When the calendar rolls over from November to December, it becomes easy to get lost in little reveries, looking back on the year. We live in an age of lists, when Buzzfeed and all of its identical websites present everything in such orderly fashion, a delightful illusion of organization and sense.  

Thoughts and dreams shift – it is the way of living – rerouted by necessity and acts beyond my imagining. I have become not-so-much-a-writer and more-so-a-photographer in the past year, though I’ll put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard. Less to write fiction and poetry, but more-so to write about life, living, music. Music more than much of anything else. Jess may argue that music is my most chief interest, though I maintain it’s holding her in the black predawn quiet.

Life is never exactly sensible, but we might as well make it so.  

So here’s a list.  Shantel asked me to select my 10 favorite shows of the year, but that’s just not possible. In a year when I covered 4 festivals, 2 mini-festivals (looking at you, First Thursday), and something like 60 shows (most with several acts), I set a few arbitrary rules: I could only include 1 festival, 1 First Thursday, and had to confine myself to 1 show for artists I saw more than once.  I didn’t exactly conform to the last rule, but those are gentle cheats.  

Without further ado and presented in chronological order (because, by whatever is held holy, I could not select a single favorite show), here’s my list.  

Aaron Lee Tasjan at Club 603

Aaron played two sets here, 9 days apart.  In the fever dream of my memory, these happened on the same day, so I conceptualize them as one show. I find it hard to articulate how much his songs have meant to me this year; he released Karma for Cheap Reincarnated in August, its slowed-down beauty an honest and powerful thing.  I wrote about these shows, which you can read here.  It might be the best I’ve written this year.  

Pedro the Lion at Club 603

This will be a theme.  Club 603 is my favorite place to listen to songs. 

I fell under David Bazan’s thrall in the last half-decade or so, once resistant to listening to his songs after losing my faith.  I’d so often heard that Pedro the Lion is a Christian band.

And maybe so, to a point; the experience of doubt should feel familiar to any currently or formerly religious person, and David has always imbued his music with a complex sense of doubting, of being human. 

Phoenix ended the year as one of my clear favorites.  From “Quietest Friend” (*quiet sob as I think about my own behavior*) to the impossible strength of “Powerful Taboo”, the aching ennui in “Model Home”, and the unknowable “My Phoenix” with its tensions of home, lost faith, regained/repurposed faith.  Seeing these songs in a living room, a full band.  What a privilege. 

The National and Courtney Barnett at The Anthem

The National are a band.

I suppose that’s an easy enough distillation of reality, but it fails to describe the truth and depth. In reality, to describe them as just a band represents a kind of injustice; they are, at their core, five friends who became a band almost out convenience, all of them leaving good jobs to make a go at writing and singing songs. Music functioned as a means to release the pressure, to let off the steam from their so-called good jobs, from the ennui implicit to living in a capital world. Their first two records passed by with little more than some attention in the press, and then Alligator got some critical acclaim and sold pretty well, but it was Boxer that resulted in them becoming the beast we see today.

The National are from Cincinnati, but also Brooklyn. Songs colored by the Ohio River and the long shadows of the Carew and the PNC Towers, but just as much by the Manhattan claustrophobia and the anxious nausea of a Brooklyn life; from the glories of Graeter’s in their hometown to the wild menagerie of cultures that define most of New York, though less so maybe then when they first rippled out of Brooklyn’s dirty rivers.

I found and find something in The National’s songs it’s not easy to explain. I can find myself in them, the life that I wanted, the life that I had planned. Or maybe the life that was planned for me. There is a tension between those things, an almost-inexpressible thing that can be deeply felt, and The National deliver that sense of emotion, that unease, that strain. 

Matt Berninger dances on the edge of a blade in every show, just barely avoiding a loss of sense.  He cultivates that tension, the band around him builds skyscrapers of sound, and the audience explodes with him.  It is an almost-wanton thing, sensual, yet dark.  

Courtney Barnett played before them that night, her trio tied tight. She loped around the stage, wielding her guitar like a weapon, her voice its trigger.  I will never forget when she walked off the stage after crashing her guitar to the ground, turning up the feedback.  No wave. Just noise. 

Solid Sound

I don’t need to write anything other than those two words.  Go read my article.  Just thinking about this weekend is enough to save my life when the shadows suck away my serotonin.  

Kurt Vile at Ottobar

I had the great fortune of seeing Kurt play the Ottobar alongside some of my closest friends in the world, within arm’s reach of Kurt on the stage.  You can read about that show here, but I feel compelled to add something to the write-up: “Wakin On a Pretty Daze” is one of the best songs in the modern musical lexicon, and on that night, the way the song looped and smoked into the ether is and will forever be etched into my memory.  

