Sounds Thrive: Music in 2025

I am happy and content with my musical life…

There’s a piece of paper tacked to a wall in my home adorned with eight affirmational bullet points to repeat to oneself upon arising each day. One of them is the sentence seen above, and while it omits the penultimate word, it strikes me as an essential addition for a man who spends his forty-five hours per week streaming music while working then listens to two or more records in his basement most nights, each day soundtracked by capricious selections, the one constant, at least for now, being that jazz inevitably forms the bookends between waking and slumbering. My primary focus as a contemporary listener is playing new releases to absorb copious different genres (sounds, really) in an effort to define what variegated albums most moved me during a calendar year, the year-end list functioning as an irrefutable recollection of twelve months’ worth of bounties when any willfully ignorant cynic avows how nobody except [Foo Fighters, among a select mundane hypothetical shortlist] crafts tunes like they did when he was a teenager. The obvious moral is to continuously evolve, like when I discussed mid-2010s hip-hop with a co-worker ten years my junior who assessed me thus: “AHF, goated culture observer and enjoyer.” Or when another friend said, “You have forgotten more good music than most people will ever listen to.” These are my (brow-raising and/or brow-furrowing) credentials whenever I suggest productive ways to stuff two of the holes in your head.

So, I now must declare that 2025 was one of the finest new music years this century, a declaration readied after first referring to my previous lists and concluding with reasonable self-assurance that it is not a melodramatic pronouncement no matter how many names on my forthcoming list may strike many as recondite. Who would want to reduce a year this rich to ten choices when what some might deem “lesser” albums—like the third straight excellent dream pop collection released by the largely unknown Madeline Kenney (a woman whose Wikipedia biography is three sentences long) or Paramore drummer Zac Farro’s twenty-five-minute blissful appeal that it’s not just Hayley Williams who makes them one of the world’s greatest bands—although a reader’s skeptical yet natural proclivity may be to regard any list teeming with manifold arcane choices as the listmaker’s need to prove he’s the more democratic listener. I am not a critic nor am I paid for my opinions: I simply like what I like and like sharing said likes with anyone who has an open mind.

However, you won’t read me contending that I possess the necessary skills to write worthwhile music reviews. What can I impart about widely lionized titles like Clipse’s comeback album or Los Thuthanaka other than that they both are primal forces, the kinds of albums I most crave: the ones that, even when serving as background noise, manage to tunnel into the brain and hang out for the day (or longer). Might you have caught me rapping “She want Mike Tyson blow to the face” while grabbing the mail? Or attempting to “sing” the stickiest electronic bits from the experimental Andean collage made by two men with unpronounceable names? For sure. When I saw Olivia, my dentist, a few weeks ago, she, as professionals should, first asked how my teeth were doing then swiftly switched to the hottest topic: “It’s Spotify Wrapped Day! What’s on yours?” When I told her I don’t use Spotify but do craft my own list, I couldn’t have guessed how eager she’d be to give me her phone number so I could text her some potential new data-harvesting options. (To avert seeming uppity: I am a humble Amazon Music subscriber.) “I’m not sure I have a number one,” I told her, “but if I had to pick, I’d probably go with Kali Uchis. Sadly, I didn’t get to see her in September, though. Was a Sunday night…in Boston…”

This prompted a do-si-do about acts we’d seen and would be seeing—Olivia’s bringing her twelve-year-old son to his first concert in the spring—and generated the idea that will occupy the bulk of this year’s musical reminiscences. Many of the people who contribute to ensuring my non-musical life is happy and content have long commented on how much they dig my concert recaps, as much for the sociological observations and banter with strangers as the, at least most of the time—Gary Numan and his gay vampire band was an atypical aberration—effulgent onstage details. I was flattered when one friend inquired about my failure to share coverage of Chris Stapleton’s performance in Albany: “I enjoyed it but don’t need to see him again,” I replied. “Yet at one point he went on a vocal run that made him seem like the equivalent of a Hillbilly Pavarotti! Was worth going just for that.” Since I rarely take photos or videos at shows, my words alone had to sell him. What a novel concept, not to demean the shaky, portrait-style videos I witnessed a plethora of fools capture at each show this year, their collective YouTube subscriber count comfortably in the double digits. 

