I listen to a lot of music from Canada (and other exciting observations about my music listening history)

If you know me well you know that I like numbers and graphs. You may have seen me post a lot of graphs and interpretation that I made about COVID. Here are some numbers and graphs about a more fun topic.

Every year at the beginning of December I see lots of people post their "Spotify Wrapped" on social media. It's always interesting to me to see what music other people listened to the most in the year. But for me personally, I want more than that. So this is kind of like a much nerdier and more detailed version of a Spotify Wrapped. And not just for a year, but for most of my adult life.

Since 2005, I've used the website last.fm to keep track of all the music I listen to (on a computer or iPod, at least; it can also track music you listen to on streaming services on your phone but I very rarely stream music on my phone). The popularity of Spotify Wrapped makes it clear that a lot of people enjoy being able to see stats about the music they listen to, so I recommend the website if you want more of that! If you go to my profile and scroll down, you can see my top eight artists (all time) displayed, kind of like a Spotify Wrapped:

Definitely a big lead for Okkervil River in first place. If you click around you can see breakdowns by artist, by song, by album, over different periods of time. But because I'm such a data nerd, that wasn't enough for me. Luckily, a kind person made a website that exports your entire listening history as a CSV file you can download. So after doing this, I used the programming language R (running under RStudio) to play around with the data.

Here are some of the results I found interesting. Will anyone else find them interesting? Maybe? But lots of people post their Spotify Wrapped every year, so I'm going to post this.

Top artists by year

Here's a scatter plot of my top five artists for each year by year and number of plays. There's a lot of information here so apologies for the small text. Click to open and zoom in if you care to.

Observations:

-For 2005 the data only cover the last five months of the year, hence the second through fifth place artists having low numbers. Still, I listened to songs by Ozma over 1400 times. I was super obsessed with Ozma when I started using last.fm.

-Okkervil River has by far the most appearances in my yearly top five with ten. Next is Typhoon with six. 

-The top seven yearly totals are all either Ozma, Okkervil River, or Woodpigeon.

-The highest yearly totals are all in the earlier years. In more recent years my music listening has become more spread out over a larger number of artists.

-The Weather Station in 2021 recorded my highest yearly total for one artist in nearly ten years.

Top single months for artists

These are the top fifteen totals recorded by artists for single months:

Woodpigeon comes in with three of the top five. Like Ozma, I was also super obsessed with Woodpigeon for a time. I like the story of how I discovered Woodpigeon. When Cara and I saw A Northern Chorus's farewell show in Hamilton, Ontario, in 2008, the next day we went to a music store there and each picked out one used CD to buy (knowing nothing about the music except for what we could see in the artwork and liner notes; it was a thing we often enjoyed doing). Woodpigeon's Songbook was Cara's pick. If you're an indie pop fan, I highly recommend checking out that album and even more so their subsequent album Treasury Library Canada. Sadly, Woodpigeon is the only artist in my top twenty overall artists that I've never seen live.

The way that my music has become more spread out over a larger number of artists and less concentrated on single artists is also evident here as the National's October 2019 tally is the only one on this list more recent than 2013.

Looking at this list, it's fun to think back on what was happening in my life and why I was listening to those particular bands so much in those years and months. Which is a good segue into...

I listen to an awful lot of Sufjan Stevens in December

Sufjan Stevens came in fourth on the above list with his December 2012 tally. That was the month after the release of his second five-disc box set of Christmas music. Yes, he has released ten discs' worth of Christmas music (a mix of traditional and original songs). And I love all of it. To me, Sufjan Stevens' music basically is the Christmas season. December 2012 was also when Cara and I saw Sufjan's spectacular Christmas show at the Beachland Ballroom. Definitely one of the best shows I've ever attended. So December 2012 stands out the most, but every single December, I'm putting all that Sufjan Christmas music in heavy rotation. And so if you take each of my top nine artists overall and sum up how much I've listened to them by month of the year for the entire 2005-2021 period, you get this:

There's one month for one artist that is a really huge outlier here! Everything else is fairly random, although I enjoy the nice oscillatory pattern on the Okkervil River graph.

Now let's move on to...

My music listening habits by geography (or, I listen to a lot of music from Canada)

I took every artist for whom I've recorded at least 100 total plays and manually annotated their nations of origin (as well as state or province for American and Canadian bands). First, here's a graph showing all the nations that appeared in my history, with the total number of listens for each:

The USA has the most by far, which is obviously not surprising. But the USA also has a much larger population than any of the other countries on here. What happens if we adjust the numbers to make them a ratio of the number of plays to the national population? Then we get this:

Canada surges into the lead! Interestingly, Iceland is second. Iceland's population of 366,000 is slightly smaller than the city proper population of Cleveland, Ohio. The USA is now third. I've noticed for quite a while that there's a disproportionate amount of music that I listen to from Canada considering how much smaller a population it has than the US. There's just something about those Canadians, man.

And here's a similar analysis but in list form for the top states and provinces of my music listening history. First ranked by raw number of plays:

No surprise that California comes in first considering its huge population and sizeable music scene, but it just barely edges out Ontario. Now to reorder the list by the population-adjusted numbers:

I think the fact that the top eight states and provinces on this list consist of four Canadian provinces along with the states of Oregon, Washington, Maine, and Ohio is easily the most "on brand" thing for me in this post.

And last, what I consider by far the most interesting result from the analysis I did:

Trends in my music listening by vocalist gender

Similar to the geographical annotation, I also manually annotated by lead vocals: male, female, both, or none (none meaning music without vocals or with extremely minimal vocals). I didn't really have strictly defined criteria for the categorization but just went with what felt right, so Arcade Fire counted as "male" because Win Butler does lead on a large majority of the songs with just the occasional Régine Chassagne song, whereas the New Pornographers counted as "both" because even though most of the songs do have male lead vocals, there are a substantial number of songs throughout their catalog with Neko Case or occasionally another female vocalist taking lead.

