October 2022

• Blondie—Against the Odds 1974-1982: I've slowly integrated a lot of 70s/80s CBGB into my worldview but this is my first foray into Blondie. Numero Group, the set's curator, always does a bangup job on historical context—this was a lot of the draw for me. The big aha with this set is how much of a constructed artifice Debbie Harry's persona, and Blondie as a whole, represented—not pop, but Pop Art.
• Grateful Dead—In and Out of the Garden: Madison Square Garden '81, '82, '83: the annual Dead.net box set is always fun to wade through. No Dark Star, but in my mind the turn of the 80s is this shining period when 60s musicians were still vital even as they were being challenged by punk/new wave/downtown. The box is beautiful too.
• Wilco—Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Super Deluxe Edition: I kinda appreciated Wilco when Yankee Hotel Foxtrot came out, but like a fine Belgian Dark Strong this work is just getting better over time. YHF is one of the foundational documents of 21st century rock—the songs, Jim O'Rourke's sterling production, the story of the band's fights with Warner Brothers and each other, the weird pre-echoes of 9/11. The box shows how many different paths they could have gone down with this music; the fact that they made all the right choices with the final album doesn't make the alternative takes any less enjoyable.
• Pink Floyd—Animals 2018 remix: Speaking of fighting bandmates, this one should have been released years ago but wasn't because Roger Waters and David Gilmour couldn't agree on the liner notes to include. As a result, this was finally released without any. Ironic given that the album's lyrics are entirely about the inability of people to exhibit humanity to one another. The real draw for me was the 5.1 mix—looking forward to getting a quite hour in my living room to wallow in the misanthropy.

Tusk & Chisel Oyster Gose