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[note: i am exhausted and this is almost two thousand words long; it is certainly riddled with errors; please forgive me / write back with corrections]
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Two things have been happening lately.
One, I’ve been on strike. Our school district is notoriously bad at retaining teachers and the community was out in force supporting our union because no one knows better than parents that things need to improve.
I was on the picket line every day, but I also ended up doing a surprisingly lot o’ media. You can see a fraction of my television appearances on YouTube (ones I know of are at the bottom of the Theric-elsewhere list), but I was also on radio, quoted in numerous articles, etc. I think just because our campus is the shortest drive from San Francisco? I honestly think that’s why.
(The other Little Hill picket captains asked me to also be a picket captain, entirely so they wouldn’t have to talk to media. I had no idea what I was volunteering for.)
But more than walking around in circles (feet KILLING me at end of each day), the most exhausting part of striking was being part of the bargaining team and dealing with the abject nonsense of our famously mismanaged school district for the last ten months.
The district hired a well known strike-breaking lawyer a couple weeks ago. He met with us the first time at the end of the first day of striking (Thursday) and offered us less than nothing. So that was that.
But, as I said, the community was on our side. So we went back to the lines. Friday, the board had an emergency meeting to tell the lawyer to work with us, to break the strike by fixing some things we want fixed.
So we met again on Saturday and had our first serious meeting of the last ten months of negotiations. The offered, we countered, then—they kept us waiting by our emails all Sunday before saying they’d meet on Tuesday.
I know.
Anyway, the people won this one. We didn’t get everything we wanted but we got so much more than most people expected—protections for special-ed classrooms and internationally recruited educators among them—and we’re well set up to make further improvements in the future.
Anyway, most of my audience isn’t local so I won’t go into details here, but suffice to say I just stood up and my legs instantly cramped, my throat is sore, and I am exhausted.
Two, KEXP djs have been releasing their top-ten-of-2025 lists and I’ve heard enough of them tell me to look up their list that I decided to write my own. (I didn’t look them up until right now to give you this link but it’s filled with bands I like who might be on my list if I’d listened to their full albums a time or two more.)
I’m not great on “keeping up” with music so I won’t pretend my list has much validity. But there’s so much variety on all the KEXP lists that we have to admit that there is so much music and so many modes of listening that every list is valid. I think the only band on my list that shows up on any of those lists is The Beths, and in addition to all the bands I haven’t heard of, their lists include bands I love (Big Thief—whose new double album I haven’t listened to yet), bands I like (Wet Leg—but I may never buy an album because Lynsey finds them annoying, bands I’ve come around on (Wednesday—maybe they are more than one song!), bands I’m intrigued by but haven’t really listened to yet (Geese) and old folks onto new projects I’m only vaguely aware of (Thom Yorke).
Anyway, since I stopped using Spotify, I mostly just listen to radio (esp KEXP and KALX) and stuff I’ve bought on Bandcamp. But stuff doesn’t start by being a Bandcamp purchase—that’s something an album earns. And if Bandcamp Friday lands on one day rather than another, something else might be top of that day’s list. This year I came very close to buying new albums from Just Mustard, English Teacher, and Adult DVD (you can find me singing their praises on Bluesky), and you can find a shoutout to this album in Thubrina, yet, although I really like her, I still don’t own any Margo Price. But I am back to buying music, just not at the volume I did pre-streaming.
In the end, I decided that what would make my 2025 best-of list would be anything released in 2024 or 2025 that I liked enough to buy (now that I’m back to buying music). It’s a pretty objective rubric, so I can write this without agonizing over anything but order.
And don’t worry. I didn’t agonize over that much either.
First up, Shovels & Rope.
They put out one of my favorite songs from the last decade, the title track of their first album, which I bought for that reason. I also bought their 2022 album on the merits of that one song. But neither album was half as good as that song. So while I was interested to hear about a new S&R album, I was not plunking anything down without listening to it. I figured I would listen a time or two, see it as another okay entry, and move on for good.
But this song has gone under my skin like few albums have. I absolutely love it. It’s like…if Low were country-tinged and happy to punch you in the face.
But they’re not just like Low musically with their drive and drone; they’re also like Low because Shovels & Rope are a married couple. I’m fascinated by married couples who make stuff together. And perhaps this helps Something Is Working Up Above My Head leap above my #2 album this year, perhaps not, but regardless this is an incredible album and worthy of anyone’s top-ten (or top-eight) list.