I then excluded the "both" and "none" artists (a small fraction of the total), calculated the fraction of what remained that fell under "male" vs. "female" for each year, and got this graph:

It's just such a striking trend! When I first started using last.fm in 2005, I listened to almost no music with female lead vocals. This had been true for as long as I listened to mostly music of my own choosing, going back to adolescence. 2005 was when I first started to really expand my taste in music. And going forward, there was a steady increase in how much music with female lead vocals I listened to. Finally, in 2020 and 2021, I reached very close to a 50/50 balance. It's just such an interesting trend to me. If you're a stats nerd, you might appreciate that a linear regression of fraction (either female or male) against year has a whopping 0.86 R-squared value (p = 5.1 x 10^-8).

I think it says something about how boys are socialized to avoid "girly" things. I don't remember ever having an active dislike for music with female vocals. But I still tended not to choose to listen to it. Then, as an adult, as I explored more and more music, and started to just listen to whatever I enjoyed listening to, this eventually led to a near perfect balance of vocals by gender. Funny how that worked out.

So that includes my super nerdy analysis of my music listening history. I hope someone else found it entertaining, but at the very least I did! It's a more cheery topic for graphs than how many people have died from COVID, so at least there's that.

Memory/The way it was before

It's not often that you get the chance to see your two favorite bands in concert on consecutive days. It's certainly never happened to me before. Last week not only did it happen, but it happened coincident with my and Cara's wedding anniversary.

June 12, the seventh anniversary of our wedding, brought Typhoon to the Beachland Ballroom, my favorite music venue and one where I have so many wonderful memories. It was another amazing show by Typhoon, a band that I have written so much about recently that there's no need to really review the show itself. But I did want to mention some things that lead singer Kyle Morton said both during the show and during our conversation after it.

At one point in between songs, Kyle talked about how new album Offerings (which I just blogged about) is centered around the theme of memory. He said the album describes a worst case scenario of total memory loss, but also that Kyle had become interested in exploring the topic in part due to things he sees happening in society. We seem to be losing our memories, he said. Although he did not directly mention Donald Trump, his remarks made it clear he was alluding to the horrifying way that events in this country today are echoing events from the past and how we as a culture seem to have learned nothing from that past.

He also brought up how (in a not unrelated way) people today seem to have such short attention spans, and tied this to the omnipresent phone screens that we often seem unable to go more than a few minutes without looking at. This is something I've thought a lot about myself. Just as one example, when I was a kid, when I watched sports on TV I didn't feel a need to have something else besides the game on TV to hold my attention. Now when I watch sports on TV I'm often constantly glancing back and forth between my phone screen and the TV screen because my brain rebels at just focusing on one thing for an extended period of time. Of course the TV is just another "screen" and in the past TVs were cited as a cause for shortened attention spans, so these issues aren't novel to the smartphone era. But I do think there has been a major acceleration over the course of my lifetime and the effects, both on individual people's minds and on society's collective consciousness, are in many ways alarming.

Kyle encouraged us not to get too caught up in the digital world of phones and the Internet and to be sure to give attention to real connections with real people and with the real world. Now, I know as well as anyone that the Internet, when used in certain ways, can greatly bolster those real connections - after all, not only did I meet Cara via an online game, but online messaging was the primary way we got to know each other, as we lived in different cities. So context matters, and I'm certainly not saying that online interactions should be completely shunned. But at the same time, it's important to not get trapped in that online world, many aspects of which are designed to give our brains instant gratification but not genuine long term fulfillment. There are so many things in the real physical world - a beautiful day outside, a friend with whom we're conversing, a concert we're attending, a delicious meal we're consuming - that merit our full attention and are cheapened if that attention is constantly split with that little screen in our hand.

The topic of memory and memory loss also hits close to home because I've become increasingly aware of changes in my own cognitive function and ability to remember things since last fall. My brain doesn't seem to work quite as well as it used to. This has multiple aspects, I've noticed. When I think back over my life going back to October, especially the first few months of that period, there's a certain haziness to the memories, a sort of mental fog. As well, I feel I've become somewhat absentminded about everyday tasks and things I'm doing and should be doing. There's a well known phenomenon that can be referred to as "widow brain" - but the interesting thing is I don't feel like these effects happened nearly as much after Cara's death as they did after the breakup last fall. So perhaps that breakup triggered a sort of delayed onset widow brain by compounding on my previous trauma. I don't want to overstate this - I don't feel like I'm losing my mind or anything like that, and overall I think my brain still works well. And I also think things have improved compared to a few months ago. But still, this has all been very noticeable to me.

Trauma affects our ability to remember things. And not remembering things (see: the parallels between Trump and the rises of past fascist dictators that so many seem willfully ignorant of) can help bring on more traumas. Not a good feedback loop.

On a happier note now, the show, as I said, was excellent, and I again got to talk to Kyle afterwards, and he (like his wife Danielle, of the band Wild Ones, in Toronto) was so genuinely pleased to get to see me and talk with me again. I'm very moved by that. I told Kyle about how it was my wedding anniversary, and he, like me, was startled by the odd coincidence. I also mentioned having gotten to see the Decemberists on the anniversary of Cara's death this year. Kyle said something that I really liked, something along the lines of, "We're all mortal. We're all going to go sooner or later. But when someone you love dies, I think a part of that person does live on in the people who loved them. And I think you can especially see that when those sorts of coincidences happen." I like that attitude!

The Typhoon show was a perfect way to mark my and Cara's anniversary. The day after found me driving to Detroit, having decided I didn't want to pass up the opportunity to see Okkervil River - especially considering that back on that wonderful weekend in June 2011, on the day before the wedding, Cara and I attended an Okkervil River concert in Columbus. So there was a nice parallelism there, and it was one I unintentionally added to. The concert in Detroit was at El Club in Mexicantown, and given that I was in Mexicantown I naturally decided to go to an authentic taqueria for dinner - and as my tacos were served to me, it suddenly struck me that Cara and I had had a taco truck cater our wedding rehearsal dinner. So not only was I replicating the night before our wedding by going to an Okkervil River concert, I was replicating it by having tacos for dinner and then going to an Okkervil River concert! I laughed at the realization. (Oh, and the tacos, at Taqueria El Rey, were delicious.)

