Okay, it is July, and in about 5 months I will be winding up another year of music. It is time for the mid-year rundown of what I have found so far: the stuff that is good, the stuff that is not so good, the stuff that should be good but fails, and this year a list of the stuff I missed from previous years.
My music discovery process derives from all manner of sources: recommendations from friends, blurbs from various websites/review sites, accidents, and for the first time *cough*Spotify*cough*, via its weekly Discovery list, which does deliver up some interesting and unusual suggestions, especially given that I do not much stream, so its analysis of my tastes is necessarily limited.
Every year I seem to run a theme – some genre or style of music that tends to dominate my listening. I’m not really sure why that is or how it happens. Last year it was largely industrial electronica and ethnic-based post-rock; this year is Old Fogey Year – discovering the music of well-established outfits I heretofore ignored because I thought I didn’t like them. It seems the older I get, the less of a music snob I become. That is probably a good thing.
So here is the list of contenders so far, in reverse order of interest, with a brief capsule review. You may notice a certain…theme to some of the album titles. Naturally, this order is subject to revision at any time. And I will just note: So far my albums of 2017 were released long before 2017. I just found them this year.
