Welcome to my weekly column “What I’ve Been Listening To,” where I publish a post every Sunday with my 5×5 collage of most-listened releases (which is sourced by my Last.fm account and made into a collage via this site). I do not intend these to be lengthy write-ups, but I like to include notes on my listening habits, discoveries, etc.
- This listening week started with the ending of the road trip mentioned in the preceding post, and I found myself with a few fixations that nearly lasted me the whole week: multiple listens through Eve by Emery, Loopified by Dirty Loops, and Frengers by Mew. Those are all masterpieces in my book. Also, as I continued working on my newly published Relient K Ranking and Reviews post, I enjoyably spent additional time with a handful of their albums.
- I started the Baroness discography this week. I’ll be finishing it next week, but it’s been a blast. I loved the band’s newest album, Gold & Grey, when it released in 2019, but I waited until now (for no good reason) to explore the rest of the band’s output — and it’s all been absurdly high quality at this point.
- A second listen through Say Things That Matter by M.A.G.S. confirmed that it is one of my favorite albums of the year; I decided to check out his self-titled debut, as well, and it mostly displayed how much he leveled up in between releases. Say Things That Matter has enough cross-genre mastery to appeal to fans of summery pop, upbeat rock, or melodic R&B.
- If you like alternative rock with awesome guitar riffs and great dynamics, I cannot recommend Forever Changed more highly. They released only two albums: The Need to Feel Alive in 2005 and Chapters in 2006, both of which have been cemented as two of my favorite rock albums, period.
- I don’t remember exactly what sparked this, but on Thursday of this week, I decided to spend the day listening through all four albums by Jesse McCartney (who recently announced that his long-awaited fifth album is coming soon). He is one of the oddest ducks in my list of all-time favorite artists, but I have a special love for his music — and his live shows are also uniformly spectacular. Going through his albums again was really fun. I’ll wait until the new album drops to make a full “Ranking and Reviews” post for him, but if you’re unfamiliar with his non-singles, I highly recommend checking out 2014’s In Technicolor, his best album and my personal favorite from this past decade’s massive fad of 80’s throwback pop.
- August 27 was a stacked release date, with most of the attention of the internet going to GLOW ON by Turnstile. But the runaway favorite for me was Asbestos Weak Hood by Narrow / Arrow, and I also greatly enjoyed Umbra by Grayscale, maybe next time by Allie, and Marlo by Ridgeway. Comment below if you enjoy any of the recommendations you find here!
Author’s Note: The reason I created this website and write these articles stems from my belief that artists should support other artists, in the same way that art inspires art. My debut album Unfall is available now and I’d love for you to hear it. You can click here to Spotify pre-save “I Don’t,” the first single for my upcoming sophomore album.
Chase Tremaine 