Begin

Los Bitchos is four women living in London making instrumental music that sounds like surf rock and cumbia fell in love in the middle east and everyone is invited to the party. This record is the most surefire crowd pleaser of the year. 

25. Lil Silva / Yesterday is Heavy

I have a dream of living in the UK for 6 months just so I can understand better what is going on in the underground electronic R&B scene. Lil Silva is another artist amongst a cohort of incredible musicians who don’t release records often enough like Sampha, serpentwithfeet, and a parade of guest artists who appear on this record. 

26. Danger Mouse & Black Thought / Cheat Codes

Danger Mouse making densely sampled hip hop beats to accompany The Roots’ Black Thought’s lyrical skills. No Brainer. 

27. The Comet Is Coming / Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam

The Comet Is Coming is a keyboardist and a drummer making mathy electronic rock ala early Battles, accompanied by a guy just going WILD on the sax. This record is weird and wonderful and will definitely freak out the squares. All three musicians are apparently extremely well respected English Jazz Musicians in their own right, but I admit that is not my forte. 

28. George Fitzgerald / Stellar Drifting

Stellar Drifting is an aptly names ambient electronic record with just enough beat and character going on to keep you feeling good without compelling you to give up what you’re working on to hit the dancefloor. 

29. Kaitlin Butts / What Else Can She Do

Country has reached a point I can’t tell what’s Pop Country, what’s Indie Country, what’s Folk Rock made by someone who grew up listening to George Strait and Garth Brooks, and where Zach Bryan fits in to any of this. What I do know is Kaitlin Butts is very good, and if you remotely like any of that Country gray area, you will like her too.  

30. Pinegrove / 11:11

If this record came out earlier in the year it would probably be higher on this list, as it was a constant listen the first few months of the year, but across the full 12 months of 2022, alot of the things I loved about this record, like the airy arrangements and field recordings of many songs, records like Florist did better for me. It’s still a great Pinegrove record and is more of Pinegrove’s signature indie folk punk emo thing.

31. Young Jesus / Shepherd Head

In my teenage years, Saddle Creek was the record for the most mature and interesting indie and emo bands, bands like Bright Eyes and Rilo Kiley and Cursive. Young Jesus is a perfect example of the niche Saddle Creek has found themselves in now, which still fits the mature indie/emo band but with contemporary production embracing slight electronics and general psyche weirdness. 

32. Pale Sketcher / Golden Skin

I found myself listening to alot of house, jungle, and other electronic music that reminded me of 90’s techno this year. Pale Sketcher happened to be one of those records I listened to the most. 

33. Rubblebucket / Earth Worship

Rubblebucket is the most masochistic band out there and I’m just so glad they exist. They are/were a married couple who’s last record, 2018’s absolutely incredible Sun Machine, was all about processing their choice to have an open relationship and it ultimately torpedoing their relationship, like Fleetwood Mac writing multiple records in which Stevie Nicks sang songs Lindsey Buckingham wrote about cheating on her with Christine McVie. Fast forward to 2022, and they release Earth Worship, a dancy art rock record full of brass and wind instruments all about protecting the environment. It’s still largely about sex, just like, bug sex? 

34. Phoenix / Alpha Zula

Phoenix is a band I have loved for over 2 decades. For their 20+ years, they have never released the same record twice, resulting in the casual listener not realizing they’re the band behind both many beautiful scenes in Sofia Coppola films and the 2009 hit single Lisztomania. Their newest record, Alpha Zula, is admittedly not their best record, but even a middling Phoenix record is better than the vast majority of records released every year. 

35. Bibio / BIB10

Similar to Phoenix, Bibio is one of my absolute favorite artists. His brand of yacht rock guitar solo driven folk-tronic just gets me, and similarly expands to never really sound like the same record twice. This, his 10th record, feels like his funkiest yet.

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I write to you from Bethlehem, a small town in the White Mountains of Northern New Hampshire. While there have been flurries this fall and early winter, apparently the first snow to stick was the 2.5” we received last night while we ate peppermint pretzel ice cream on an outdoor patio. I’m here as one of the first residents at the new and expanded Artist Residency at Directangle Press run by my friend Josh Dannin with my friend Hannah P Mode. I recognize it has been several months since I’ve sent out my last playlist. This week at Josh’s studio was what I looked forward to through what was one of the most hectic, successful, but also difficult Falls of my life. One of the many things I let pass by was this project — so much for it being monthly. You’ll get to hear more about this in the next week or so when I finish up my 2022 Year In Review playlist. 