El Club is a cool little venue that I'd been to once previously. It was in January of this year, and it was to see Typhoon (obsesssed much?). In retrospect I'm so glad that I went to that show, because on the same trip I visited my great friends Adam and Jackie in Ann Arbor, and then in April Jackie's mother Carol, a wonderful person who had lived with MS for decades, passed away. So that Typhoon show resulted in me getting to see Carol one last time, and I'm grateful for that. There's another interesting parallel there. In January 2015 Cara and I visited Adam and Jackie (and their two young boys and Carol), and then Cara passed away in April 2015, and I became especially glad we had made that trip, just as I became especially glad I made the January 2018 trip after the April 2018 passing of Carol.

The show this week was my eleventh time seeing Okkervil River in concert. It was my fourth time since Cara's death. Each of the three previous post-Cara's death concerts, I realized, had been unusual in some way, distinctly different from a "normal" Okkervil River show. The show in 2015 was for the tenth anniversary of the album Black Sheep Boy and featured (rather than a normal setlist) that album and the accompanying EP Black Sheep Boy Appendix played in their entireties. The show in 2016 was in support of the album Away, and after it I blogged about what a totally different experience that show was. The setlist largely consisted of songs from Away, which is a very different album from any other by the band, and on top of that, "every single non-Away song in the main set was a very heavily reworked version of the original song." And the show in 2017 featured a stripped down, three person, acoustic version of the band, playing an all requests setlist (and that show included probably the most emotional moment for me at any show ever when Will Sheff said "This is a very special request for Jeff McManus" and played a song I had described in my request as being linked to a special memory of my late wife).

So all three of those shows had been major divergences from what I'd think of as a "normal" Okkervil River concert. At the 2016 Away tour show, I wondered if the approach Will was taking to his music at that show would become the new norm going forward, and if perhaps I'd never again experience a "normal" Okkervil River show. I keyed in on a lyric from the last song played at that show, "Black": "It'll never be the way it was before," and I wrote these words:

Perhaps Okkervil River shows will never be the way they were before. Very certainly, my life will never be the way it was before. Before Cara got lung cancer and then died of it. But I will always carry that past with me. And the future? It can still be pretty great.

It's eerie now, looking back, that just weeks later another "It'll never be the way it was before" moment happened and at the time I wasn't even a bit concerned about it because I just didn't think it was going to happen. I'm referring, of course, to Donald Trump's election to the presidency. I realize that I keep going back to Trump even in posts that are mainly about non-political topics, but it's hard to overstate just how much the ongoing crisis in this country has affected me and my view of the world. And I'm a privileged white guy who hasn't even been directly affected by it in any significant way. There are so many people who unfortunately can't say that. It's a collective trauma that's happening to all of us and even if we do turn things back around, there are going to be scars that will remain for as long as this country exists. And there's a part of me that fears our country, as we know it, won't exist anymore in the not so distant future. Trump clearly wants to be a dictator, and although he isn't one at this point in time, our Republican elected officials have so far collectively shown basically no willingness to meaningfully stand up to his corruption and abuses. So what if he just refuses to leave office, and the Republicans just go along with it? I don't see that as the most likely outcome, but I can't discount the possibility. So this is probably another appropriate time to say: make sure everyone you know gets out and votes in November.

This blog entry that is centered around two concerts at which I had fantastic times sure has some unhappy little asides in it!

Anyway, it turned out that my idea that Okkervil River shows might never be the way they were before did not actually come to pass. This show, finally, for the first time for me in almost five years, was an Okkervil River show the way it was before. The band played a set full of songs both from excellent new album In the Rainbow Rain and from most of the other albums in their catalog, and while there were some interesting variations thrown in on the older songs they were generally much more faithful interpretations of the original versions, and the band had so much energy, and for 90 minutes it really did feel like old times again and it was so great and I had so much fun and I kind of just wanted that show to never end! Seriously, it was magical!

Will Sheff is the sole songwriter for Okkervil River and he's actually been for a while now the only original member still in the band; he's gone through a lot of lineup changes over the years, and while the shows have always been fantastic, at times they've felt more like a group of musicians performing Will Sheff's music rather than a performance by a band, if that makes sense. But the current lineup is just clicking in an incredible way and at times I felt like I was transported back to, say, the Pepper Jack Cafe in Hamilton, Ontario on Cara's birthday in 2007. And it's really special how music can do that. Life as a whole is never going to be "the way it was before," but it's nice, for a little while, to be able to recapture that feeling. I think the fact that it had been so long since I had seen a "normal" Okkervil River show made this one all the more special. The last previous "normal" show was also the last time I saw Okkervil River with Cara - at the Beachland in 2013 just about a month after she was diagnosed with lung cancer. At that show she sat right in front of the stage in a wheelchair and she reveled in the fact that she had enough lung capacity to sing along with those familiar songs. After the show she was handed from the stage a setlist from the show, written on a paper plate, and that plate remains on display in my living room. At the show the other day I was able to obtain another such souvenir.

I drove home from Detroit after the show and, although I did not get home until about 3 am, I was so amped up and giddy from the show that I had not the least bit of trouble staying awake - I didn't even feel the need to stop for a caffeinated beverage, as I typically would on such a late night trip. And then, just as I was pulling into the garage, what band's music came onto the college radio station I had playing?

Yep, Okkervil River. Naturally I sat in my car and listened to (and sang along with) the whole song ("The Latest Toughs" from 2005 masterpiece Black Sheep Boy). Another one of those funny, weird little coincidences and a perfect way to cap off a thrilling and emotional two days.

It'll never be the way it was before

Sunday night capped off a busy little stretch of ten days in which I went to four concerts in four different cities. Each of the four shows carried some special significance to me, so I'll write a bit about each one before reviewing the last and most special of the four: a very memorable Okkervil River concert that was very different from any I'd seen before.

On Friday, October 7 I got to see Madi Diaz down in Newark, Ohio at a new venue called Thirty One West. I've been a big fan of Madi's for almost five years but had never gotten a chance to see her live - in fact on my list of "favorite artists I haven't seen live" she'd have been very close to the top - so I was thrilled to finally attend one of her shows, and she did not disappoint. I was very surprised when I had seen that the L.A.-based singer-songwriter had booked a show in Newark of all places. It turns out she is friends with the guy who runs the venue and he had asked her to play a show for the opening week. Madi can flat out sing and has a real knack for crafting wonderful songs that just have a way of really sticking with you. In addition to a number of her own songs, a fantastic cover of Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" was another highlight of the set. Before playing it she spoke of how she had suggested the song to her band and they had thought she was crazy but she decided to do it anyway. It's indeed a surprising choice but it really worked. After the show I told Madi of how I had been a fan for so long and never gotten to see her before. "Aww! Let me give you a hug," was her genuinely appreciative response.

