Hardscrabble 🍫

After reading How to Quit Streaming in May, I canceled my Apple Music account. I found the conclusion compelling:

I’ll close by saying this: Music just sounds better when you’re not streaming it. Not only because the audio quality is often literally higher, but because you’re forging a connection with what you’re hearing that’s strengthened by your choices, your commitment, your active participation—and, if you bought it at a shop or the merch table at a show, by the lasting imprint of those in-person interactions, however brief they might have been. Spotify can do a lot of things, but it can’t compete with that.

I switched to using Doppler and started buying mp3s again. Mostly on Bandcamp, occasionally on iTunes. I used Syncthing to keep my library in sync across my personal Mac Studio, my personal Thinkpad running Linux, and my work MacBook Pro. I tried at times to listen to radio, but there are so many ads that it’s not really possible to have on while working without constantly feeling annoyed, so I mostly gave up on that. Instead I mostly stuck to my mp3s and YouTube.

(On Linux, which I used a bit this year, I used the GNOME Music app although to be honest I didn’t listen to music on my Linux laptop much this year.)

Being off streaming, my listening habits changed. I did end up spending more time with fewer artists, and I did appreciate that.

So here’s what I listened to this year, in no particular order. Mostly 2025 releases but not all.

• Oklou - choke enough – my introduction was this spellbinding Tiny Desk performance which I watched many times. The record is more electronic. I like these songs in either mode.
• Chloe Qisha - Modern Romance EP – and also her other EP, although that was released in 2024. Witty, droll pop music to listen to on a loop. When I said I didn’t miss you, I lied, I’m sorry.
• The Clash - Train in Vain – this was on the soundtrack of Halt and Catch Fire, which I rewatched a good chunk of this year, and it’s just a perfect song
• Mk.gee - Are You Looking Up (Live) – a magical performance I first heard of him maybe this year or last year, who knows. This guy is so cool. It’s fun to watch him jam on his own, with Dijon, or with Bieber.
• Lady Gaga - Killah (Saturday Night Live/2025) – This whole Lady Gaga performance is so cool. The opening dance. The drumming. The scream. The costume change. Sick.
• JENNIE & Dua Lipa - Handlebars – this song has a very nice groove that I enjoy and the music video is worth watching jjust so you can try to help me understand what they were going for there. There’s just so much going on. The surreal disconnection between all of the images makes me wonder (like so many things did this year) if this was AI’s doing. I feel a little bit like the guy in Pete Holmes’s bit about the guy in the audience of the magic show confidently saying, “This is magnets”.
• Lizzy McAlpine - Staying (Live from The Greek Theatre, Los Angeles) – I found this performance (from an artist I’m not terribly familiar with) so lovely and confident. It begins with a lengthy piano prelude before layering in the vocals and the other instruments… And what a cool set! I wish I’d seen that show.
• Gregory Alan Isakov - The Trapeze Swinger (Iron & Wine cover) – an interpretation of an old favorite Iron & Wine song which feels to me like a whole new song. This one draws my ear to the rhythm of the vocal melody.
• ROSÉ & PSY - APT. (live from 싸이흠뻑쇼 SUMMERSWAG 2025) – I think history has vindicated Psy as the coolest guy in the world. The arc of history is long but it bends toward justice.
• mewithoutYou - Live (vol. Two) – despite ending their run a few years ago, mewithoutYou (who are very special to me) are still producing some aftershocks, in the form of a planned trilogy of live albums, the second volume of which came out this year. They’re very cool artifacts – they insist on not labeling the tracks in the mp3 metadata because they want the experience to be like attending a live show, where you don’t know which song is coming up next. The recordings all come from different shows and are mixed together seamlessly. They sound so good. A bit of on-stage patter is preserved. I was very happy to see Stereogum write a love letter to them this year, and also see Lucy Dacus bring Aaron out for a cameo on her tour. He may be a retired rock star who seems pretty happy working as a professor of anthropology these days¹² but I can still daydream that he’ll pop back up with a solo album at some point…
• Tim Armstrong - Take This City – This song is from 2007 and I listened to it then and somehow stumbled back upon it this year. What a gem. This is the frontman from Rancid and he is chilling out here. This is the mood I am trying to inhabit.
• Moving Mountains - Pruning of the Lower Limbs kind of out of nowhere, hometown heroes Moving Mountains came back online with a smooth, moody album that feels more grown up³ and laid back than some of their earlier, angstier stuff. This is the album I put on in the subway with my Apple earpods to set the mood for getting around, unhurried, thoughtful, while reading a book.