However, like a Christmas miracle, inspiration struck on a commuter train after a red eye to Boston, along with the help of some crowdsourcing, to compile this playlist ahead of you. What follows is a fairly left of center Christmas playlist comprised mostly of originals and unique arrangements of Christmas classics, admittedly from an indie/folk/alternative point of view. It has a few moments that the party arrives, but is generally low key and admittedly somber in nature. It will work in your headphones walking along water on your own, or in the background of a family friendly gathering. The playlist is absent of almost any mention of Santa Clause, as well as the broad cannon of parody, whimsical, rock, punk, and hip hop renditions and the much less expansive Hanukkah songs (shout out to Puppy For Hanukkah), which all have their place,  just not on my playlist for my feelings around Christmas this season.

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List here on Spotify | Here on Youtube Music

1. Matt Pond Pa - Holiday Road

2. Frank Sinatra - The Christmas Waltz

3. Khruangbin - Christmas Time Is Here

4. The Band - Christmas Must Be Tonight

5. The Smashing Pumpkins - Christmastime

6. Andrew Gold - The Bells of St Victor

7. Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers - A Christmas To Remember

8. John Denver & The Muppets - Christmas is Coming

9. Lord Kitchener - Christmas Greetings

10. Los Bitchos - Los Chrismos

11. Wham! - Last Christmas

12. Low - Just Like Christmas

13. Sufjan Stevens - Once In Royal David’s City

14. Carla Thomas - Gee Whiz It’s Christmas

15. Hey Rosetta! - Carry Me Home

16. Esso Trinidad Steel Band - Winter Wonderland

17. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Christmas All Over Again

18. The 1975 - Wintering

19. Otis Redding - Merry Christmas Baby

20. Michael Buble & Shania Twain - White Christmas

21. Bing Crosby, Peggy Lee, Danny Kane - Snow

22. Sufjan Stevens - Christmas In The Room

23. Dave Matthews - Christmas Song

24. Praytell - Something Bright, Something Shiny

25. Joni Mitchel - River

26. Sleeping At Last - O Come, O Come Emmanuel

27. Tracy Chapman - O Holy Night

28. David Bazan - Away In a Manger

29. James Taylor - Go Tell It On The Mountain

30. John Denver & The Muppets - A Baby Just Like You

31. The Pogues & Kristy MacColl - Fairytale of New York

32. Ghost Of Christmas Present - It Feels Like Christmas

33. Kishi Bashi - It’s Christmas, But Its Not White Here In Our Town

34. Marika Hackman - Driving Under Stars

35. The Waitresses - Christmas Wrapping

36. Los Straightjackets - Feliz Navidad

37. Paul McCartney - Wonderful Christmastime

38. Tom Waits - New Year’s Eve

I love Christmas and I love Christmas music. Or rather, I love a lot of Christmas music. I, however, also HATE so much Christmas music, namely any of the ultra sweet pop music mostly about gifts and santa and written almost entirely for placement in advertisements. (it strikes me as fitting how much this mirrors my personal feelings about being a Christian and how I want to shake a significant amount of American Christians for not dissimilar reasons) What I appreciate most about Christmas music is its complexity. There are a number of Christmas songs I enjoy purely for nostalgia reasons, sure, but Christmas seems to be a season in which we are able to uniquely express and explore the range of complicated emotions we have around the Christmas season. 

The holiday season, at least in the western world, is steeped in the traditions of family and religion. For six weeks we are compelled to spread cheer, spend time with loved ones, be generous in our actions and offerings, and rekindle our relationships to faith (or, atleast make an appearance). For many of us, some or all of this can be difficult and painful, exhausting and entirely performative. It’s truly my favorite time of year, however I admit it's grown harder through the years, as I think much of life does. It’s grown lonelier as friends with kids have new traditions and demands of their time. It serves as an annual reminder of the loved ones who are no longer with us and those who it's difficult to be around. A ubiquitous holiday rooted in the theological foundation of Christianity while also fueling the largest commercial period of the fiscal year causes those of us in the faith to wrestle with how intertwined our faith has become to capitalism in the West, stirs up feelings of abuse and abandonment by many who have left the faith, while isolating the significant population who practice others faiths or none at all.