I can commend Basia Bulat’s vibrato, laud Deftones’ dependability, and delineate how Just Mustard is like Japanese Breakfast uniting with Chvrches (“You’ve gone too far into esoterica!” someone’s shouting), but anyone can sample the albums in question for the proof and the pudding. “Butterscotch? Yow! That brings me back!” Enumerating trips around New England to explore live music in 2025 feels like a worthwhile endeavor in a year when I will attend thirty-four live events, sporting events and stand-up comedy shows excluded here. My friend, Mooch, currently working on her own essay in response to the one I published about her in the summer, emailed an early draft, her description of me including two adjectives that have lingered in my mind similar to the sounds from this year’s best albums: “He is funny, angry, loving, uncontainable, unlimited, messy, and unforgettable.” While I took umbrage with the word “messy,” a by definition accurate choice that slanders the obsessive-compulsive neat freak I have long been, being hailed as uncontainable and unlimited is a high honor, one I will unapologetically call back with ample hubris in the future, but one I note now because I like to believe the two descriptors also qualify the loving she attributed to me, loving I extend when pursuing my greatest passions.

There is still one concert to attend this year: Fat, a 1970s psych-rock band from Springfield, Massachusetts, is playing what they’re dubbing their final show at a one-hundred-and-ninety seat hall in Northampton two days after Christmas, one I will attend with my old boss, the man who owned the record store where I worked what will likely forever be the job that made me happiest. And in my fondness for looking ahead, I can confirm that next year’s music essay will be the last one in my planned third book, an essay where I will revisit the list of my all-time favorite albums that culminated my first book with an assortment of imperative revisions that may seem inconsequential for trying to isolate an exclusive group when finding as much satisfying music as possible is the one true goal. There’s that uncontainable streak again, and the belief that there should be no limits to the number of lists a man devises to create. Until then, I submit to you a list comprised of music for everyone—country, hip-hop, singer-songwriter, international language (from France), mainstream pop, metal, shoegaze, trip-hop, indie rock, folk and folk-rock, electronica, alternative R&B, jazz, and neo-soul—and encourage playing them all so that you yourself can constitute an approximation of everyone. Maybe that’s one of the keys to being unforgettable, or it at least helps for the hour when you have another hole in your head stuffed by your dentist.

Top 30
Willow Avalon, Southern Belle Raisin’ Hell (Atlantic)
Danny Brown, Stardust (Warp)
Basia Bulat, Basia’s Palace (Secret City)
Lou-Adriane Cassidy, Journal d’un Loup-Garou (Bravo)
Clipse, Let God Sort Em Out (Roc Nation)
Chuquimamani-Condori & Joshua Chuquimia Crampton, Los Thuthanaka (self-released)
Miley Cyrus, Something Beautiful (Columbia)
Deafheaven, Lonely People With Power (Roadrunner)
Erika de Casier, Lifetime (Independent Jeep)
Deftones, private music (Reprise)
DJ Koze, Music Can Hear Us (Pampa)
Zac Farro, Operator (Congrats)
Miya Folick, Erotica Veronica (Nettwerk)
Friendship, Caveman Wakes Up (Merge)
Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist, Alfredo 2 (ESGN)
The Hellp, Riviera (Anemoia)
Patterson Hood, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams (ATO)
Maddie Jay, I Can Change Your Mind (self-released)
Just Mustard, We Were Just Here (Partisan)
James K, Friend (AD 93)
Madeline Kenney, Kiss From the Balcony (Carpark)
Cass McCombs, Interior Live Oak (Domino)
Eliza McLamb, Good Story (Royal Mountain)
James McMurtry, The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy (New West)
Mereba, The Breeze Grew a Fire (Secretly Canadian)
Okonski, Entrance Music (Colemine)
Nadia Reid, Enter Now Brightness (Slow Time)
Shura, I Got Too Sad for My Friends (PIAS)
Kali Uchis, Sincerely, (Capitol)
Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory, s/t (Jagjaguwar)