The following night I was back home in Cleveland and (after dropping off at home the stray kitten I encountered that afternoon in Columbus and decided to adopt!) went to see Kishi Bashi at the Beachland Ballroom.

This was a show that I felt quite emotional about attending, because I had previously tried to get Cara to go see him with me, thinking she'd really enjoy his music, and she had not gone. But then she had later listened to him more and told me that she did want to see him the next time he came to town. And here was that next time. Kishi Bashi put on a great show as always.

Tuesday night brought a relatively short-distance out of town concert excursion as I headed down to Musica in Akron to see the Get Up Kids. Before the show I also enjoyed a great meal at my and Cara's favorite Mexican restaurant, Ranchero's Taqueria (and as a bonus, Tuesday is $3.99 margarita night!). So the significance of this show? The Get Up Kids are a band I'm really just a casual fan of and I don't think Cara listened to them; they've been around for over twenty years now but I had previously seen them just once - and it just so happened that that one previous show took place on March 24, 2015. I'm sure some of you will recognize the significance of that date. When I was at that show at the Grog Shop, having a great time with a really energetic crowd on the band's twentieth anniversary tour, I had absolutely no idea that exactly one month later would be the day my wife died. So it's a fond memory I have, going out to a fun show, and coming home to my beloved Cara, who asked me how the show was when I joined her in bed, and I told her about it. It's something that happened many times (for although Cara did enjoy going to numerous concerts with me, I attended far more than her). That was one of the last such times, and it was on my mind as I enjoyed another fun Get Up Kids show at Musica.

The fourth and most anticipated show in my busy week and a half came at Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale, Pennsylvania, a small Pittsburgh suburb. It was my second visit to Mr. Smalls, both coming within the last three months, as I had previously attended an amazing Daughter show there in July. This time around I headed out to Pittsburgh to see my very favorite band in the world, Okkervil River. This would be my ninth time seeing them live.

I recall the first time I ever went to the Beachland Ballroom, to see Sufjan Stevens, and how when one of my friends said she had seen him four times I was amazed, and said, "Wow, you must really like him!" Having been to very few concerts myself, I didn't appreciate then how each concert was its own unique experience, and how you can see an artist you really love many, many times over the years without ever getting tired of their performances. I know much better now.

As it so happened, the very first time I (as well as Cara) saw Okkervil River was almost exactly ten years before Sunday night's show (ten years and five days, to be precise). I've blogged extensively about the significance of Okkervil River to my and Cara's relationship (here and here). I won't cover all that ground again now, but it is worth mentioning that it was after that first Okkervil River show that I finally decided (having already strongly suspected she had a crush on me) that yes, I would like to try being "more than friends" with Cara - and the next time we saw each other in person was when we became a couple.

One of the (many) great things about Okkervil River is that each new album is truly its own distinct entity, not at all a rehash of earlier material, and not only that, but Will Sheff and bandmates have managed to continue to put out great album after great album while always changing things up. This year's Away is the eighth Okkervil LP, and there's not a one of the eight that I don't love. Away is also arguably the biggest departure yet from previous Okkervil albums. It's a sprawling (58 minutes long with only nine tracks), lushly orchestrated work with a contemplative feel to it, basically lacking in the up tempo, high energy songs that would usually make up at least a few tracks on an Okkervil River album. Frontman and sole songwriter Will Sheff has said in interviews that when he wrote the album he wasn't sure whether it was going to be a solo album or an Okkervil River album. The title of the opening track "Okkervil River R.I.P." strongly suggests that this is something of a turning point in his musical career.

In light of this, I was very curious about how this show on the Away tour would compare to all my previous Okkervil River concert experiences.

It turned out to be far more different than I ever would have guessed. In more ways than one.

The band started off their set with gorgeous renditions of the first two tracks on Away. The third song was one I didn't recognize from the intro music, but when Will's vocals came in I realized it was a reworked version of "Plus Ones" from 2007's The Stage Names. I've seen bands do live versions of songs that are very different from the album versions in the past. It's always cool to see an artist reinterpret their past work in this way. Sunday night at Mr. Smalls was something entirely new, though. As the band continued through their setlist I came to realize that every single non-Away song in the main set was a very heavily reworked version of the original song. Somewhat curiously (but I'm not complaining because it's a great album) these included four Stage Names tracks - "Plus Ones," "A Girl in Port," "Unless It's Kicks," and "Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe" - and just two other tracks, "For Real" from breakout 2005 album Black Sheep Boy and "Down Down the Deep River" from 2013's The Silver Gymnasium. I love all six of those songs. To be perfectly honest, I don't think I'd rate any of the reinterpretations as better than, or even as good as, the original versions. But all of those songs were just sublime in their original versions and it would be very hard to improve on them. Having listened to those original versions over and over, and seen them all performed live in the past, it was a very cool thing to experience these radically different versions in an intimate live setting. The new versions of "Our Life..." and "For Real" in particular were amazing.

As  the concert went on, this continuing stream of strangely familiar yet different music began to take on a sort of symbolism in my mind. All that music is so strongly tied to my memories of the last ten years of my life and my time with Cara. Those memories are very important to keep and hold on to. Yet as time goes by, memories inevitably become distorted, imperfect recreations of the events that happened in our past. We want to keep the happy times in the past with us just the same as they were when they originally happened. But that's impossible. And so the distorted yet still wonderful versions of those familiar songs began to represent for me the distorted yet still wonderful versions in my mind of the familiar past events of my life. (Events that include, of course, the previous times I saw those songs performed live.)

Two of the songs in particular evoked poignant memories. "A Girl in Port" reminded me of how, after Cara had gotten her Mediport surgically installed in June 2014, she wrote a blog post titled A Port in Girl. Obviously that was a reference to the Okkervil River song title, but she didn't mention this fact in her post, so there were undoubtedly very few (if any) people besides her and me who got the reference. But that wasn't important to Cara. God, I love her.