While much of the Christmas canon includes the syrupy snow cones of “Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Santa Baby”, the oldest Christmas hymns are sung slow in minor chords, like “O Come O Come Emmanuel”. Amongst the Rudolphs of the world, some of the greatest mid-century contributions to the holiday standards come from White Christmas, featuring the titular song about pining for earlier times via written correspondence, suggesting the author would be spending the holidays alone. Newer Christmas staples like Wham’s “Last Christmas” and Joni Mitchell’s “River” depict failed love and how lonely the season can feel. Many of the most contemporary original Christmas songs reflect our increasingly dispersed society with songs like Hey Rosetta’s “Carry Me Home”, the 1975’s “Wintering”, and Marika Hackman’s “Driving Under Stars” all tell the tales of attempting to get home to loved ones. Praytell’s “Something Bright, Something Shiny” and Sufjan Stevens’ “Christmas In The Room” relay a feeling of insignificance and a desire for something more. 

Of course it’s not all blue. While I believe Christmas music gives us permission to be sad around the season, it has the capacity to inspire hope & joy. I appreciate songs like The Band’s “Christmas Must Be Tonight” and Dave Matthews’ “Christmas Song” which clearly address the birth of Jesus and origin of Christmas very matter of factly. John Denver’s “A Baby Just Like You” is a song written for his newborn son, the same Zachary of which my name happens to be inspired by (my mom was a big John Denver fan). Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers’ “A Christmas To Remember”, The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York”, and The Waitresses’ “Christmas Wrapping” all tell stories of finding holiday love when they least expect it; as Los Bitchos say “It’s Christmas time! Sexy Time!”. 

Happy Holidays wherever you are and whoever you are with. 

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This summer was a blur, evident by the fact this is only the second of my “monthly” newsletters I’m sending out since April. I understand why so many people take the summer off of these kinds of projects. The last week of July I drove across the Northern Midwest en route to the Driftless region of Wisconsin, stopping at typically out of the way National Monuments and Parks, picking up a 100 year old paper cutter in Minneapolis along the way. I made the 33 hour drive to South Western Wisconsin to be a resident at ACRE, an artist residency dedicated to community building and experimentation, set in a rural landscape far from the environment most participants live their daily lives in. At the end of two hot, hard, humid, bug filled, and absolutely wonderful and well fed weeks on the farm, I began the long drive back to California, this time making pit stops to see family and friends in Kansas City and across Colorado. 

The playlist that follows is a reflection on this window of time. It’s full of winks and nods, as any mix cd for your summer crush should. It is mostly a party playlist in my opinion, accompanied by a solid showing of 80s and 90s rock ballads. For that reason, I highly recommend the youtube music playlist because there are some truly incredible music videos in this mix, including possibly the greatest music video ever made. 

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#10 Club Sentimentality

Listen here on Spotify | Listen or watch here on Youtube Music

1. Friendship - St. Bonaventure

2. Florist - Sci-Fi Scilence

3. Harry Styles - Little Freak

4. James - Laid

5. New Order - Ceremony

6. The Rentals - My Summer Girl

7. The Moody Blues - Your Wildest Dreams

8. La Bellini - Satan In Love

9. Steve Monite - Only You

10. Animal Collective - Brother Sport

11. Broken Social Scene - Windsurfing Nation

12. Shania Twain - Man! I Feel Like A Woman

13. Sylvan Esso - Look At Me

14. Four Tet - No More Mosquitos

15. PARTYNEXTDOOR - Not Nice

16. Lil Silva - Vera

17. Problem Child - Nasty Up

18. Mitski - The Only Heartbreaker

19. Carly Rae Jepsen - Cut To The Feeling

20. Cher - Believe

21. Robyn - Dancing On My Own

22. Heart - These Dreams

23. The Cars - Drive

24. Billy Idol - Eyes Without A Face

25. Abba - Knowing Me Knowing You

26. Newsies - King Of New York

27. Metallica - The Four Horseman

28. Kiwi Jr. - The Extra Sees The Film

29. The Doobie Brothers - What A Fool Believes

30. Mariel Buckley - Let You Down

31. Florist - Feathers

32. Celine Dion - It’s All Coming Back To Me Now

For those unfamiliar with artist residencies, I would describe them in three ways: 

1. The rather prestigious institutional “Artist in Residence”, in which an artist is provided a studio, resources, and often housing by a museum or other cultural institution for 6 months to several years. 

