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• 2023 Albums #13

  • Album: Kerplunk
  • Artist: Green Day
  • Year: 1992
  • Spotify link

  I’ve been on a big Green Day kick recently. They were my favourite band for a very long time, but I’d fallen out of listening to them. Kerplunk is a fun one to go back to.

  It’s got that raw, indie, pre-big time sound. It’s not polished. But it’s got some great songs; One for the Razorbacks is a great poppy punk song, I’d forgotten how much I loved that in particular. One Of My Lies is another.

  And I’d forgotten they did silly songs too. Dominated Love Slave is a parody of a country song, and it’s been stuck in my head for days because it’s catchy and stupid.

  I love Green Day. American Idiot was fundamental to my later teenage years. Warning was the first album I remember buying. Nimrod and Dookie are classics. Kerplunk reminds me of that deep dive, when you discover a band you really enjoy and just want to hear more, and sink into their back catalogue.

  

  21 October 2023

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  • 2023 albums

• 2023 Albums #12

  • Album: Bleed American
  • Artist: Jimmy Eat World
  • Year: 2001
  • Spotify link

  Fun fact about Bleed American: it was released two months before 9/11, so it swiftly got renamed to be an eponymous album in case it was considered insensitive. And the lead track got renamed to Salt Sweat Sugar. Which both actually work better to my mind.

  I love the balance on this album between calm, mellow songs and fast-paced rock energy. For example, how it goes from The Middle to Your House to Sweetness and back again to Hear You Me. There are two relatively different styles, but they work together, and there's not a single bad song on the whole album.

  Talking of Sweetness, that was the first Jimmy Eat World song I ever heard, on a Kerrang! compilation album (remember those things?), and I think it's still my favourite of their songs. The energy, the melody, the anthemic singalong "whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa-oa" through the verses...

  ---

  2023 Goal

  I had a goal this year to listen to 12 albums, and this was the one I chose to hit the goal. It's just a great album and a fun way to hit the target. I don't plan to stop tracking them though; while I enjoy playlists and randomly selecting songs, this project has shown me how great a whole album can be when it's put together just right.

  

  5 May 2023

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  • 2023 albums

• 2023 Albums #11

  • Album: Enema of the State
  • Artist: Blink-182
  • Year: 1999
  • Spotify link

  I was watching videos from Blink-182's Coachella performance and reading the set list, I realised it was really heavily weighted to Enema of the State and Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. I already listened to Take Off recently, so I listened to Enema instead.

  There's just not one bad song. Puerile, sure. Some lyrics are quite dated, to childing 90s humour. But it's really catchy pop-punk, just pure nostalgic fun.

  If the new Blink-182 album is in the same vein as these two, and the setlist plus new song EDGING suggest as much, then we could be in for some classic Blink.

  

  18 April 2023

  • music
  • 2023 albums

• 2023 Albums #10

  • Album: Meteora
  • Artist: Linkin Park
  • Year: 2003
  • Spotify link

  I wouldn't have listened to this, if Spotify hadn't pushed the 20th anniversary version of the album. I haven't listened to Meteora, or Linkin Park at all, in years, it's just not stood out to me to go back to. Then I did.

  I was singing along to pretty much all of Chester's lines. I had completely forgotten how obsessed I was with Linkin Park in the early 2000s. This made me feel like a kid again, with my Discman's earphones constantly in my ears when I wasn't in school.

  On listening back, I think Faint and Numb are the only songs that have aged well. The rest has a really strong early 2000s nu-metal feel to it. But I loved it at the time, and it was fun to listen back to.

  

  12 April 2023

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  • 2023 albums

• 2023 Albums #9

  • Album: Take Off Your Pants and Jacket
  • Artist: Blink-182
  • Year: 2001
  • Spotify link

  I absolutely love Anthem Part Two, for two reasons. It’s a great guitar riff, both to listen to and to play; and it’s the intro to one of the best punk pop albums of all time.

  I was the perfect age for this, looking back. Newly teenage, completely ready for punk pop, songs about dating, and puerile humour. And I'd just started playing the guitar, so I got a book, an actual book, of the guitar tabs for the album, and played it for years. I picked up my guitar to try out the opening riff to Anthem Part Two and I can play it from memory, after over a decade of neglecting my guitar.