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Drive-By Truckers, District Music Hall, Norwalk, CT (February 1st)
Patterson Hood’s best solo album to date (see above) would be released twenty days after this show, my sixth time seeing the band I esteem as the one most adept at continuing the classic rock lineage, the genre that made me fall in love with collecting music in high school. The Truckers have a propensity for sounding muddy, the vocals from Hood and Mike Cooley often somewhat inscrutable, but they circumvented that trap at a revived old hall I would return to twice more in the fall. “They’re like mid-‘70s Neil Young merged with the best of the Stones” has long been the easiest way to sell people on a group whose name is indefensibly awful, not that my descriptor itself is hyperbolic, the invocation of two prized artists a huge part of why I love them. My uncle, the man who turned me onto them, had been enduring a bout of depression and backed out, so I attended with my friend Sam, a woman who hadn’t listened to them since her college days but was as thrilled as I was by the live rendition of Southern Rock Opera, their most celebrated album. Baked out of our minds, we sat alone in a three-seat row gleefully letting the fierce “three axe attack” chop away at us, the crisp drums equally indispensable. None of the trio of men playing guitar would rank among the instrument’s most noteworthy specialists, but “the sum is greater than the parts” is a phrase coined for this band’s specific kind of collective gusto. Less than two weeks into the current political administration’s attack on all things normal and logical, Hood was unafraid to rip them apart to an admittedly liberal audience, his vituperative outburst cathartic at a time when public figures were fearful of retribution. In reality, Buttholeville, one of their song titles, wouldn’t be a terrible name for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue through 01/19/29. Most important is the music itself, a consolidation of a template crafted by the gods, the band’s shit-kicking style and lyrical specificities still forging forward in refinement of a genre many have unfairly relegated to ‘60s Mesozoics. See you at the rock show indeed. \m/ 

Kool Keith, Daily Operation, Easthampton, MA (April 1st) and Nas with the Boston Pops Orchestra, Lenox, MA (June 27th)
I swore off attending hip-hop shows ages ago, but catching an underground legend at a converted restaurant for twenty-five dollars brought me (regrettably) back into the fold. The show was due to end at 10 p.m. per the venue’s website, a time my friend in attendance said would keep him in compliance with his bedtime schedule, but by 9:59 we’d yet to see Kool Keith onstage. Local emcees and deejays killed time, which might’ve been tolerable twenty years ago, but neither of us wanted to wait anymore, later learning that the headliner, a man who has released twenty-four albums in the last thirty years, went on minutes after we departed and played for exactly sixty minutes, opting to freestyle for part of his set. Why are hip-hop artists so frequently guilty of succumbing to their worst impulses (and false promises)?

The same friend and I took another chance when Nas played Illmatic in full at Tanglewood aka Hollywood Bowl East, the premiere outdoor concert venue I’ve patronized in New England. Before the show, my buddy hit a joint I’d just lit then coughed prior to removing it from his mouth, all its contents flying out onto the grass at our feet, the reason why I will only bring a carcinogenic vape pen to any future shows with him in tow. We set down our folding chairs, ate grinders we’d brought in (another example of Tanglewood’s convivial atmosphere), and then Nas surfaced in a tuxedo moments after the start time, skipping an opening act or much preamble. Forty-five minutes later—including intervals when he failed to rap certain bars out of what seemed like sheer indolence—Nas thanked the crowd, returning for a rushed fifteen-minute medley of hits to wrap up his hour in the Berkshires, skipping entire verses in each song. As he began spitting a foreboding version of “Memory Lane,” one nearby man had to be assisted by five paramedics (a couple of the fallen man’s aloof friends paying him sporadic attention while nodding their heads), a half dozen Indian children danced around their hip mother and dullard dad lazing on a blanket in front of us, and as we left, a group of bros holding IPAs in koozies were walking into the venue at what would’ve been an early arrival for any other hip-hop concert. It’s hard to imagine the specific scene was what Nas had in mind when penning gangster rap’s signature album three decades earlier, but the two meth heads who looked more like Juggalos cavorting nonstop earned our admiration, the man at one juncture doing the “dinner plates,” or moving his upward-facing palms up and down over and over again to our e-marijuana-fueled mirth. Ideal show? Kool Keith opening for Nas, but given the vicissitudes of live hip-hop, one assumes there would be a brawl interrupted by gunfire to verify that, as hip-hop goes, nothing old can slay.

St. Vincent, College Street Music Hall, New Haven, CT (April 18th)
“There’s a man in front of the stage who is making eye contact with me every time he turns around,” my friend Connor said to me. “What you need to do is slowly raise up your arm to your forehead and then quickly salute him,” I replied. “Let’s see what happens.” He did and the man in question opted not to look back again for the remainder of the evening. While Connor, a man more than six feet tall, savored the view, I kept peeking through crevices in the crowd, ultimately advising him, “We both make enough money to not stand on the floor again.” While it was outrageous that balcony seats were priced fifty dollars higher than general admission entry, there’s a cost to growing old and leaving the house. (“Adam, are you quoting the pillows at Home Goods?”) As a big St. Vincent fan, the inconveniences were a minor hinderance to appreciating a woman whose discography is mostly excellent; she played four songs from Masseduction, an album most wouldn’t anoint as their pick for her masterpiece, but I do. The Ethiopian food consumed beforehand emanated from my fingertips but never teased my butthole during the performance, some exquisitely timed farts perhaps the best chance I would’ve had to glimpse one of Annie Clark’s ripping guitar solos unobstructed. Artists of her stature and songbook should play more than sixteen tunes, a criticism bolstered by the woman’s theater kid energy during a long-winded mid-set speech that I remember solely because it was embarrassingly unorganized and self-indulgent, a direct contrast to her expert knack for tight songcraft. Glad I went regardless? Any opportunity to see her shred a Music Man guitar is worthwhile, and how could I buy a concert tee shirt if, my average stature be damned, I didn’t want to commemorate the night that spawned the purchase? Hypothetical new merch booth item: artist-branded stilts.