2. The “work” residency, which usually is one week to one month where a single artist or small group of artists comes to a studio space with the main intention of taking a workshop or working on a project they likely submitted as a proposal to explain how they will use the resources on site.

3. The “art camp” residency, where larger groups of artists come together for one week to several months mostly with the intention of creating space and relationships with little pressure to make anything tangible. 

ACRE (Arists’ Cooperative Residency & Exhibitions), falls squarely within “Art Camp'' territory, which is precisely why I have wanted to attend for quite some time, especially after the last two years of relative isolation and art friends leaving the bay. Additionally, the founders of ACRE had connections to the program where I completed my BFA in Chicago, and thus it has been part of my artistic zeitgeist for as long as I have seriously considered myself an artist. 

I, however, did not grow up going to summer camp. There was the occasional weekend mountain cabin trip with friends and terrible tent camping at music festivals, but nothing resembling the coming of age activity of finding yourself far from home with a group of strangers. I had nothing but the fictional realm of countless 90’s classics to vicariously live through. 

The closest I have come to summer camp was the period in my early 20’s in which I was part of a band that took me on the road across the Northern Hemisphere. For two weeks to three months at a time, I would find myself one of 30 to 300 people living out of vans and busses, spending every single night together until we went our separate ways on the last day of tour, usually exhausted and ready to get home, focused on what was next. When I stopped touring, I gave all of my instruments away and mostly left the music industry and the bulk of the relationships I made in it behind. I would not trade anything for this time in my life, but it’s a time I don’t talk about often, the way some people will never speak of a long term ex. Part of this is because of the complicated nature of explaining my role in the band and why I eventually left, while another is the fact that, especially out in the Bay Area, almost no one I know cares about the band or scene I was a part of, making it just an ambiguous past life. Mostly though, I think I don’t talk about it often because doing so makes me think about how I wasn’t very good at my job a lot of the time and was even worse at maintaining almost any of the relationships I made along the way, In part due to age, but largely as a reflection of my own perception of acceptance and belonging. 

I bring it up here because at ACRE the venn diagram of “artists” and “people familiar with Fear Before The March Of Flames” overlapped more than any other setting previously, which seemed rather amusingly coincidental because of how much it was on my mind leading up to my arrival. After the last two years of COVID, the constant movement of this summer felt  familiar to those years I was never really at home. As I drove through cities and states I had last been in nearly 20 years earlier, listening to records we played in the van back then, I was reminded of those sacrifices one makes to follow creative and untraditional lives; the friends you won’t be able to hug at the opening you won’t be at, the presence of grief for a funeral you had to miss. 

I arrived at the lodge in the woods already tired, having spent most of the previous week alone, dulling the social skills necessary for finding myself amongst 40+ strangers. On the other end of the gravel road, I had no real plans for making and realized there were no facilities where I could make my work naturally, a problem for someone with an unhealthy relationship to productivity that finds confidence in projecting the proficiency of their craft. I reverted to entirely id tendencies, regularly hearing what was coming out of my mouth before I had even consciously considered what I was saying. I had to fight the urge to be alone, listening to the new Florist record on repeat. 