First Thursday, August

This edition of First Thursday was, without any kind of doubt, the biggest and bestest of them all.  Susto, Steve Gunn, Bailen, Seratones, Dylan LeBlanc, Strand of Oaks.  Six great acts that ripped summer’s most beautiful sunset into existence.  That night marked the third of five times I saw Strand of Oaks this year (a few gratuitous shots from those shows are included in the mix below), and he more than delivered again.  In a different world, I’d have written even more about his music here.  Eraserland is a perfect record.  I still can’t believe WTMD managed to put together a bill with this much firepower.  

Gregory Alan Isakov, Red Rocks

Jess and I flew into Denver and planned an entire road trip around this show, this experience.  This is a band and songwriter that fills every moment with easy transcendence, and having his songs cascade off the red rocks, bounce between the natural walls of the amphitheater, is an experience that cannot be replicated or even keenly understood.   

“Dark, Dark, Dark” and “This Empty Northern Hemisphere” back to back early in the set; the wandering love of “Amsterdam” or the quiet love of “She Always Takes It Black”.  

Or when they invited Mountain Man onstage to sing “If I Go, I’m Goin’”, adding tearstains to the rain-soaked cheeks of the audience.  

Or the set-closing and volatile “Liars”, Jess’s single favorite song in the world. 

Or the song that ended up being our theme song for the trip, “San Luis”, the most beautiful place we’ve ever been (now).  Its sand dunes, small towns, and towering mountains live inside the music.  

Shakey Graves, Dr. Dog, and Liz Cooper and the Stampede

I wrote about Shakey Graves here, but suffice it to say his guitar licks set flame to the DC sky and his kick-drum synchronized thousands of hearts to beat together.  

Dr. Dog has also been a long favorite of mine, and hearing them back to back with Shakey made for a special a night.  “The Heart It Races” and “That Old Black Hole” evoke something deep inside, though “The Breeze” was maybe my oldest friend on the night.  

Liz Cooper and the Stampede (she’s a Baltimore native, too!) opened that show and converted me to becoming a lifelong fan immediately, the band ripping and roaring with excitement, Liz thrashing on the guitar like a madwoman.  Theirs is a psychedelic and explosive sound, as ready for massive venues as it is for smaller clubs.  

Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster and Spencer Thomas

I saw them twice in a week and wrote about it here.  It bears repeating that Pete’s songs are full of epiphany, revelation, those tensions between the lightness and darkness of being.  He spreads hope, but acknowledges the reality of hopelessness. Spencer’s songs recognize those same tensions, and singing along to them as a congregated audience makes them feel like prayers.  

Craig Finn and the Uptown Controllers @ Club 603

I saw Craig Finn and his band play a house show.  

I’ma write that again: I saw Craig Finn and his band play a house show.

I love Craig Finn with a wild abandon and couldn’t even write about this show when it happened.  I remember discovering The Hold Steady a decade and a half ago, Craig’s speaksinging voice set to hard-charging rock and roll guitars, the songs about parties (on the surface) and what it means to be human.  And then his solo records, which feel truer than anything else we can ever hear.  

This show, this experience, was a gift.  I sometimes look at the pictures because I’m not sure it really happened.

Hozier

Jess has loved Hozier ever since she discovered his first album, and his songs soaked into my brain through osmosis.  His music evokes community, a shared experience, denying the idea that music should not be political.  Indeed, Hozier increasingly and directly demonstrates that the political and personal cannot be distinguished.  

His crowd adores him endlessly.  We saw him twice, first at the Hippodrome (a few photos from that show added below) and at the Anthem.  He added a massive backdrop for the second show, videos playing throughout the night, adding meaning to the songs we might have otherwise missed.  

Caleb Stine and the Revelations

I wrote about this show here.  Caleb and his friends delivered the kind of experience of community so rarely matched, so rarely felt, that it bears repeating how important his music and character are to the city of Baltimore.  The album has been my constant friend for this last month, and I think it’ll be lifelong. 

Others

I saw other shows that I need to mention.  Pedro the Lion at Club 603.  Strand of Oaks at Boot and Saddle. Charm City Bluegrass Festival and DelFest.  Cris Jacobs at Union Brewing.  David Wax Museum at 603 (Jess’s favorite of the shows at our favorite venue).  Blue Cactus in a barn.  I finally saw The New Pornographers (and Neko Case!).  The massive Grace Potter in one of the most beautiful venues I’ve ever seen.

A helluva year, honestly.  I don’t know if I can match it, but might as well try.