We all know Spotify and other big tech music streaming services are evil. They take advantage of artists, their algorithmic business models are designed to flatten the cultural bell curve, and they directly support ICE. I quit using Spotify ages ago, but since that decision I’ve struggled to find a cloud-based streaming platform that was ethical to artists, aligned with my personal political worldview, and accessible to me everywhere and on all my devices.
My first move after Spotify was to switch to Apple’s iTunes Match, not to be confused with Apple Music (which has a similar business model ickiness to Spotify). Rather, iTunes Match sync’d my locally-stored music collection with Apple’s cloud servers, making my purchased music collection accessible on all my Apple devices. This worked well for me for several years. I was able to purchase digital music directly from artists or via ethical outlets like Bandcamp, import the files into my music library on my laptop, and poof – the music would be available on my phone.
Somewhere along the line though, iTunes Match broke. I think it coincided with the release of iOS 26. After that update new additions to my collection would not sync to my phone. I was heartbroken.
My next step was to sync my collection to my phone via a hardwire, like a Neanderthal. This was inconvenient but manageable, and I found the offline availability of the collection to be wonderful. My collection is large, however, and I needed to curate what I was syncing to my phone due to storage capacity. I needed to find a better way to have access to all my music.
Enter Navidrome. I never read blog post comments, but a note from Thomas Brand on Manton’s post about Spotify burnout was enough to peak my interest. Navidrome is a free, open source personal streaming service. After a few minutes reading the docs, I decided to give it a go.
The first thing I needed was a place to host the Navidrome instance. I chose PikaPods because they have an out-of-the-box managed integration with Navidrome and the hosting cost estimate for a collection like mine was ~ $3.00 per month. The price is right!
Creating pod and installing the Navidrome app took me about 10 minutes. I uploaded a Nirvana’s In Utero as a test to see how it all worked. Listening in the browser on my laptop, it sounded great. Could Navidrome become my radio-friendly unit shifter?
But what about listening on my phone? Navidrome doesn’t have a native iOS app, but there are several options that support streaming from Navidrome. After playing around with a few, I settled on Amperfy which is open source, feature-rich and seems to have the most elegant UI of the mobile apps I tried. Yep, works as advertised. Francis Farmer did indeed get her revenge on Seattle via Amperfy’s CarPlay integration as I drove to pick up my kid last evening.
With a quick, multi-device test complete. I bit the bullet and transferred my entire collection via SFTP. It took most of the night, but I am now live with a cross-platform, multi-device, ethical streaming workflow that I think will serve me well into the future. I’m excited to have access to my entire collection on all my devices again.
It’s been a long time since I was out late on a school night for a rock show, but when Justin mentioned that FACS was playing in town on a Monday night, I was game to check them out. I’ve been a fan for a while and their 2025 release Wish Defense is fantastic. They ripped through a solid set consisting of both old and new songs, and sounded great.
It’s Bandcamp Friday, where Bandcamp waves their cut and passes 100% of all proceeds on to artists and labels. I always try to grab some wishlist records on these days. Today I picked up new releases from Mandy, Indiana and Ratboys. If you’re a Bandcamp freak like me, what’s on your list?
I’m loving this new EP IV of Wands from Boston-based Main Era. Super noisy, but with enough structure to chill with. Some might say shoegazey slowcore. Whatever you wanna call it, it’s rad. Bonus points for using jigsaws, power drills and hammers as instruments.
Really digging this LP Forward from Santa Cruz-based First Day Back. They certainly have their own vibe going on, but I also hear shades of vintage Rainer Maria and The Get Up Kids. Had I discovered it earlier, it might have been on my favorites list from 2025.
What a year it’s been for music! There have been so many awesome records released this year and it’s been extremely difficult narrowing this list down to my ten favorites. So hard, in fact, I’ve included five honorable mentions at the end. Please take no pretense or judgement in these choices, they are simply the albums released this calendar year that I connected with most. Without further ado and in no particular order, here are my favorite records of 2025.
I know these are in no particular order, but this record may be favorite of the year. It’s definitely my most played record. The songwriting on this one is just impeccable. Pile brings an intensity and sharp edge to their performance, but the melodies and lyrics are just as solid as the musicality. They’ve been around for a long time, but this record was my gateway into their back catalog, which is also very good.