I eventually found solace at night staying up too late listening to Metallica with Dylan and Kelly in the kitchen. Artist talks reminded me that we were a collection of incredibly talented and deep individuals, not just a gathering of random beings, when Stephen reminded us we don’t need to know what we are talking about all the time. Jamie stirred up memories of a club in Houston that used to be a dentist office. Then I danced with Katie to Robyn and Carly Rae Jepsen, the same songs I danced with my friend to in our studios in grad school, and then saw the Harry Styles tattoo on her ass. I found my grounding talking with Sarah for 4 straight hours about extreme nuance as we drove to Madison and ate bagels at the same shop I ate at every day just a few months earlier after my Grandfather’s funeral. Madeline’s pure excitement towards karaoke melted my bah humbug attitude and convinced Alea to sing an Abba duet with me, a rendition of Man, I Feel Like A Woman was performed so well that it should be retired from all karaoke offerings, and Be stole the evening, closing it out with It’s All Coming Back To Me Now. Phoebe asked Jacob and I about what we long for while Layla played Animal Collective in the distance. We sat around a campfire, recording voices for Lyntoria and yelling TE EXTRAÑO with Christina. Showtunes were sung to the moon, potentially spurred by my evangelizing of Newsies, or maybe it was Cats. On our final night, Zach suggested we all write each other notes while CVS Bangers played in the background. We made some art somewhere in the middle there too. As usual, I wasn’t as conscious in the moment of how lucky I was to be there with these people as I am now. 

I have grown to appreciate the tension of leaving one life behind to be present in another more than I did as a young adult, mostly by becoming more sentimental. I’ve learned the potential of meaningful connection if you leave yourself open to the opportunity of it. I do this things where if I meet someone and we have any semblance of a connection, they almost instantly achieve best friend status. The number of people I text in a given day is honestly unsustainable, and I’m prone to sudden outpourings of appreciation I guarded myself from previously. I spent long enough being the person who left to now hopefully also know how to be the person who remains. I’ve had people crash into my life like a meteor, staying for just a bright hot moment, and been fortunate to have many friends who have stayed on the back burner for a long slow simmer. 

The morning I left the farm where I made these and many more new summer friends was anticlimactic. Early flights and thunderstorms caused most of us to substitute group chats for proper goodbyes. My mind quickly shifted to the classes I had unexpectedly been hired for that I would begin as soon as I got back home. Maybe nothing has changed, but I try to find time for reflection now. I make these playlists and write these stories. I try to harness gratitude for the time I’ve shared and remain hopeful for when it all can happen again. I think that's really the best we can do these days. 

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I skipped last month because I was on a lengthy trip through Norway & Denmark while May turned into June. The essay that follows will be part of a book I’m working on involving photos from that trip, also featured in this post. It’s about my relationship to photography in my practice, specifically images taken while traveling. This month’s playlist is a companion piece to all of this. It’s heavy on atmospheric indie rock and electronic music.

Tomberlin and Tess Roby were my calming companions for countless hours in the air across 10 different flights. Songs like those by Renata Zeigur, Frontperson, Hovvdy came out shortly before or while we were in Europe and I spent a lot of time listening to them while moving through. Others are contextual, such as Laura Marling, Hjálmar, and Holly Humberstone playing in bars we hung out in, or Sting’s Field of Gold playing on repeat in the bathroom of a very long and luxurious dinner. While I’m usually stubborn about trends, Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill is just too good and fits the overall mood, captures this moment in time, and there was a literal mountain outside our house in Lofoton that our friends ran up at night. Artists like The Books, Four Tet, and Peals use of found sounds and samples forms a conceptual link to how I’m thinking about image making. I can’t give a good explanation for bands like Seahaven, The Velvet Teen, or Volcano I’m Still Excited besides they round out the mood in an inexplicable way. 

For the next playlist, I’ll be driving to Wisconsin and back for a residency and want to create an American Road Trip playlist, and would love your help. Is there a song that encapsulates road trips for you? Please tell me about it!

I create these playlists and essays as an extension of my art & publishing practice and will always make them free, but if you feel like monetarily supporting with the added benefit of getting weird stuff in the mail every month, I do have a patreon if you are interested.

And now, to the music…

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#9 Tourist Photographs

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1. Renata Zeigur - Evergreen

2. Frontperson - Reach Out

3. William Shatner - Together

4. Hjálmar - Lof

5. Sting - Fields of Gold

6. Tomberlin - sunstruck

7. Tess Roby - Ideas of Space

8. Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill

9. Everything Everything - Pizza Boy

10. The Districts - Velour and Velcro

11. Hovvdy - Town

12. Four Tet - Angel Echoes

13. The Books - Be Good To Them Always

14. Volcano, I’m Still Excited!!! - Mostly On An Island

15. The Velvet Teen - Four Story Tantrum

16. Chorusing - Watching The Beams

17. Anna of the North - Oslo

18. Holly Humberstone - Please Don’t Leave Just Yet

19. Seahaven - Silhouette

20. Daughter - Tomorrow

21. Ben Howard - Finders Keepers

22. Laura Marling - For You

23. Throw Me The Statue - Honeybee

24. Caroline Spence - I Know You Know Me

25. Cristin Milioti - 715 Creeks

26. Big Red Machine - Forest Green

27. Peals - Essential Attitudes

28. Valley of the Giants - Whaling Tale

“You’re taking tourist photographs”.