Sun Ra Arkestra, Academy of Music Theatre, Northampton, MA (May 18th), Hartford Jazz Festival, Bushnell Park, Hartford, CT (July 20th), and Makaya McCraven, Hope Center for the Arts, Springfield, MA (October 9th)
If classic rock began my musical mission, then indie rock and hip-hop resulted with a foreseeable expansion, jazz is on some level the inexorable climax, not that there’s finality or the possibility that I don't spend my later years as a classical music snob (get ready for all those Brahms symphony hall concert reviews). I read Miles Davis’s memoir this year, the book easily persuading me that he was The King of Jazz, the man whose music first enticed me to begin collecting a genre of which I’ve now become a devotee. While many luminaries are gone, Sun Ra himself among them, his nineteen-member band played a mind-bending set in May, the only absent member being saxophonist Marshall Allen, a one-hundred-year-old legend unable to travel for the gig. Luckily for those in attendance—or me, whose favorite instrument to hear is the horn—alto, soprano, tenor, and baritone saxophonists were on hand in his stead along with trumpet, trombone, french horn, guitar, bass (and upright bass), cello, flute, and soaring vocals, the mixture achieving the heights of the band’s best studio albums, which are abundant, an unrelentingly joyful celebration of what jazz can be, uplifting yet poignant and improvisational yet grounded, all while lacking a keyboard (or piano), the instrument Ra himself played. When the band marched in a circle around the orchestra pit near the end of the night, I knew I’d seen a concert unlike any other, a testament to implementing pure freedom to maximize the pleasures afforded by the unconstrained momentum of densely layered sonic motion.

Hesitant to attend the Hartford Jazz Festival due to a pending thunderstorm, I couldn’t resist the chance to see the eldest child (and only daughter) of the man who I decided last year was the greatest artist who ever lived. Like most jazz bandleaders, Michelle Coltrane’s awkward stage presence was a given, but her group played notable classics by her father and stepmother, including a stirring rendition of the latter’s “Journey to Satchidananda,” one of the most exorcising, singular behemoths in the vocal jazz songbook, a towering tribute to devotion, peace, and the woman who spent her life saluting the two qualities she believed most enriched the attainment of an eternal life. Olivia Tilley stood out most, her harp playing clearly shaped by Alice’s plucking (how could it not be?), the instrumental incantations a reminder that any chance to see a harp played in person should not be sullied by comparisons to other giants. The crowd remained mostly mellow, numerous middle-aged couples and groups of friends sitting and listening, the unrelenting humidity at least not deterring their ears while the rest of their sweat-soaked bodies took an afternoon respite. Michelle also announced that her childhood home in Dix Hills, New York, was tentatively opening as a museum next summer, a monument to the location where some of America’s most singular art was produced, the theoretical day trip already in the works. As I speed-walked to the parking garage the storm commenced, latino men playing pickleball abandoning their game to seek shelter beneath an oak tree as I got soaked while thinking of Giovanni, the record store owner who sold me some “jazzy jazz” earlier in the day and implored me to not skip seeing The First Daughter. Gracias, amigo.

When raving about the acoustics at the Hope Center, the brand-new theater where I studied Makaya McCraven, one of the world’s greatest living drummers, leading his quartet in a ninety-minute free jazz session, most people had no clue who the man was. The new venue, opened a week in advance of the show, didn’t yet have a concession stand, but an employee gifted me a free bottle of water, a small yet staggering bit of griftless generosity. The bare bones floor-level stage and towering screen evoked ‘70s talk show studio spaces, a welcoming new room to see artists who might’ve skipped playing the city in the past. Despite my stance that acoustic jazz is the best jazz, McCraven’s band featured both electric piano and bass, the sounds bringing me back to the Miles records that indoctrinated me into the fusion era. Jazz may cannibalize itself, but the intention is to pay tribute and push the present into the future via the past, or so this happy listener likes to think. Each band member shined, but sitting on the right side of the theater directly facing McCraven was a gift, the man’s tentacular style one I wouldn’t have quibbled with as a solo performance since drums are the first thing I listen for in all recorded music, the guy’s ability to skirt around the clichés that befall technically amazing monsters on the trap providing me a new skinsman to canonize. Further research for the curious can be found on his four EPs released this year, yet 2022’s In These Times, an album of the jazziest jazzy jazz I regret not appending to that year’s list, is the more desirable starting point.