Glory is what happens when amazing musicianship meets smart & evocative songwriting meets unique production. Seriously, listen to this one with headphones. Not airbuds, but really good headphones. You will hear layers upon layers of dynamics that seem to surround in 360º. And the voice. It’s a thing of majesty.
I never got into Paramore. I think I just missed them when they were doing their thing back in the day. Williams was the frontwoman for that band, but I can’t really hear much Paramore influence in these songs. And these songs are fire. Eighteen of them and not one is a dud. My favorite track is True Believer. If you haven’t seen her performance of this song on Jimmy Fallon, check it out.
This record is shot out of a cannon. One hundred miles an hour from start to finish. The Armed doesn’t have much in common with bands like Refused or At the Drive-In, but the first time I heard this record I had the same feeling I had when I heard The Shape of Punk to Come or In Casino Out back in the day. It feels like they’re earnestly pushing forward with something important and new with these songs.
Have you ever had that weird feeling after you spin a new record for the first time and it feels like it’s one that’s been in your collection forever? Not it a trite or unoriginal way, but like when your nose catches a scent of something memorable from your past and transports you back there instantly, subconsciously. That’s what Highwalllow & Supermoon Songs feels like to me. It’s folky and yodely, but in a head-noddin' way. Really beautiful mandolin & guitar melody lines layer themselves under shaky & pained vocals. There are some seriously great songs on this record.
I drove to the beach last September. It was a spur of the moment add-on to a work trip that had me in New Jersey anyway. The excursion to the shore was an occasion to meet up with some good friends from high school, who were all remarkably in town from disparate areas of the country for disparate reasons. The hang was spontaneous and real. There was 30 years of history among us. There were intoxicants. There was a seafood boil. There were memories. We shared laughs and tears. As the sunset brilliantly over the bay, someone put on this record and I lost my shit. It was the perfect vibe for that moment. Mellow, relaxed, orchestral. Deeply layered. Intense. Familiar but fresh. A fantastic record to enjoy with the ones you love.
There’s something about Saya Gray’s voice that I connect with. It has a unique texture. It’s rhythmic in a cool way. The songs on SAYA bring together acoustic artistry and digital production that create a sound that pulls you in and keeps you in from top to bottom. The melodies are wandering, from joyful to solemn, and they take you on a journey to someplace different from where you started listening.
It’s the year of our lord 2025, but the 90s are alive and well. The songs on this record from Die Spitz sound like they could have been performed on the stage at one of the early Lollapallooza tours. Simply put, these women shred and this record is one of my favorites released this year.
I don’t know much about They Are Gutting a Body of Water and I can’t remember how I heard about this record, but I love it. It’s so different. Some songs are noisy and experimental, some songs have hints of pop laced throughout. I hear something different each time I listen, and to me that’s the sign of a great record.
This record is insane. I’ll admit, after Justin recommended it and I first listened, I wasn’t totally into it. But after a few more listens I was fully on board the YHWH Nailgun train. I’ve never heard anything like this before. Complex time signatures, guitar synth, roto toms and some of the most guttural/spastic vocals make for a truly unique sound.
I started pulling a draft together for my annual ‘ten favorite records of the year’ post. Looking back at my notes and listening patterns, there was so much great music released in 2025, and I connected with a lot of it in meaningful ways. It will be difficult to edit the list down to ten!
When Pinegrove announced their hiatus/breakup a while back, I was heartbroken because they had become one of my absolute favorite bands. Even though they’re not actively making music, the band is releasing new work. Mapster is a crowd-sourced archive (submitted by fans) of live shows from their decade-plus run. Very well done and super cool to see the photos, videos and notes across the years.
In the mood for some Friday Free Jazz? Why not. Check out Plunge, a stellar debut record from London-based Flur. Hat tip to Dash Lewis who reviewed it over at Pitchfork.
I’m jamming hard to the new-ish Hayley Williams record, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party. Williams initially released the 18 songs separately as singles, but recently packaged them up into her preferred playlist. These songs are so good. It’s currently a front-runner for my record of the year.
A friend reached out the other day asking if a self-released EP my band put out back in the day was streaming anywhere online. It was not, so I uploaded it as a playlist to YouTube.
Released in late 1999, line (pause) line was the first and only recording we put out into the world. We toured a bit supporting it opening for bands like Midtown, The Juliana Theory, Further Seems Forever and the like, and I have some amazing memories from this period of my life.
