[You would think that a year's lockdown—more or less—would be a golden age at squarefoot.blog. I have no explanation for why keeping a blog didn't feel like a good use of my time. So this post is several months late according to the calendar of my expectations for myself.] 2020 was THE Covid year. We're … Continue reading 2020, My Year in Listening
Category: Vinyl
Grad school upended how I listen to music. Mostly, music with discernible lyrics was out. As you'll see, I listened to a lot of Spanish language music. But this was year of mostly classical music, including more baroque music than I care to admit. This is the year where the occasional, subtle dissonances that you … Continue reading 2019, My Year in Listening
Automatic for the People was never my favorite R.E.M. album. Later, the inescapable ubiquity of "Man on the Moon," and "Everybody Hurts" on radio tarnished the thing for me. Between the movie tie-in and the overly joyful "Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight," it began to feel trite and commercially exposed. At least in comparison to the music I was … Continue reading Etude (Record Review): R.E.M., Automatic for the People