Autobiographical Order Nos. 1178-1180: Bob Marley and the Wailers x 2, and Bailter Space

Bob Marley and the Wailers - Catch a Fire OK, folks, this is a somewhat significant milestone in that after 39 years of not buying Bob Marley records, I eventually started buying Bob Marley records. I spent much of my life feeling as if his music was oversaturated, and in Southern California, as it is...

Autobiographical Order Nos. 1175-1177: R.E.M., Dos Santos, and Rocket from the Crypt

R.E.M. - New Adventures in HiFi A few months ago (a year ago? I don't even know anymore), a Twitter prompt was going around, asking what the best American rock band was (if it wasn't The Grateful Dead, if I'm remembering this right...). Well, it's not the Grateful Dead from my perspective—they've never been my...

Autobiographical Order Nos. 1169-1171: Superchunk, Circuit des Yeux, and La Luz

Superchunk - No Pocky for Kitty I've put off these daily record blogs for about a month and in that time, I realized that Autobiographical Order reached its 10th anniversary. I've been writing my silly record blog for 10 years. Just for fun, because I can. And it's still kind of neat to take the...

Autobiographical Order Nos. 1157-1159: Coil, Dummy, and Kiefer

Coil - Love's Secret Domain As I explained back in my post on Musick to Play in the Dark, I developed an obsession with Coil during the pandemic, one that more or less came about once I realized how much music they had and how relatively little of it I had actually heard. But it's...

Autobiographical Order Nos. 1154-1156: John Coltrane, Lungfish, and Ænigmatum

John Coltrane - Ballads John Coltrane is a legend—understatement doesn't really enter the conversation when talking about someone whose imprint on popular music as we know it is as large as is. I use "popular" in a broad sense here, because we're discussing jazz, after all. Coltrane's body of work tends to be overshadowed by...

Autobiographical Order Nos. 1148-1150: Depeche Mode, Moor Mother, and Donald Byrd

Depeche Mode - Playing the Angel I've been spending a lot of time with Depeche Mode lately, in part because I wrote a long piece about Violator for the Treble 100 series, which perhaps isn't my favorite essay that I've written for the series, but still pretty good! (I'm a harsh judge of my own...

Autobiographical Order Nos. 1145-1147: The Bug, EXEK x 2

The Bug - Fire Kevin Martin has been around a long time, a frequent collaborator with Godflesh's Justin Broadrick in projects like God, Ice, and Techno Animal. The Bug's been his solo project for a while, however, and his 2008 album London Zoo brought him a good deal of acclaim for its intense dancehall and...

Autobiographical Order Nos. 1142-1144: Low x2, and Bobbie Gentry

Low - Trust At this stage of Autobiographical Order, my wife and I are living in Richmond in a temporary apartment situation that was otherwise comfortable but somewhat awkward—all of our stuff was still in boxes and so we never really allowed ourselves to get too comfortable before eventually moving into a house. But after...

Autobiographical Order Nos. 1139-1141: The Body & Big Brave, Grouper, and World Domination Enterprises

The Body & Big Brave - Leaving None But Small Birds In the past decade, some of the most exciting albums in metal have been collaborative efforts. In fact, I put together a list about it back in 2022, which illustrates my point: Chelsea Wolfe & Converge, Sumac & Keiji Haino, The Body & Uniform,...

Autobiographical Order Nos. 1136-1138: Paramore, Little Simz, and Julien Baker

Paramore - Paramore We've reached a landmark in Autobiographical Order: The first records I obtained after moving to Richmond. So from this point forward, I'm no longer in San Diego. However, two of these I did technically buy while still living there. The Internet! Huzzah! I ordered this from Discogs just before we left, in...