Halsey, Mohegan Sun Arena, Uncasville, CT (June 8th)
My friend, Jamie, a man a year younger than I am, had not only never attended an event at Mohegan Sun Arena (my favorite indoor arena in New England to see a show), he’d never attended an arena concert. Halsey’s Badlands is Jamie’s all-time favorite album, which meant we had to see her, and when I said, “There’s not too many gay guys here” to him in the merch line, he briskly replied, “She’s too real for them!” Jamie identifies with Anagrammed Ashley’s bipolar disorder, her mental health a mainstay topic in her lyrics, the frankness from the woman clearly the attraction for much of her fanbase, the bulk of them women with colored hair (and fishnets), abundant piercings and tattoos, and other markers documenting a life battling humanity’s collective best friend and biggest enemy: our own brains. It surprised me when the venue let her play for a half hour past the usual 11 p.m. curfew, the bonus songs and unwaveringly high energy earning a newfound level of my fandom, a man who’d admired her singles from a distance, her studio albums not connecting in the way many from other female pop stars have. Her voice has a warmth that resonated deeply in person, her manic crowd interactions and passionate, Alice in Wonderland-themed performances (emphasized by supplementary fanfare on the house screen) initiating a kind of “anything goes” spectacle I loved seeing overwhelm Jamie, not that I wasn’t right behind him (metaphorically speaking, natch). Here is a woman who should release a covers album displaying her range, but until then, I’ll start retroactively upgrading my opinion of her discography, my first stop at the album cover for If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, it baring one of the woman’s exposed breasts, not for me to ogle lasciviously, but to reference during the next hour of Freud-adjacent therapy. “Why?” Hey! Nobody asked you, bitch!

Dua Lipa, TD Garden, Boston, MA (September 9th)
There’s no denying I’ve sublimated my love for Sue into Dua Lipa, the female celebrity I most revere. Not because she’s the most beautiful woman alive or because she has a flawless head of hair or because of her clear alacrity and joie de vivre in all her pursuits or because she’s a fantastic dresser, writes in a journal, hosts a book club (conducting monthly interviews with legendary authors like Margaret Atwood), and is a massive foodie, but foremost for what matters: I love her music. Opting to see The Queen alone, and having predicted to see innumerable homosexual men, I instead spotted an abundance of Asians, offering to snap (a couple dozen) photos of two cute Korean girls standing in front of my seat—one flashing a beaded, rainbow-colored belt Sue would’ve lost her mind praising—then spent the night sitting beside a middle-aged Japanese lady who smelled like sandalwood, one of my most beloved scents. Dua donned four different outfits (I was particularly enamored with the shimmering gold one-piece that ended mid-breast and had two straps that met at the neck to form a halter top), talked to and took selfies with several fans on the floor during her walk to the secondary stage, covered a song by a major artist from the city where she was playing (a prominent showcase at all shows on the tour, her choice for the first of two nights in Beantown being “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith, a song and band I loathe, but a reinterpretation I enjoyed in full), and featured a perpetually engaging video board as well as numerous lazer [sic, duh] tastes, or stimulated beams dancing along with the lively echo chamber of a crowd. The two-hour show couldn’t have been more satisfying as I sang every word in a state of zen-like ecstasy. I hope to see her alone on all subsequent tours for as long as she performs, a chance to turn concertgoing into a form of female idolatry I’m comfortable confessing is not based on my (sometimes, okay most times) perverse nature. My friend Jessica asked what I’d do if I walked into a room where a nude Dua awaited: “Go into convulsions and faint. I couldn’t handle it. But when I came to, I’d definitely ask to touch and smell her hair.” A man of the people, or so I like to pretend, since as Jessica added, few men would be so brazenly self-deprecating in the face of the very real Utopia Lipa.