The second of the two songs was "Down Down the Deep River." After making The Silver Gymnasium, Will Sheff created a Kickstarter to make a film inspired by "Down Down the Deep River," the album's lead single and a really wonderful song. I backed the project on Kickstarter.

I just looked at the list of updates on Kickstarter to try to find the exact release date of the film and discovered something I don't remember ever being aware of previously. The very last update, titled "It's here!" and announcing that the project was completed, the Kickstarter rewards were about to be shipped out, and the movie was available for download to backers, was posted... on April 24, 2015. The exact same day that Cara died.

Wow.

Well, that was rather startling. Especially in light of what I'm about to write next. I received my DVD of the "Down Down the Deep River" film some time in May 2015 but didn't get around to watching it until months later. A Saturday night, July 25, 2015. There I was, relaxing on my sofa in a darkened living room and watching the beautifully shot piece of nostalgic filmmaking, when my phone rang. I paused the movie and grabbed my phone. It was my mother-in-law Joyce, Cara's mother. I answered the phone.

She was calling to tell me that Cara's grandmother had just passed away. Cara's grandmother, the woman who helped Joyce raise Cara, who always called Cara her "favorite birthday present" because they were both born on September 22, and who was one of the most wonderful people I've ever known.

I'm still stunned by the newfound knowledge that that movie I first watched on the same day Cara's grandmother died was released on the same day Cara herself died. Another entry in my list of wild coincidences, I suppose!

Returning to the more recent past, when the band finished their main set on Sunday night I found myself looking at the time on my phone in disbelief, like, already? With the addition of the encore the show hit ninety minutes in length which is somewhat shorter than most Okkervil shows I'd previously attended, but not by a huge amount. In terms of number of songs this one came in a lot lower, though, due to the length of many of the new songs as well as some of the reimagined older ones.

The band returned to the stage for their encore to chants of "Westfall! Westfall!" from the crowd. "Westfall," from debut album Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You See, is one of the band's most popular songs and a traditional show closer for them.

To my great surprise, Will went up to his microphone and said, "We're never playing that fucking song again."

He didn't sound angry about it. Exasperated, perhaps. I suppose it's understandable how he might have gotten tired of performing "Westfall" after doing it at almost every show for fifteen years. If he holds true to his word of never playing it again, I realized that the last time I saw "Westfall" performed was also the last time Cara saw it. Which would perhaps be fitting in a way.

"You can tell the Internet," Will added, about them not playing "Westfall." "If you're a woman disappointed about it, I apologize. If you're a man, I don't care," he amusingly concluded.

I briefly considered but rejected the idea of yelling, "War Criminal!" referring to "The War Criminal Rises and Speaks," probably my favorite song on probably my favorite ever album (by any band), Down the River of Golden Dreams. It's a song I've only seen performed live a single time, at that wonderful show ten years ago this month. Based on Will's reaction to the "Westfall" chants I gathered he wasn't feeling keen on audience requests.

I went to the Pittsburgh show after considering either it or a Detroit show the previous night. And now looking at the setlist from that Detroit show I see that they actually did play "War Criminal" there. Damn.

The encore concluded, after a stunning performance of Away's beautiful final track "Days Spent Floating (in the Halfbetween)," with Will saying that he would perform another (non-"Westfall") song that someone had requested, "Black" from Black Sheep Boy. So maybe if I had said "War Criminal"? Damn. Damn.

The final song was preceded by Will discovering that the sound on his guitar had totally stopped working, so he did the last song solo and acoustic, his voice and the guitar both picked up by microphones. An amusing moment came when Will began to sing the first verse and a number of audience members loudly (and badly) sang along, nearly drowning out his voice. Will laughed and stopped playing, stepping back from his microphone for a moment before starting the song over. After that the crowd singalong was much more subdued, except at certain appropriate vocal climaxes.

Although heavily stripped down, this rendition of "Black" was not such a drastic departure from the original as the previous old songs in the show. But near the end of the song, at one of those vocal climaxes, the lyrics seemed to reinforce my earlier thoughts about the symbolism of the reworked older songs: "It'll never be the way it was before."

Perhaps Okkervil River shows will never be the way they were before. Very certainly, my life will never be the way it was before. Before Cara got lung cancer and then died of it. But I will always carry that past with me. And the future? It can still be pretty great.

At the end of the show, I knew I had just seen a great show, but I felt a little odd. The experience had been so different from any other Okkervil River show. To be honest, if I were a long-time fan who had never seen the band live before, I would have considered this show disappointing. For me, having already seen them so many times, I could better appreciate getting to hear new versions of some of their classics. Still, I had to process what I had just experienced.

Fortunately, something happened then that ended up making the night just perfect.

I've realized that I really, really enjoy telling people about Cara. On a few occasions when I've been talking to someone about her, they've said, "It's okay if this is too hard to talk about." It's not, I reassure them. It's really good for me to talk about her. I guess that's pretty obvious if you've been following my blog. Something else I've realized is that it's often particularly meaningful for me to talk to musicians about Cara, when those musicians have made music that had special meaning to us or that we enjoyed seeing together.

Almost a month ago I went to another really great concert, by Nada Surf at the Beachland. They were another band that Cara and I really liked, but the most special part of this particular show for me? I'll just copy here what I posted on Facebook last month:

Nada Surf's normal bass player wasn't there, and filling in was none other than Daniel Brummel of Ozma, that is, the band that Cara and I took our first ever trip together to see in Washington D.C., and is probably the number one most important band in the development of our friendship and relationship and therefore in my life. I got to have a really great conversation with Daniel after the show, telling him about Cara and about the times we had seen Ozma and how important his music was to me. I even showed him some pictures of the storybook Cara made for me for Valentine's Day 2007 that contained lots of Ozma references. He seemed very moved to hear about Cara and about how his music had touched our lives. He also showed me a picture of his wife and the baby they had early this year, which he seemed very happy about, and I know Cara would have loved to see. The last time we saw Ozma, in 2007, we briefly talked to Daniel and afterwards a starstruck Cara said, "I can't believe I just talked to Daniel Brummel!" I know she would have been so thrilled to get to see him again, but as Daniel said, I know she was with me in spirit!