I like Thayer Sarrano’s work (speaking seasonally, she recorded perhaps my favorite version of one of my favorite carols). This short album is terrific and worthy of all praise but, as I’ve already done so, I’ll just let her Bells speak for itself today:
Love Waxahatchee. Finally got to see her live this year. She has good albums and great albums and this, I think, leans toward the latter.
What distinguishes Tigers Blood from the others is less a matter of type or execution and more a matter of slant. As the cover art suggests, she’s leaning harder into her proudly Southern ethos, and using MJ Lenderman on harmony helps deepen that—he has just the right sound to make that work.
Anyway, she’s done it again and its fabulous.
I was a big fan of her previous album (which then won a Grammy for bluegrass)—even bought my mom a copy!—so I wasn’t sure if I would love the more poppy version of herself or react negatively.
Ends up I think this Molly mode is great. It is more poprock but it’s still Molly Tuttle. And more songs about places I know, which never hurts my enjoyment.
You can see how Molly is engaging in the conversation being had by people like Taylor and Subrina, but it’s not trend chasing or anything so vulgar as that. She’s stepped into the store and found a couple cool accessories to add to her wardrobe. And they work for her. She looks great. (Maybe this is the metaphor the cover art is going for?)
Anyway, every song is good, but I do want to specifically mention “I Love It” because it feels like we’re always talking about what makes a good cover and I think I’d propose that when you love a song and it’s faithful to the original work but it’s not until the chorus lyrics that you even realize it’s a song you know, that’s a cover that has a reason to exist. That seems like a decent opener to any conversation on covers. Feel free to sally back.
I heard “California Shake” on the radio (KecG; currently off the air for district mismanagement–related reasons) and thought it had to be something branspanking new. but nope. Margo Guryan died in 2021 and her music was never broadly known. This collection came out recently and it covers so many different styles—including some I don’t always like—that show off her songwriting chops. It’s an adventure that goes on for 46 tracks and I’ve listened to it many times to support many different moods.
Including a new Christmas song that’s now on this year’s rotation.
It’s probably unfair that just being a good Beths album can’t amaze me anymore. Some people more savvy than me say Straight Line Was a Lie represents a real change for them but, to me, it’s just another really great album from The Beths.
That’s more than most bands can do.
I wonder if the Waxahatchee and Beths albums listed above had been my first encounter with them that they would have been battling for #1 but it’s impossible to know. What I do know for sure is that Foxes in the Snow did not get a fair reading from me. Like the Beths’ album, I ended up preordering this one. But I’m not deep into Jason Isbell’s catalogue and so this wasn’t competing with an entire career but only the first album of his I really loved. And since it was the first and because I hadn’t owned it that long, every time I wanted to listen to Jason Isbell…I just went back to Weathervanes.
I’ve no doubt my respect for Foxes in the Snow will grow as time goes on.
I did enjoy listening to him jam with Norah Jones while I was doing the dishes.
It doesn’t feel like “like” or even “good” is the right way to explain anything Lustmord does or my relationship with it.
I started listening to dark ambient music on Spotify while I was grading AP tests. It’s kind of perfect for the task and while I tried a lot of bands, the obviously superior product was Lustmord’s Songs of Gods and Demons. So eventually I decided it was time to buy it on Bandcamp. At that same time, his new Much Unseen Is Also Here was available for a single euro, so I listened to it while I was doing some grading and then added it to my two-large 100% Lustmord dark ambient collection. It’s great. Perhaps you have just the right space in your life where you need this sort of thing as well. If so, may I present Lustmord:
One thing any top-ten (top-eight) list reveals is the person making the list. Even if you previously knew nothing about my musical tastes, you can tell now that among my favorite things are women’s voices (heavily represented in 1,2,3,4,5,6), rock with country ancestry (1,3,4,7), ethereal beauty (at least 2,5,8), and wit (1,2,3,4,5,6,7).
I am curious how much variety someone outside my head thinks this list has and I hope you’ll write back with an opinion on that and your own favorite music of recent months.
IN OTHER MUSIC NEWS, I have a new-to-me album that I’ve been listening to a lot since the week before Thanksgiving. I’ve annotated one song from that album over at Ships of Hagoth—you should check it out.
Happy December, all!