She said it in a matter-of-fact way that wasn’t exactly authoritative but definitely conveyed a feeling that her words were obvious truth rather than mere personal opinion. I don’t believe it was qualitative; this specific grad school mentor had a way of speaking in declarative statements that were delivered with a tonally implied but rarely spoken conclusionary “right?”. I’m sure this served mostly as a perfunctory statement to get the studio visit moving. It however has obviously stuck with me. 

To say I disagree with the statement isn’t exactly accurate; it's true, I do primarily take the photos I work with while traveling. In undergrad I had a classmate critique photos I had taken in The Netherlands by asking, “These are beautiful photos, but why did you have to travel to Europe to take them? Why can’t you just take photos of Chicago?”. Ironically, I already did have hundreds of photos of Chicago I cherished, they just all had been taken before I lived there. 

Yet, agreeing with the suggestion I was taking snapshots similar to any other American Tourist felt a bridge too far. The photos in question included over 300 photos taken across Germany, Poland, and Uganda the previous summer. Chronologically, they began somewhat identifiable — attempts to capture the imposing scale of the Cologne Cathedral was a particularly significant undertaking — but quickly merged into abstracted images that were much more ethereal (or, blurry). This was largely a product of two factors: 1. I had spent most of three months alone outside of the occasional interaction with new acquaintances, which allowed my eyes and mind to wander with a meditative freedom, and 2. I had unknowingly flipped a setting switch on the bottom of my camera which I did not notice until I had developed the first round of film a month into my trip.

I should pause here to explain how I take the photos I use for art purposes. While I own several high quality film and digital cameras, I shoot almost exclusively using Holga cameras. Holgas are plastic film cameras similar to your standard point-and-shoot disposable cameras, but they are reusable and somehow even lower quality. They are extremely light and can fit in a jacket pocket easily, which is why I began using them while traveling. If you have ever seen or used one, it was likely the medium format model that, while still in production, gave one the ability to shoot 120mm film while investing just $19.99. They have a lens that needs to be focused, but the viewfinder, like your point-and-shoot, is not connected to the lens, so you're left to guess based on a set of minimal illustrations. It has a manual frame advance, causing the user to arbitrarily choose the frame placement, allowing for the possibility of multiple exposures. The most pertinent feature for our current purposes are the two film speed settings: 1. The “Normal” (N) setting which shoots at a standard 1/100th of a second, and 2. The “Bulb” (B) setting, which keeps the shutter open for the duration the user is physically pressing the action knob/button. 

Standard human shake will cause images to be blurry with speeds under 1/60th of a second. Dear reader, I must inform you, I am unable to click the camera option in anywhere near 1/60th of a second. I found this out while excitedly opening the envelopes holding prints from roughly a dozen rolls of film I had processed in the first city I stayed long enough to endure the developing turn around time. I could not tell you if I genuinely preferred these accidental blurrier photos, or if deep shame based adrenaline threw me into a sort of aesthetic Stockholm Syndrome, but I decided to keep this switched flipped for the remainder of my trip.

While not dissimilar from the images I’ve been taking since, the 30+ rolls of film I began to unpack once I returned home were really the first photos I had presented as serious parts of my practice. They would eventually become the focus of my thesis works Gorale and Tea Time, but I’m not sure I even viewed them as photos at the time, rather something more akin to a conceptual archive of sorts. I did NOT see them as “tourist photos”. They barely looked like anything — light shining through moving bushes, an out of focus hillside, a shadow on the ground. If anything, they were esoteric souvenirs, visualizations of a memory. 