Ozma was the number one most important band to my and Cara's relationship, but Okkervil River, they were a close second. I actually think of Ozma as the "band of our friendship" and Okkervil River as the "band of our romance." (The reason Ozma still edges out Okkervil River in importance, then, is that we became the best of friends - Cara, in fact, was already the best friend I'd ever had - before we started dating.) After seeing it announced that Daniel would be performing with Nada Surf, I went to that show determined that I'd get to talk to him. At this Okkervil River show, on the other hand, I went into it thinking it would be cool if I got the chance to talk to Will Sheff, but really having no expectations of doing so. That was because at all the previous times I'd seen them, I can't recall ever having the opportunity to talk to him.

So I was surprised and thrilled when, minutes after the show ended and still hanging around on the venue's floor, I noticed Will emerge from the door next to the stage and walk over to the merch table.

At all eight of the previous Okkervil River shows I'd attended, I can't recall ever seeing Will go to the merch table to talk to fans. Now I can't say for certain that he never did, but I do know that I bought merch at several of those shows (including the first one and the two most recent before Sunday's), and that I had never talked to him.

And so I quickly walked to the merch table myself, stopped in front of the man who has been one of my most admired people for many, many years, and said, "Hey, great show." He thanked me and we shook hands, and I continued, "I've been a big fan for a long time. Actually I was just thinking about the first time I saw you, it was almost exactly ten years ago in Columbus. I was with the girl who would become my wife."

Will smiled at that, so of course I had to add, "She passed away from lung cancer last year."

Cara wrote this on her blog in June of 2014 (in fact, in the post that came just before "A Port in Girl"):

Telling someone that doesn't know you that you have cancer is an interesting experience. The evolution of their facial expressions can be completely awful. The words "I'm so sorry" usually follow. I'm so used to it now, to the apologies and even to having cancer that all I know how to do, is fight.

I could replace "that you have cancer" with "that your wife died" and those words would apply so well to me. And I am so used to it now.

It's worth mentioning that that paragraph on her blog was followed immediately by the two paragraphs that I printed on a collage that I have hanging in my apartment, and also gave as gifts to some close family members:

Today we saw the Neurosurgeon. While we waited, I glanced over at Jeff and noticed he looked worried, so I asked him if he was - and he nodded yes. All I could do is assure him that it's going to be okay, because I am convinced that it will be.

Everything in life is okay, until it isn't. A lot of times, that is all we can ever know. Today, I am not afraid of the future. I cry, but most times it's out of gratitude and awe. I am moved every single day by the kindness of friends, family and total strangers.

Those are my words to live by.

Getting back to my conversation with Will, I told him that his music was very significant to our relationship. I asked if he remembered how three years ago when they played in Cleveland, there was a woman directly in front of him sitting in a wheelchair. He said that he thought he did remember. I'm not sure if he actually did, and I certainly wouldn't hold it against him if he didn't, but I thought it was worth asking since seeing a person in a wheelchair in the front row of the audience undoubtedly doesn't happen often. That show happened about one month after Cara was diagnosed, and only about two weeks after she had major surgery to remove three liters of fluid from around her lungs and put in a pleural tube to drain additional fluid. She was, in fact, capable of walking at that point in time, but only to a limited extent, and would not have had nearly the stamina to stand for an entire concert. So we brought a wheelchair so that I could push her right up in front of the stage where she'd have a perfect view.

"That was her," I explained to Will. "Oh, and another time we saw you was the night before our wedding in Columbus. It was a total coincidence that you were playing there."

Will, like Daniel the previous month, seemed really appreciative and grateful to hear how his music had touched our lives. "Thank you so much for sharing that," he said more than once. We also talked briefly about all the new versions of old songs. "I'm trying to keep it real," he said. "I've been doing this for so long." I can certainly appreciate that perspective, and I have a lot of respect for it. I think it's sometimes easy to forget that the performers who entertain us are real people with the same sorts of feelings and concerns we all have. Having a conversation with someone who has really had an impact on your life, letting them know about it, and seeing their genuine gratitude is a wonderful thing. If you haven't done it, you should give it a try.

Cara just had a way of connecting with people. And she and I connected on a level probably deeper than a lot of people ever connect with anyone. It won't be easy to find that again, but since her death, I've found I really like making those sorts of real connections, even little ones, with the people I meet. And perhaps especially with musicians, because music is so important in my life.

I had thought it funny how Cara had said, "I can't believe I just talked to Daniel Brummel." Because for me, I was able to see Daniel Brummel as basically an ordinary guy who just happened to make music I really loved. Sunday night, though, walking away from Mr. Smalls, I think I felt a little like Cara had felt all those years ago. I can't believe I just talked to Will Sheff. Will Sheff to me had been an almost larger than life figure, and the concept of trying to have a conversation with him had seemed almost scary. Of course, it turned out there was no reason it had to be.

Will Sheff and Daniel Brummel, completely without either of them knowing it, had honestly been two of the most important people in my life, and in Cara's life, and most of all in the life we had together. I didn't know before I got to do it just how impactful talking to them about that would be. Both times there was just a wonderful sense of catharsis. I'm so grateful for those opportunities. Not to mention for the amazing concerts that accompanied them!

Concert review/trip report: Okkervil River in DC

Okkervil River is my favorite band and has been for many years. I had already seen the Will Sheff-led folk-rock outfit seven times in concert when they announced earlier this year that, for the tenth anniversary of their most acclaimed album Black Sheep Boy, they'd be playing a very brief run of shows in which they'd perform both Black Sheep Boy and the companion EP Black Sheep Boy Appendix in their entirety. Instantly I knew, since this was likely a once in a lifetime opportunity, that I had to go. So last Friday, November 20, I headed out with a couple friends to Washington DC and the Black Cat music venue for the first of the anniversary shows.

