Favorite Music, Q1 2026
I'm a relentless nerd, always tracking what I'm listening to, thinking hard about what I like and why I'm picking what I'm picking, trying to thread the unc needle. I'm making more peace with being a little out of touch but I don't want to just sit in my pigeonhole. I miss Tiny Mix Tapes.
Anyway, here's five records released so far this year that I've really loved.
Hecker - Natural Selection
There's a feeling I can get on my inner ear if I manipulate my back-of-throat just right. It feels like itching from the inside. If you haven't felt it maybe that sounds like body horror, but it's good, don't worry. That's what this music sounds like to me. Hecker's Sun Pandamonium was an early introduction to a frame for making the music I want to make so I'm always happy when he's got something new.
xavisphone - balança e paixão
I genuinely cannot get enough of the claustrophobic metallic clank of the snare sounds on this record. I ebb and flow with my connection Brazil Funk and its musical influence, partly because the inside-out spareness makes me feel like an alien in the same way footwork did when I first heard the Bang & Works comp, but this one hits hard.
sidepieces - darklight
Just an absolute chaos barrage that asymptotically approaches being a deconstructed hip-hop record. There are production moments on this that sound like nothing else because these guys just gleefully give not a single shit about producing "correctly" and that rules. Too much correct production these days. Side chain the whole fucking track to the kick if you want, I say.
Bill Callahan - My Days of 58
My wise friend Harlan says that when we talk about music we're talking about ourselves and when I process new Bill Callahan I'm processing my own relationship to fatherhood in a way. Callahan, Will Oldham, and John Darnielle were huge songwriters for me as I was figuring out how to write the songs I wanted to write and my relationship with them has changed since both I and they had kids. For a while I held them at a remove because I wasn't trying to relax into easy aging (cf. my self-conscious invocation of "unc" above). But, My Days of 58 is the most immediately satisfying Callahan release for me since Apocalypse and that counts for a lot, musically and psychically.
underscores - u
It feels very good to listen to this. The production is dense and satisfying. Brightly colored. Windows down type of music.