I rarely refer to myself as a photographer, which I admit is a slightly cheeky stance since the majority of my work starts as exposures on film. While I’m using the tools of photography to make my images, I’m not terribly concerned with photography, especially not with taking “good” photographs. I feel comfortable saying this because my initial spark and training within the visual arts was analog photography and I tend to believe the communal nature of dark rooms and the necessity to think in a highly detailed manner about technical choices framed out my foundation for printmaking. However, beyond the occasional social media share of scans, I typically only show images in their final risograph or screenprint form, which pulls them more into the conversation of printmaking than one photographers are concerned with. 

This of course is not to say I’m not interested in taking beautiful or otherwise aesthetically pleasing photographs, quite the contrary. I’m currently deeply committed to an aesthetic I have come to accept resembles the widely adored impressionist paintings I grew up seeing on museum walls and souvenir mugs — this too a connotation I wildly rejected at first even though I was simultaneously making woodcuts of hay stacks. You’ve hopefully picked up on a trend by now.

My camera has become my sketchbook. While I always have a notebook in my pocket, I’ll often grab my camera first to capture the atmospheric location of a thought. Weeks to months later, I’ll attempt to decipher the overlapping images on small rolls of plastic, much like revisiting an old cryptic journal or a field recorder you forgot about. I can usually transport myself to the place and time, but often have to surrender to the mystery of what exactly I thought was so interesting at that moment. When I’m lucky, I still find it interesting, if not for entirely new and different reasons. 

Choosing to purchase a box of expired film from an estate sale through Ebay as the only film for three weeks in Norway, a country I hope I return to many more times but in all likelihood may not, was a curious choice. Once film expires, it can lose exposure sensitivity and colors can start to react in unexpected ways. Sometimes this is negligible, blues may shift towards purples while white loses its brilliance. More expired film may cause your photos to become underexposed and dark. If the film is really old and stored improperly, light leaks can begin to creep in, causing bright white and yellow flares to appear in your images. 

The majority of the film I brought to Norway included all of these features. We spent a week in mountainous islands above the Arctic Circle where the sun never set, but my physical documentation of this environment resembles how I imagine the last light of November would illuminate the landscape. Still, the images take me back to white beaches and wildflowers and the smell of dried fish in the air, but those guideposts will become unreliable quickly. 

I was caught off guard by how comfortable I felt in Norway. It is of course one of the wealthiest nations in the world and everyone speaks perfect English while subsisting on a diet of at least 30% hot dogs. Deeper, there was something shared I could only feel but lack the words to describe. I think there is something about both nations being relatively young (within the context of predominantly white western countries) and thus our cultural identities contain malleability. This is of course the findings of a straight white 38 year old Californian male artist who spent three weeks in a foreign country reliant largely on the itinerary suggestions of local friends who share multiple identities and interests. I do not know this country deeply, I only know what I saw and felt while moving through it temporarily with a desire to know it more. Like a blossoming friendship or romance, I absorbed as much as I could and made conclusions that affirmed my feelings. 

I want to think curiosity often benefits from temporary conclusions, like mental cairns that allow you to choose between feeling satisfied enough with your journey to head back out, or continuing down a trail that may reveal itself slowly over time as a loop that leaves you with a wholly different understanding of where you began. Planting a flag forces you to consider if you should defend it or if possibly it should be moved and reconsidered all together. 

When I think of photos one takes on vacation, I jump to cliches; a smiling couple in front of the Eiffel Tower, a faintly lit silhouette viewing a sunset in the caldera of Santorini, a group in lederhosen at Oktoberfest. These are images for showing others, including your future self, that you have been there; you once knew this place. I however am disinterested in taking pictures of landmarks and over time have become increasingly uncomfortable taking photographs of people. Yet, I still feel a need to create a relativity container for the places I have been. I return home only to make hundreds of copies of publications as a proxy for my family vacation slideshow which has been edited down to show the highlights of the trip, or at least some idiosyncratic version. Even when I qualify how annoying it is when people tell you what to do on your vacation, I will tell you to go to Norway and that you must eat and drink at Tempo Tempo when you visit Bergen, because of a coincidental encounter I had that formed friendships. You will say that sounds great, that hopefully you’ll get to go one day, and for a moment, we’ll exist together within mutually exclusive yearnings for a temporary respite from the real lives we currently lead. 

Maybe she was right.

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