  I did a sound production module in my Higher Music class at school, and chose to record Stay Together For the Kids for it. I must have heard this song thousands of times in intricate detail, listening to small sections over and over and over of both the original and my appalling cover of it. And I'll happily listen to it over and over again.

  The same applies to the whole record. Whether it's the stupider songs like Happy Holidays You Bastard, or the hits like First Date and Rock Show, or the deep cuts like Give Me One Good Reason, I don't think there's one song without some formative memory for me.

  Plus they're all just fucking great.

  

  20 February 2023

  • music
  • 2023 albums

• 2023 Albums #8

  • Album: Coming Home
  • Artist: New Found Glory
  • Year: 2006
  • Spotify link

  I remember my first thought when I heard the opening of Oxygen: "holy crap they got a new singer". No, he just grew as a singer. And that's this album for the whole band. They really grew; their writing and their sound.

  It's a New Found Glory punk pop album, but it's so different, because it feels mature without being a change in sound. It's just refined, improved. NFG at their peak, even though it's not often held up as one of their most popular.

  And it is so positive too. It's really hopeful, really sweet at times, even. Songs like Coming Home and Too Good To Be, especially.

  Or Boulders:

  "Put down your arms and wrap them both right around me."

  

  30 January 2023

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  • 2023 albums

• 2023 Albums #7

  • Album: Blackened Sky
  • Artist: Biffy Clyro
  • Year: 2002
  • Spotify link

  Biffy have moved on a lot since their debut, sounding a lot more polished and much less grungy. But I still remember sitting in the soundproof music studio in high school, with my guitar plugged in and turned up, playing songs like Justboy and 57 with friends.

  Nobody really knew who they were yet, just some local Ayrshire band a few years older than us, who'd done what we wanted to do and made it into Kerrang! From what I remember, The Vertigo of Bliss, their second album, was about to come out, and it marked them getting a bit heavier. The idea that one of their songs would be an X Factor winner's single was ludicrous.

  This is the Biffy Clyro that I remember. This is the music that filled my formative years. I still absent-mindedly play the chord progression from Justboy on my guitar.

  'mon the Biff.

  

  26 January 2023

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  • 2023 albums

• 2023 Albums #6

  • Album: Infinity On High
  • Artist: Fall Out Boy
  • Year: 2007
  • Spotify link

  I loved this album when it first came out. Looking back now, I feel a bit wistful about it, because it's when Fall Out Boy changed direction, moving away from the pop punk I really loved on "Take This To Your Grave" and "From Under The Cork Tree". The final regular track, "G.I.N.A.S.F.S.", feels like a goodbye to that original sound.

  I found it strangely hard to listen to this time around; there were a lot of tracks that I wanted to skip, like "The (After) Life Of The Party" and "I've Got All This Ringing In My Ears And None On My Fingers". And at the same time, some that I was fully singing along to even though I hadn't even thought about the lyrics in a decade or more, like "Hum Hallelujah". When I first listened to it, I had the whole thing on repeat, but now I think it's got a few highlights and a lot of filler.

  

  ---

  There are some lyrics that I always really loved in "Hum Hallelujah".

  I love you in the same way there's a chapel in a hospital.

  I thought I loved you but it's just how you looked in the light.

  I never quite realised why those lines struck me so strongly when I first listened. I think I just thought they sounded clever. Looking back now, it was a great reflection of the relationship I was in at the time.

  24 January 2023

  • music
  • 2023 albums

• 2023 Albums #5

  • Album: Handwritten
  • Title: The Gaslight Anthem
  • Year: 2012
  • Spotify link

  I bloody love The Gaslight Anthem. They've got a new album due out this year - their first in almost a decade - and I couldn't be more excited for new music from them. Listening to the Gaslight Anthem is my happy place.

  Anyway, Handwritten is a great rock album. "45", "Here Comes My Man" and "Mae" are some of my favourite songs, and listening to this album again for the first time in a while was fantastic. The whole reason I'm pushing myself to listen to more albums this year.