Deafheaven, District Music Hall, Norwalk, CT (September 19th)
One of the most visceral shows I’ve attended in years, my pal Drooq wanted to see them touring Lonely People With Power, one of the year’s strongest albums, a mixture of black metal vocals, shoegaze guitars, and death metal-style blast beat drumming. The two subpar openers notwithstanding, from the moment these guys got going glorious chaos reigned: kids ran up wooden ramps onto the stage then jumped into the crowd, a recurring ritual for ninety minutes, some of them tumbling awkwardly to the cement much to my laughter, like when lead screamer-slash-gargler George Clarke held out his microphone for one of them to “sing” along and got a “RLAAAAAAHHHHHHGHGHH!!!” in return. There was also a circle mosh pit on the floor, not the type of behavior I envisioned from the moneyed twenty-something Norwalk crowd, but the organized violence further ratcheted up the nonstop high energy and discordant assault, Clarke at one point claiming we were the best crowd of the tour and guaranteeing a return to the venue when on the road again. Drooq had asked Kevin, a bygone co-worker I hadn’t seen in almost a decade, and I if we were bringing ear plugs, something the three of us chose to skip, this show registering as the loudest one since the bass at a Madonna concert years ago rendered me partially deaf for half of the ride home. Intensity does not beget an endorsement, but when examining a band who operate so well as a unit, I’m now certain one destructive heavy metal show per year is a no-brainer, a reminder that the genre’s goal is to upend your sensibilities but also to uplift them, to power through the mayhem into a kind of peaceful stupor, one proving that craftsmanship can take on all forms, the transgressive illumination worth having to say “Huh?” ad nauseam to be on brand earlier than expected during one’s twilight years. 

Twenty One Pilots, Xfinity Theatre, Hartford, CT (September 30th)
Something of a tribute show for me, I learned that Sue’s former co-worker, my new-ish friend Sarah, loved this band, one I’d seen with Sue ten times, so it felt vital to resuscitate a tradition I assumed was over. When I purchased the tickets a technical issue on Ticketmaster’s site caused me to lose the original seats I’d placed in my cart, so I bought two neighboring aisle seats and moved on. During the show, a typically high energy spectacle that swayed Sarah to go see them with me on all future tours, security workers roped yellow caution tape across the aisle where we were standing. The band always has a secondary stage for part of their set, but this time it appeared they did not until Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun exited the main stage and moseyed through the crowd, both men walking directly by me as I touched them for Sue; had they done this at a show when she was alive, I truly believe she might have fainted, an action she teased here and there, but I’m unsure how her habit of being starstruck could’ve withstood the insensate out of body experience that followed becoming one with her favorite band. Not long before the encore, the same security personnel constructed a tiny stage about five feet from our seats, one where Joseph sang directly to us (he literally stared right at us for some of it), intimacy that would’ve undone Sue a second time, not that I’m implying she played a part in the festivities, although I did bring her old TOP bracelet as a gift for Sarah to wear during the show, so draw your own conclusions. “Why did you hand me a pad and a pencil?” This is the interactive portion of the annual recap, and while you’re busy putting those conclusions to paper, we’ll now break for a word from our sponsors: Nico and the Niners. While their studio albums have declined in quality, the need to be around a crowd whose energy stays maxed out for two hours straight is as good a feeling as there is, and why I’ll continue telling anyone who will listen to see this band whether they know who they are or not. Fun fact: Sarah divulged that she was considering getting her first tattoo, one depicting their lyrics “Death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit,” ink I nominated for placement on her ass cheeks. Might she also append a carrot to her pelvis? You are now in the queue to find out. Please solve these yonic captchas and standby.

