Music/ 2025
John Van Deusen
As Long as I am in the Tent of this Body
I do sometimes worry when an artist gets on a streak. That it’ll end horrifically, I suppose. It happens all too often and the disappointment, for me, cancels out some of the joy I had taken, even for decades prior. Witness, for instance, A Moon-shaped Pool: favorite band went status traded for occasional indulgence over one failed concept. That’s severe, I know, but I am that way.
No sign of slowing down for JVD though. He was on my favs list of 2023 and 2022 likewise and this is, if not quite his best, his most ambitious, and confessional, and faithful. May his streak continue!
Fine China
I Felt Called
Fine China is a VBM band, which means I discovered them via Bloomsday, and the label sampler that featured a song of theirs in the 1990’s, but I never got into them until now. It’s 80’s pop, like The Cure, but smart. A bit like Pains of Being Pure at Heart and a bit like The Fascination Movement. Best driving music.
Beirut
A Study of Losses
This is an odd record, I want to say, for several reasons, but then I recalled that most Beirut records are odd. Glockenspiel-driven Serbian folk songs? Sure! French chansons in baritone? Why not! This one though is a film soundtrack, with a few actual songs, and some other instrumental mood music. It’s a vibes record for sure that hits pretty consistently for me.
Wilderado
Talker
There’s a couple of chill-rock records I love all out of proportion with their actual merit. Deluxe, for instance, by Better than Ezra. Most 90’s kids have moved on, but for me it’s still unbelievably poignant. This record is a bit like that in mood and instrumentation: a bit country, but a bit too cool for that. Gin Blossoms call-back meets Nathaniel Rateliff sedated.
EPs
I’m an album guy. I don’t really do playlists or singles. It takes a little to settle in for me, and the LP is the artwork toward which songs are gesturing. So, I’m putting here a series of records that I listened to a lot this year, and that I loved, but putting them on a Best Albums list feels wrong somehow because anything under 10 songs is not an album. Some of these clock in at 20 minutes. What is that? They’re not labelled EP’s, but that’s essentially what they are, so I’m rounding them up under this heading, hoping you’ll find something worth hearing in the soundtrack to my 2025.