  

  19 January 2023

  • music
  • 2023 albums

• 2023 Albums #4

  • Album: Old Souls
  • Artist: Deaf Havana
  • Year: 2013
  • Spotify link

  I hear two songs from this and get the feels:

  "Everybody's Dancing and I Want to Die" sends shivers up my spine. I very clearly remember sitting on a bus in Dalston in 2014, after a break up, listening to this and disappearing into my thoughts. It's a strange sensation to have such strong, sad feelings triggered when listening to a song, but also not want to stop because the song itself is so, so good.

  The second song is "Boston Square". I don't have a story about that. It's just really fucking good.

  I love Deaf Havana, although I usually find I jump around their back catalogue rather than listening to a whole album, so it's been a while since I've heard much of Old Souls. Listening to this in its entirety was a fun experience.

  

  10 January 2023

  • music
  • 2023 albums

• 2023 Albums #3

  • Album: Screen Violence
  • Artist: Chvrches
  • Year: 2021
  • Spotify link

  I love how dark this feels. There’s no clear theme to it, you can’t say this is an angry or a depressed album. It’s just really dark in lots of ways.

  There are songs like “California”, “Asking For A Friend”, and “Violent Delights”, which feel personal, and sad.

  There are songs that are much more fantastical, like “How Not To Drown”.

  And then there are songs like “He Said She Said” and “Good Girls”, which are angry.

  I’ve always loved their music, but in Screen Violence, Chvrches really hit a (dark) lyrical high as well. One of my favourite albums, I’ve been listening to this pretty constantly since it came out a couple of years ago.

  

  9 January 2023

  • music
  • 2023 albums

• 2023 Albums #2

  • Album: In With The Out Crowd
  • Artist: Less Than Jake
  • Year: 2006
  • Spotify link

  I hadn’t listened to this album in years, and boy was I surprised. I’d either ignored, forgotten, or not understood, just how depressed Less Than Jake were when they wrote this. Songs like “The Rest of My Life”:

  Let me apologise while I’m still alive.

  Or the entirety of “Fall Apart”.

  I enjoyed it though. Less Than Jake always have great music, and this is an album I’d listened to a lot when it came out. It brought back good memories.

  

  2 January 2023

  • music
  • 2023 albums

• 2023 Albums #1

  • Album: Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace
  • Artist: The Offspring
  • Year: 2008
  • Spotify link

  I love the mix on this album. Some tracks, like Kristy, Are You Doing Okay? and Fix You, have a great rocky ballad feel to them. I love singing along to that stuff, it really brings out my 2000s emo side.

  Then you get the tracks where The Offspring excel. Your Gonna Go Far, Kid and Stuff Is Messed Up. Angry, punky, political. I love it.

  Funny story about this album. I bought it in Walmart in Florida on holiday. I had no idea it was censored. So when I first heard Your Gonna Go Far, Kid years later and heard the line “Now dance, fucker, dance” I was really surprised. Like “oh, yeah, there was a weird gap there before! That does sound better doesn’t it.” Fucking prudishness from Walmart.

  

  2 January 2023

  • music
  • 2023 albums

• 2023 Albums #0

  • Album: Warning
  • Artist: Green Day
  • Year: 2000
  • Spotify link

  For all the shit it got at the time, this really holds up. It just dials down the punk a bit, when it seems like fans wanted another Nimrod. I can’t pick a bad song from it, it’s just missing the big bang songs like Time Of Your Life. But show me Church On Sunday, Minority and Macy’s Day Parade and I’ll show you a good album.

  This is a special album for me. It was the first “proper” album I bought. It marks a clear line in my childhood, with football shirts and 90s pop on one side, and baggy jeans, skateboards, and alternative/punk (as iTunes always insisted on calling it) on the other.

  So maybe it is mediocre and I’m biased by nostalgia. But one thing that sticks with me is reading Green Day’s opinion on it, years later. This was a direction they enjoyed taking, and they were disappointed by fan reaction. That’s why they started side projects like Foxboro Hottubs, and didn’t even want to say it was them for a long time.

  I really loved Warning as my introduction to Green Day and that whole scene. And I still love it now.

  

  31 December 2022

  • music
  • 2023 albums