• Sara Bareilles and Rufus Wainwright Perform “She Used to Be Mine” – this song, from the musical Waitress, was written by Bareilles, who originated the part. Here she is performing it as a duet with a male vocalist, which seems counter-intuitive and very unexpected to me. But Christ is it pretty! What a wonderful interpretation. Bareilles has sung this song so many times, but it feels like Wainwright pushes her to an even more tender place here somehow…
• Bear vs. Shark - Out Loud Hey Hey – BVS has been “my favorite band” for twenty years now and I still listen to them regularly. They went on tour this year, and I saw them twice in the UK in March. This track has emerged as a new favorite this year. I just love how it has two moments where the guitars drop out, seemingly to give the drummer a moment to strut his stuff, and then when they do come back it’s in this very percussive mode, as if the guitars are inspired to be more like drums. Such a potent dose of mania in less than two minutes. Perfect song. Perfect band, still. I should’ve traveled to see more of their shows.
• Jane Wickline Gives Dating Advice – Comedy music lives. I am rooting for Wickline to thrive on SNL, I think she’s very funny in an internet sort of way.
• Wet Leg - mangetout in the Live Lounge – I should probably actually buy this album because the YouTube algorithm knows I’m going to click on the thumbnails for this band. They’re so strange and fun. They feel like they exist in some other world of their own creation.
• Geese - Au Pays du Cocaine – The song of the year, easily. This band got a lot of buzz and at first I thought they were weird and pretentious and dumb and I got fully converted, they’re actually weird and pretentious and smart. This is the kind of song that makes me want to go watch all of the amateur covers from all the weirdo sweeties who also felt deeply stirred by this perfect gem of a tune. It’s the kind of song that makes me want to record my own amateur cover.
• The Weakerthans - Sun In An Empty Room – this is the perfect theme song to Heavyweight, which came back from hiatus this year. It’s so imbued with that association that I don’t know that I would have even noticed this song if I’d heard it out of context, but it’s Pavlovian for me now. I hear this and I feel wistful.
• Christopher Owens - This Is My Guitar (Live Acoustic Performance) – I hadn’t thought of this guy for many years, but this crossed my transom and hit me like a hammer. That guy! What happened to him? I don’t really know. I haven’t looked into it and won’t speculate. But this is a really beautiful tune that suggests it hasn’t always been easy.
• KiiiKiii - Debut Song – I am not the biggest kpop fan but I loved this article about what the industry is churning out these days and how it compares to the recent past. I watched a bunch of the linked songs, and my favorite was easily Crayon Pop’s FM which is a crazy contrast with this KiiiKiii tune.
• McKenzie Kurtz - It Hit Me Like a Hammer – This, from the short-lived Huey Lewis and the News jukebox musical, is Kurtz’s big number. I love McKenzie Kurtz. She’s great. She can do anything, including make me like Huey Lewis and the News.
• Maggie Rogers - In The Living Room – This single came out after her 2024 album. Maybe it didn’t fit there, because it’s this exuberant, bombastic thing, while somehow also a wistful, domestic lament. I love it. She almost sounds out of breath because she’s giving it her all, which is saying a lot.
• Audrey Hobert - Who’s the Clown? – This is another pop album I listened to on a loop this year. She’s got such a gift for understated comedy and overstated dancing. Small phrases will catch me by surprise, like in Shooting Star when she sings in her friends voice, telling her “Girl, that’s not a shooting star” and then replies in her own, “I’m sorry, my bad, I thought that it was”. I like songwriters who are conversational and wordy and somehow rigorous all at once.
• Jacob Collier Improvises the National Symphony Orchestra – I usually find Collier fairly mechanical and dull, but seeing this former child prodigy be basically a kid in a candy store really enchanted and impressed me. I’m of course jealous.
• Frank Watkinson - I Miss You – An old many mournfully playing Blink-182’s loveliest tune. Achingly beautiful stuff.
• Wednesday - Bull Believer – Seeing them play this live a few months ago boiled my brain and restarted it. It’s so loud and so committed and so powerful. I also loved the lead single from their new album from this year, Elderberry Wine, which hardly sounds like the same band, but they’ve got range, and which Wednesday you’re gonna get depends on the day of the week.
• Dan Hardin - Romeo and Juliet – This was uploaded to YouTube in 2007 and it looks like it. This is a Dire Straits cover and it’s one of my favorite covers. A few years ago I thought of it and tried to find it and was sad to learn that Hardin had made all of his videos private to protest YouTube running ads on them (I think?). I happened to think of it again today and was delighted to see that he’d made them public again. What a perfect song. A Christmas miracle. This time I downloaded it. It’s only 10mb.

This is a very random assortment of recommendations but I hope you found something to like here. Those are the highlights. Bon voyage, 2025.