I haven’t listened to it in ages, and thought I’d cringe a bit upon hearing it, but I’m cringing less than expected. It actually brought a smile to my face and unlocked those memories once again.
Let me know if you want the mp3 files and I can email them to you.
Iron Man was the first stong I learned to play on the guitar. After years of trying, I never was able to nail those solos in Crazy Train. My band covered Mamma I’m Coming Home at the middle school talent show. We lost a legend today. RIP Ozzy. \m/
I started the long and arduous process of cataloging my record collection, and thought it would be good to throw a quick page together using the Discogs API . I’ve got a long way to go in the cataloging effort, but I’m liking the way the collection page is coming together!
Our values as a publication—pro-worker, pro-artist, pro-active listening, anti-villainous corporations—did not align with many of Spotify’s actions and policies.
I learned a couple new things via this article too. The book they reference, Mood Machine, sounds fascinating. It’s on my to-read list. Also, I didn’t know this:
In April 2024, Spotify enacted a new policy that denied royalties to songs that collected less than 1,000 streams, causing artists to wonder what would stop the company from arbitrarily increasing that number in the future.
An AI “band” is racking up hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners on Spotify. What kind of world are we living in? Soon there will just be an opaque layer of robots between all human connection.
Texas is the Reason is reuniting for a run of shows and festivals this fall. Their 1996 debut (and only full-length to date) Do You Know Who You Are? was instrumental in my musical development and hooked me on the post-hardcore genre for decades. Stoked for the Pittsburgh show at Preserving Underground on September 16th!
We are now proud to announce that we are now 100 percent worker-owned! This aligns us further with our values—we believe the future of journalism will be led by workers—and means that we are truly DIY.
Just finished Red Letter Days, the debut memoir from Matt Pryor, guitarist & songwriter best known for his work with seminal post-hardcore band The Get Up Kids.
I’ve been a fan of TGUK since 1997. It was great learning about the early days & little known stories of the road. Recommended!
As a pre-teen in the early ’90s, few things lit me up like the newly emergent Seattle grunge scene. I had been playing guitar for several years by then and most of those early years were spent idolizing hair metal shredders and learning Guns N' Roses solos note for note. But then at some point in 1991 I heard the four-chord intro to Smells Like Teen Spirit and my life changed.
Those four chords showed me that music was meant to move you. Forget formality. Forget the polish. Those four chords opened up a new world of bands who wrote songs with raw emotion and intensity. One of those bands was Pearl Jam.
The first Pearl Jam song that hooked me was Alive. That intro lick was (and continues to be decades later) so fresh. Shortly after hearing it, I bought the Ten cassette and played it on repeat. It was in the walkman. It was in the deck of my parents' 1988 Dodge Caravan. I played it in my room over and over and over learning the hard-panned guitar parts played by Mike and Stone. Pearl Jam had become my favorite band.
When the lineup for Lollapalooza ‘92 was announced, with Pearl Jam playing in the 2nd slot between Lush and The Jesus and Mary Chain, I knew I had to find a way to be there when the tour came to nearby Scranton, Pennsylvania. Being only thirteen, getting there would not be easy. I had no friends that could drive and my parents were not keen on the idea of dropping their thirteen year-old son off into a grungy mosh pit.
I’ve written before about how supportive my dad was in my musical endeavors. After weeks of badgering him to go to the show, he relented and agreed to go with me. It wasn’t the coolest thing to go to a rock show with your dad, but nothing would stop me from being there.
Long story short, the concert was located at Montage Mountain Ski Resort in the Pocono Mountains and the parking situation was a nightmare. We couldn’t park near the venue and needed to park several miles from where the concert was taking place. Concert organizers were bussing attendees from remote parking locations up to the base of the mountain where the bands were performing. It took us several hours to get from where we parked to the location.
As we stepped off the yellow school bus at the base of the mountain, I heard in the distance the familiar sound of one of my favorite Pearl Jam songs, Porch. They were already playing. Back in those days there was no setlist.fm so I had no idea how far the band was into their set. Turns out, they were pretty far into it. By the time we got to a vantage point of the band, they were well into Rockin’ in the Free World, which would be their final song. I was bummed to miss most of their set, but to this day I feel extremely fortunate to have caught a glimpse of their brilliance at that stage of their career.
Fast forward 33 years. Between 1992 and 2025, I never had the chance to see Pearl Jam again. I continued to follow and admire the band, but getting to a show just never worked out. That all changed last Sunday night.