Big Thief, MGM Music Hall, Boston, MA (October 21st)
A band I love so much that I broke my personal rule to avoid concerts in Boston for a second time in as many months, the inability to locate a parking garage that accepted credit cards pissing me off soon after my arrival. Then, in the line to enter the venue, a staff member asked if I would be consuming alcohol. When I told him no, he said he’d need to draw a black X on each of my wrists. “Why do you need to do that if I’m not drinking?” “This way they know not to serve you.” “How about this? Give me a bracelet. I’ll take it off the second I walk in. Then you don’t have to draw on me.” “I wouldn’t do that, sir.” “WHY? BECAUSE THEY WON’T SERVE ME ALCOHOL LIKE I DON’T WANT THEM TO?!” Fucking ended him, right?! This show was also attended by a surfeit of fetching, lissome college girls mixed in with the crunchy, armpit hair-sporting feminists whose self-typecasting I planned to be disappointed by, a rare point in Boston’s favor. As for Big Thief: Their latest album didn’t make my list, not because I disliked it but because it was a predictable falloff from their last one, among the pinnacles from this decade and the album I play to begin each round of house cleaning, but hearing the new songs live almost made me change my mind. Adrianne Lenker is such a warm, endearing person, her countless “Thank you”’s issued to the crowd all as genuine as the moment when she said, “I love you!” and wished one woman a happy birthday. James Krivchenia, the band’s drummer, was the star, a man at a normal-sized kit playing as both an anchor and with a jazz-like fervor, tiny flourishes consistently augmenting their tuneful palate, one that had lead guitarist Buck Meek so enraptured when Lenker asked him to sing one of his own songs, he began then stopped thirty seconds later and said, “I can’t. I’m too in guitar mode.” Music as anarchy, not the kind you’re thinking of, but the kind where cooperation of the individuals makes for an imperfect yet incomparable whole. The night ended with a “Vampire Empire” > “Spud Infinity” one-two punch that didn’t offset my hatred for the inescapably infuriating lane closures on the Mass Pike afterward but sure helped me smile through the adrenalized lack of sleep to begin the ensuing morning at work.

Katie Pruitt, Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, MA (October 24th)
This was my first “stand-in” concert, meaning I went on behalf of someone who couldn’t attend. In short, I heard her first album in 2020, emailed a synopsis to Moore, and he became instantly captivated by her voice when streaming on his state-issued tablet. I’ve since recommended her music to Gary, my old boss, a man who loves pretty much any melodic female tessitura, and he agreed to see her with me, my mission being to hand her a colored pencil drawing Moore crafted with the LGBTQ flag above her, a bit of prison pandering, but a drawing she eyed and immediately asserted “makes me look better than I do holding it!” Gary and I sat at a tiny table not far from the stage where Pruitt had her opener, Jess Nolan, join her on keyboards as I said to Big G, “Are we sure that that’s not Paul Stanley in drag?” Later, tour manager-slash-harmonizer Hadley Kennary joined them, a woman who I told Pruitt watched her “like a doting mother” as she performed. Pruitt also incited each person in the crowd to turn to the person next to them and say, “I love you,” which I did much to Gary’s red-cheeked embarrassment. The real humiliation is when I do it unprovoked at the Fat concert while adding a kiss on the cheek. Big on crowd interplay, Pruitt also invited the man (named Danny) who was sitting in front of us onto the stage to pull two Tarot cards, the thematic images decorating them influencing her next two song selections. When Gary and I left, the man in question was standing streetside with the woman who sat beside him, the gal crying and wiping away tears during several breakup songs. “Have a good night, Danny!” I said to him as his companion smiled. Don’t ever let them tell you I’m not a man of the gay musical community but do let them qualify what that potentially bizarre proclamation means. I’m anticipating seeing her with Moore in the future, especially when he draws some sapphic softcore to test how much his probation officer is paying attention.

Earth, Wind & Fire, Mohegan Sun Arena, Uncasville, CT (December 7th)
“I bet they go on right at seven,” Connor told me earlier in the day when politely christening it an Oldies Revue, a rare form of concert punctuality enforced by a band we determined has been the lone one capable of merging pop, rock, R&B, soul, and disco at the highest level. After splitting a large pizza, my diabetic friend needed a Coke and a Twix bar to adjust his blood sugar, and as he was about to pay, a bassline sounded from the arena. “Is that them or an opener?” I asked the girl behind the register. “There’s no opener. They go on right at seven.” The band played twenty songs (all the hits) as numerous rotund white women stood up and “danced” in a fashion I shall describe as otiose because other than for judgmental people-watching purposes, their graceless freedom and exultation scanned more as a performative seizure TikTok trend. Both Connor and I became overly taken with bassist Verdine White’s one two three four five six seven EIGHT head, a forehead that should have its own social media accounts and surely performed miracles when bedding several of the sexiest sistas of the ‘70s. “They’re just chords,” Connor said to sell me on how the group’s success was entirely dependent on their rhythm section, a claim guitar gurus would likely go to comical lengths to disprove as a general statement but would meet with resistance when assessing EW&F’s rhythmic bona fides. Philip Bailey, the band’s lead singer, simulated hitting the falsetto notes he routinely reached in his prime, but we played along for his sake, in part because it’s tough not to be fascinated by an elderly man role playing as a castrati [which may be a sentence in the unredacted Epstein Files]. The real stunner was that the lyrics in “September” were not amended to reflect the rhyming month in which we were hearing them, a plausible edit I’m dismayed that the casino betting book would not take action on. Getting back to Connor’s house at 9:53 was a minor miracle, and if I knew shows held an hour away the night before a day of work would be so compact, I’d attend more of them. The mystery persists: Why no Water in their name? Dehydration.