The music of Okkervil River was very significant to my relationship with my (deceased from lung cancer in April) wife Cara. Of the seven previous times I had seen them, she had joined me for six. I was naturally reminded of all those great shows - most of all, of the very first time Cara and I saw Okkervil River, on October 11, 2006 at the since-closed venue Little Brother's in Columbus. Cara and I were not yet dating at the time, but had become best friends over the course of that year. I drove down from Cleveland for the show despite it being on a Wednesday, because I had recently become a huge Okkervil River fan and I had never seen them in concert before. Any trip to Columbus was also an opportunity to see Cara, so naturally I asked her if she'd join me at the concert. Although she herself was not yet that familiar with Okkervil River's music, I can imagine how excited she was to go to the show with me. I was very excited to see her as well.

My friends and I ended up standing near the back of the room at the Black Cat, as Cara and I had also done at Little Brother's (the room at Little Brother's was smaller, though). And so I imagined Cara was next to me at this show as well. On occasion, I spoke to her, in my mind. "Isn't this great, Cara? Isn't it so cool that Jonathan Meiburg is here?"

(One of the best aspects of this anniversary show was the fact that Jonathan Meiburg, a member of the band from the earlier days who left years ago to focus on his own band Shearwater, joined Okkervil River to perform all their old songs. Meiburg, who has a stunning voice that wonderfully complements Sheff's rawer vocals, was with the band the first two times Cara and I saw them, which were probably the two best shows of all the Okkervil River concerts I've attended. Up on stage at the Black Cat, Meiburg looked so happy to be performing with his old band. It was a wonderful thing to see!)

Despite my having seen Okkervil River so many times in the past, the majority of the songs performed at this show were ones I'd never seen live before. I imagine many of them had rarely if ever showed up on setlists. Before the whole band came out, Sheff opened the show with a solo acoustic performance of the Sleep and Wake-Up Songs EP that preceded Black Sheep Boy in Okkervil River's discography. It was a great way to open the set. Sheff made an amusing and insightful comment before the last song, "No Hidden Track," about how the "hidden track" reference was very of its time and already very dated, referring to a concept that was only a thing during the CD era.

The Black Sheep Boy album was next. It opens with a gentle-sounding cover of the Tim Hardin tune of the same name, before going immediately into the visceral "For Real." I have a vivid memory of the first time I listened to the album. I got it for Christmas in 2005 after asking for it simply because I had read some good reviews online. My first listen to the CD was in fact my introduction to the band's music. I remember sitting at my computer at night, next to the window in the bedroom of my fourth-floor apartment. When that second track came on I was just blown away. And looking at my old last.fm logs, I see that after my first listen to the album, I listened to "For Real" three more times in the subsequent hour. It's a spectacular song. On the album, you can practically hear Will Sheff's spittle hitting the mic as he belts out the lyrics. Which reminds me of how, at two of the Okkervil River shows we attended, Cara commented that she got hit with some of Will's saliva while he was singing. She wasn't annoyed by this; rather, it was an indication of how close to the action she was (in both cases, I was standing behind her). The first time this happened was the second time we saw them, at the Pepper Jack Cafe (which, like Little Brother's, is apparently closed now) in Hamilton, Ontario on Cara's birthday in 2007. The other time was Cara's final Okkervil River show, on September 29, 2013 at the Beachland Ballroom here in Cleveland. On that occasion, Cara had recently had surgery to drain three liters of fluid from around her lungs. She didn't have the strength to stand through a whole concert so we had her in a wheelchair for the show so that she could be front and center by the stage. Here's a picture she took at that show:

Seeing the whole Black Sheep Boy album performed at the Black Cat was quite an experience. It's definitely a classic album. Hard to believe, of course, that it's more than ten years old now. The years really do go by. For the first time at any Okkervil River show I've attended, there was a female vocalist to duet with Sheff on the several tracks that have female vocals on the album. This was a really nice addition. Besides "For Real," another definite highlight was the much slower burning but equally intense "So Come Back, I Am Waiting." I have fond memories of this song both from that first time seeing the band back in 2006 and from the time we saw them the night before our wedding in Columbus, in June 2011.

(An aside about "So Come Back...": I've always thought it was just a bit odd that during the highly emotional climax of the song, there is what seems to me like a really cheesy pun: "Come back to your life on the lam." Get it, "lam," like "lamb," like "sheep" as in "Black Sheep Boy." Not a slight, just something that always stuck out to me. Moving on!)

The closing track of the album, "A Glow," is another song I've always loved but one I had never seen performed live. It's one of those songs with a really pretty male/female vocal duet. Great stuff.

After a short break, the band came right back for the last portion of the show, the Appendix. I've always thought Black Sheep Boy Appendix was fantastic (heck, everything the band has done is pretty fantastic), but never held it in quite the same regard as the album proper. Live, though? The Appendix might have been the very best portion of the night's proceedings. "No Key, No Plan," "Another Radio Song," and "Last Love Song For Now" were all spectacular, with the band rocking out at full intensity. One of my favorite moments, though, was the comment Sheff made before "The Next Four Months." Something about how he didn't want to "George Lucas things up too much," but he had to fix the lyrics in the song, which is about taking pills. Apparently he had gotten the dosage wrong, so "2000 milligrams" in the original version was changed to "100 milligrams" in this live performance. I just thought that was so great; I could imagine that little mistake eating away at him over all those years and I could imagine myself feeling the exact same way if I had done something like that. One of the wonderful things about live music, especially with certain performers such as Will Sheff, is seeing in person the humanity of the people whose music you've listened to so many times on your speakers or headphones. Which takes me back to that very first Okkervil River show in 2006. Sheff was sick, and apologized for it, but it didn't stop him from delivering a powerful performance. Because he was sick, he was drinking a lot of water during the show. He made a remark about being in the "hydration scene" that Cara and I remembered and referenced for years to come.

Another memory of that show is standing with Cara at the merch table near the entrance to the venue, looking at the shirts, and her asking me if I was going to buy one. I said I would wait to decide until after the show, and it would depend on whether the show was good enough to warrant making such a purchase. It most definitely was. I bought another shirt at the Black Cat last week. And here's the whole collection. Left-to-right: my shirt from 2006, my shirt and then Cara's shirt from 2013, and my shirt from 2015.

I was definitely sad, knowing that Cara would have been at the show with me (and not just in spirit) had she still been alive, but I'm very glad I got to go. It was an unforgettable experience.