Earlier this year when the band announced a pair of Pittsburgh dates, I made it a mission to attend. The tickets were hard to get (thanks Ticketmaster) and a bit pricey, but I would not be denied. I scored two upper level tickets, and Jilly and I circled the date on the calendar.
To say Sunday night’s show was worth the wait is an understatement. It was the final show of their Dark Matter world tour, and the band blew the roof off PPG Paints Arena to a more-than-capacity crowd. The air was electric – a mix of die-hard fans who’d seen them dozens of times and people like me who’d waited decades for this moment. You could feel the anticipation building as the lights dimmed and the crowd roared.
Early set highlights included an urgent & powerful version of Why Go that folded perfectly into Deep, two of my favorite tracks from Ten. Elderly Woman… was amazing as well, especially when Eddie turned over vocal duties to the crowd for the outro. Hearts and thoughts, they fade away. Chills. As expected, Even Flow whipped the crowd into a frenzy for the remainder of the first set, which culminated in a frantic rendition of Rearviewmirror that left the crowd dizzy.
The band left the stage for a few minutes and came back to play a 10-song encore that included unexpected songs like Hunger Strike (dedicated to Chris Cornell) and Crazy Mary, setlist staples like Alive, Lukin and Yellow Ledbetter, and covers of Rockin' in the Free World and Little Wing, which closed out the night.
Eddie’s voice was so good and the band was super tight, seemingly firing on all cylinders. The energy was electric. It seemed like they were actually having fun. That’s rare to see in a band nearly four decades into their run. Pearl Jam is something truly special.
Reflecting back on this experience, I think it was worth the wait. It’s pretty cool that 33 years after I first saw the last bars of Rockin' in the Free World at Lollapalooza, I got a chance to see the full version at a distinctly different stage of life. I lost my dad a long time ago, but Little Wing was one of his favorite songs of all time and I can’t help but think the universe was smiling at me at that moment. He would have loved to hear Pearl Jam’s version.
I’m not sure if I’ll get the chance to see Pearl Jam again. To be completely honest, I’m not sure I want to. The experience from Sunday will be a lasting memory and part of me wants to leave it at that – captured and catalogued alongside the 1992 memory for decades to come.
I’m seeing Pearl Jam this weekend. Bucket list. First time seeing them, sort of. More on that weird circumstance in a future post. According to setlist.fm, they’re playing State of Love and Trust occasionally on this tour. Fingers crossed they play it on Sunday night. I will absolutely lose my shit.
Andy Cush in Hearing Things on quitting artist-abusing platforms like Spotify:
Music just sounds better when you’re not streaming it. Not only because the audio quality is often literally higher, but because you’re forging a connection with what you’re hearing that’s strengthened by your choices.
Seminal post-punk band Swing Kids reunited for one show in their hometown of San Diego last month and there’s a fantastic documentary that captures the performance, rehearsals leading up to the show and candid interviews with the band. It’s a fun watch.
I just learned that Perfume Genius is playing in nearby Cleveland on Father’s Day. You’re damn right I’m playing that card and packing up the whole family for a roadtrip to the show.
The new Mars Volta record, Lucro sucio; Los ojos del vacio, is out today. For selfish reasons, I wish it had been released one week earlier because I saw the band last Friday and their set was comprised entirely of this new collection of songs. They sounded great and these songs translated well in the live setting, but I wish I had the opportunity to connect with the record before catching them in person. Alas.
The songs on Lucro sucio are a significant departure from previous releases. Gone are the angular and edgy post-hardcore elements from the band’s early days. Instead, these new tunes offer a jazz-infused take that still rocks, albeit with softer edges.
The songs are mellow and smooth, and blend together into a vibe that is best appreciated in the gestalt. Cover to cover. There are 18 songs on the record, but it might as well be one extended track. Song starts and endings are blurred. They morph into each other with surprising ease.
Cedric’s voice is perhaps the strongest it’s been. He floats between low range and falsetto effortlessly, as key melodic themes re-emerge throughout the record. I hate the term ‘concept album’ but it feels like that in a very good way, thanks to Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s strong musical direction and songwriting. In the live setting last week, Omar was like a mad scientist up on stage, jumping between instruments and conducting the band with the passion he’s become known for. You can hear that energy and passion in the Lucro sucio recordings.
This one will be in my heavy rotation for a while I think.