Andrea Bocelli, PeoplesBank Arena, Hartford, CT (December 13th)
As someone who regards arguing about objectivity in art as a waste of time, beholding objective virtuosity in person is something everyone should do at least once. From the thirteenth row of the upper level, it was impossible not to be floored by the man’s voice accompanied by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, a performance that eschewed feeling by-the-numbers (he performs the exact same show nightly) or stuffy, the minimal crowd banter about the man’s bashfulness when discussing his own work conveyed by the evening’s conductor, a man who can twirl a stick with the best of ‘em. Bocelli ceded the spotlight to another tenor, a man who did a rousingly comic version of “Figaro,” as well as former American Idol contestant Pia Toscano, one of two mesmerizing sopranos who performed by his side. “I prefer that song in English,” I told Jamie after “O Holy Night,” and when Bocelli switched to our mother tongue for a terrific version of “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” I opined, “And I prefer that one in the original Italian” much to my companion’s confusion. “Nessun dorma,” an aria from Puccini’s Turandot that has become synonymous with the World Cup, ended the night as I debated purchasing a tee shirt sporting the man’s face, too fretful that it would be an insincere choice when donning it in public, not that I couldn’t invent a back story about how I was invited to a one-off, private engagement with him, John Oates, and Art Garfunkel doing a dry run as  3 Tenors 2. The highlight was a Pirates of the Caribbean medley, one that caused Jamie to lean over and say, “This is on my morning playlist!” to which I replied, “You know how I know you’re gay?” Earlier, I’d tried to convince him a ballet dancer’s clit ring was visible through her leotard as he squinted like a pervert, the kind of devilish brotherly love the world’s greatest living virtuoso vocalist can yield from his public. Truly transcendent.

The one show already lined up for 2026 is a trip to see Cass McCombs, a date booked at a tiny, standing room only venue, a fact I made peace with because it’s a chance to see him play songs from an album that, were I to rank 2025’s best, would be near the top. It’d be inconceivable to finalize a year in musical review without reporting on a recent trip to what has become my hometown record store, a place ten minutes north where my number is programmed in their phone, yielding instances like one when I called to hear, “Hi, Adam. Howzit goin’?” only to reply in jest, “Just wanted to say hello. Bye, Joanne!” In my post-Music Outlet career, it’s nice to walk in a store where the two people working—shout out to the homey Dave!—beam when greeting me, laugh each time I go to their restroom while loudly broadcasting that I’m off to do cocaine, and feel special in the way I know select regulars at The Outlet did when spending time with me. 

During a visit last month, I conversed with a man who asked if I grew up in the area, and upon learning I did, inexplicably referenced a 2001 car accident that killed one of my childhood best friends, a guy named Scott with whom I’d lost touch by the time of his death. The shopper in question had been riding shotgun in that same car for most of the day, but after they stopped for SoBe drinks and Funyuns, Scott demanded to sit up front, the car crashing into a tree an hour later, an accident that occurred three days before Christmas and rocked my hometown. In thinking about Scott, I recalled playing soccer with him in his backyard, the place where I first saw a snake, the harmless demon slithering by my feet and scaring me into the house as he casually picked it up and moved it to the neighbor’s yard. When Dave told the man, named Colin, to summon my expertise concerning which of the two Rolling Stones mono records in his hand he should buy, I instructed him to go with the better of the two albums (Out of Our Heads) and settled for the other one (No. 2). That night, I flashed to an impromptu Scott-affiliated memory, one I’d unintentionally buried in my mind. One foggy afternoon, Scott’s older sister, a girl who my memory insists was much taller than me (and eighteen or so months older), urged me to step into a walk-in closet at their house. Inside it, we removed our pants and rubbed our genitals together, engaging in what we thought was a realistic simulation of intercourse. Five or so seconds later, her mother called her name and I, a kind-hearted kid, did not disparage her for being a tease while pointing at my blue balls. And then the moment went dormant for almost thirty-five years. I reveal this now not to shock or appall, but rather to reaffirm how being happy and content with one’s musical life carries significant weight in assimilating those same attributes synchronously into the other facets of one’s life, the past not merely prologue but also protean, the otherwise forgotten adolescent snapshot of making arrhythmic music in a closet a harbinger of my musical madness to come, no pun intended.