Masterlist Audit
Just a bit of housekeeping
After working this whole ‘amateur album reviewer’ thing for a few years, I have a system. Much of this system entails a spreadsheet.
Yes. I’m one of those guys.
Anyhow, if I find an artist I like, they go on the spreadsheet. If an artist consistently produces poor quality music, disbands, or promotes problematic ideas, they come off of it. This gives me something to check against as the year is coming to a close, ensuring I don’t miss any potentially-amazing albums — this is especially useful for smaller, up-and-coming artists who aren’t going to make any announcement lists.
And I definitely caught a couple of those this year. After all of the additions to, and removals from, the list this year, there are now 434 artists on it.
Sampler Playlist
I also used this year’s audit to complete an idea I’d had previously: a big ol’ sampler playlist. Every artist on my spreadsheet has at least two songs on this list, taken from different albums as often as possible, and hand-picked whenever I have the confidence to do so.1
Sure, you could intentionally search for songs to sample for an artist you’re interested in. But if you’re not sure what you’re interested in, you could just pop this monstrosity on shuffle and see what comes up. You may find something new that you didn’t know you were interested in.
The goal, ultimately, is to further break this down into genre samplers of at least fifty songs each to help illustrate each genre’s (current and historical) defining traits. But that’s a long-term project.
Found Albums
And now, the main reason for this post: the list of albums discovered during the big audit. There are fourteen total, and, as of the time of this posting, half of them have been reviewed (links included); Lacey Sturm and Malinda are on deck, and they sounded promising after just one listen
American Authors will be culled from the list next year after this terrible outing.
Nickel Creek wasn’t on the list, but Chris Thile is, and he’s in this group, which is why this is out of order, alphabetically.
I have no idea how I missed this one earlier this year.
Lacey Sturm
Malinda
Tanith
The Band Camino
The Chainsmokers
The Maine
Therion* (Dec 15)
The seven remaining albums above are joined, solely, by As December Falls, currently, as the final eight reviews of the year. I may still pick up one or two, before the year is out, through recommendations or from other outlets’ year-end lists, but I’m mostly content at this point.
I should note that the Therion album has not released yet, and will be out this Friday, December 15. This is the final album in their planned Leviathan trilogy, but the group also went through a label change this year, which caused some delays in this album’s release.
Once these reviews are done, it’ll be time to start the work of ranking the best ones across the whole year — at least, among the 1622 albums on my list. Reviewing other top album lists shows that there was still a lot that I missed this year, and I wish I had time to pick up a few of them.
Just because I’m tracking them for new releases doesn’t mean that I’m intimately familiar with their music.
At present count, including those I haven’t rated yet.