Cam Recommends

I try my best not to talk too much about the actual act of writing this blog and the intersections with my personal life and mental health because, well, (A) it’s not really fun to write about and, b (B) it really can’t be fun to read about in a space that’s meant for music recommendations. That said, an astute reader can certainly compare the last six months worth of writing here with any previous 6 month time period and see that I’ve slowed down significantly and I skipped doing a quarter one (and now) a quarter two round-up. Suffice it to say, I’ve been in a bit of a dark tunnel for a while and it’s been hard to motivate myself to write anything down. Fortunately, I haven’t reached any severe levels of music anhedonia yet, so, despite a few troughs, I’ve mostly been able to still engage with quite a few awesome new releases so far this year. I really, really, really want to get back in the habit of posting here but I don’t want to leave too much behind either. I feel kind of daunted to try to “catch up” from here, but sometimes, you just need to give yourself a goal and go for it. Plus, this can hopefully reset the template here and get back to the “post 3 to 4 times a week” schedule with single item posts in the 250-1000 word range with occasional longer form posts here and there and a quarterly round up. I can’t promise the quarterly this year, but I think I can at least plant a flag right here and run down all the new albums this year that have had an impact on me. I must confess, I feel kind of helpless (and still intimidated) at the amount of music and with my own self-doubt I can only summon a kind of resolve to just allow myself my worst writerly instincts and also let myself off the hook, length-wise.

So reader, if you’ll indulge me, this will be as fast and dirty a list as I can make it. I really want to just get this out there and move forward with a lot of good music to come (and a lot I’ve certainly missed). So, some of these might only be one word. Some will have prose as purple as a certain 90’s children’s TV dinosaur. Some will be the dreaded comparisons to and mashups between other bands and or/genres. Some will be the even more dreaded food similes. I’ll certainly mix up my similes with my metaphors, definitely end some phrases with a few propositions and possibly have more than one run-on sentence. Also, no particular order, just going down a big list I made (so, roughly, in some kind of order from the beginning of the year but, you know, mostly just in the order I added to the list). With all that out of the way. Here we go!

(Tidal Playlist here if you want to follow along and most links go to Bandcamp pages which allow free preview streams so it's easy to listen.)