My friends and I also had a nice time in DC the following day. We went to the National Gallery of Art, a museum I don't think I had ever visited in all of my many previous visits to DC. That might be partly because I thought art museums were boring when I was a kid. I've since changed my opinion. There was a lot of neat stuff there!

It was a very beautiful November day.

That evening we went to the Adams Morgan neighborhood of DC and went to several cool places. We checked out a couple of neat record stores, caught some free live music at Madam's Organ Blues Bar, and then had a fantastic dinner at The Diner. Since I finally got around to getting a smartphone recently, naturally I have to take pictures of things I eat and drink:

I had the Voodoo Parish ("absinthe, sugar cube, angostura and peychaud's bitters, bulleit rye, sparkling wine" - my reaction: "a drink with both absinthe and rye? This I have to try" and it lived up to my expectations!), the Peanut's Revenge Shake ("peanut butter, chocolate sauce, vanilla ice cream," delicious!) and a very tasty blackened salmon sandwich with caramelized red onion, mixed greens, and basil aioli. Also, one of my friends got this amazing (and vegan) Jamaican Shepherd's Pie with plantains, sweet potatoes, peppers, beans, coconut milk, and yucca.

We closed out the night by checking out one more bar and happened upon a place that was playing an amazingly nostalgia-inducing assortment of '90s alt-rock, pretty much every single track a hit from my middle school days. Songs like "Creep" by Radiohead, "Champagne Supernova" by Oasis, "Enter Sandman" by Metallica, and many, many others. It got to the point where every time the next song started up we would just look at each other and start laughing. Until finally, the music abruptly stopped, and then a minute later they started playing some lame Linkin Park remix. Which was a sign that it was time to leave.

By the way, Okkervil River fans (especially Clevelanders) may enjoy this bootleg I've just been listening to of their May 12, 2004 Beachland Tavern show. Sadly, that was before I was familiar with either Okkervil River or the Beachland, but it's really cool to hear the band back at that early point in their career and to imagine being there in that wonderful, familiar room.

Favorite music of 2011

With the new year here, I guess if I want to post a list of my favorite albums from 2011, I had better get to it! It was a strong year for music, from my point of view. I got to listen to a lot of really good albums; some were releases I'd been anticipating and many others were artists I discovered. There were also some great concerts. Godspeed You! Black Emperor in Chicago and The Decemberists at Nautica stand out as two of the most memorable shows I've ever attended. The former was simply one of the most epic experiences of my life, two-and-a-half mind blowing and eardrum rattling hours of post-rock mastery. The latter was an all around great set punctuated by the single most memorable song performance I've witnessed, as a huge cargo ship passed behind the riverside stage in perfect timing with "The Mariner's Revenge Song."

In this post, I decided to list my ten favorite albums of the year. I make no claim that these are the ten best albums of the year; these are strictly my opinions. I listened to about three dozen new albums this year (and at least as many albums from previous years that were new to me). There's undoubtedly lots of great stuff out there that I haven't heard, but this was a good number for me. I like being able to devote extra attention to the stuff I really like, rather than trying to listen to as many different albums as possible.

I'd like to mention When You Left the Fire by The Wilderness of Manitoba, which I reviewed here. It was released in 2011 in the U.S., and would rank pretty highly on my list, but was actually released in 2010 in Canada.

And now, to the countdown.

10. Beirut - The Rip Tide









"Postcards From Italy" off of Beirut's first album, Gulag Orkestar, is one of my favorite songs ever. The words and music together create an amazing mood of nostalgia and of being transported to another time and place. And oh, those horns! Although The Flying Club Cup was pretty good, nothing off of Beirut's sophomore LP really came close, and I found it somewhat disappointing. The Rip Tide, in contrast, has several tracks that evoke similar feelings to "Postcards From Italy," and coming from me, that's saying a lot. Key tracks: "A Candle's Fire," "Santa Fe," "The Rip Tide."

9. My Morning Jacket - Circuital









Here's another band whose previous LP disappointed me, and in this case, a lot of other people as well. Circuital is a nice return to form, just some great roots rock that adds nicely to what the band did on albums like It Still Moves and Z. Key tracks: "Victory Dance," "Circuital," "Holdin on to Black Metal."

8. The Rural Alberta Advantage -Departing









I reviewed this album from the Canadian indie rock trio after it was released. It picks up right where their first album, Hometowns, left off - "Departing is ten more tracks of the RAA's signature sound - Nils Edenloff's Jeff Mangum-esque vocals over purposefully strummed acoustic guitar and propulsive keyboard and percussion." Although I'd like to see them change up their sound a little more in the future, they certainly haven't worn out their welcome yet; there's some great stuff here. Of special note, Paul Banwatt's drumming is killer, not something you often hear in modern indie rock. Key tracks: "Stamp," "Tornado '87," "Good Night."

7. Odessa Chen - Archives of the Natural World









Odessa Chen is a little known, San Francisco-based artist who I discovered several years ago and whose gorgeously moody music characterized by stirring cello, arpeggiated electric guitar lines, and Chen's strong voice I fell in love with. This is her third album; it was funded by a Kickstarter project which I gladly donated to because I enjoyed her previous albums so much. The title of the album refers to Chen's desire to record the stories of the numerous forms of wildlife that are being driven to extinction by human activity. This serves as an overarching theme for the album, which, musically, is fairly similar to her previous work, with a bit more of a rock side. The appropriately nautical-sounding "Oh, Atlantis!" is a real standout. Key tracks: "Deer Perspectives," "Oh, Atlantis!", "The Mercy of Sound," "Cinders."

6. Bon Iver - Bon Iver, Bon Iver









This album ranked highly on a lot of people's year-end lists, and I can see why. I was really surprised by the dramatic evolution in sound here, and I personally like this album quite a bit more than the also quite good For Emma, Forever Ago. Key tracks: "Perth," "Holocene," "Calgary."

5. Motopony -Motopony








This is another album that I already reviewed. I guess it's appropriate that it ends up adjacent to Bon Iver on my list, because I wrote, "In a certain sense, I'd compare this album to Bon Iver's latest. I wouldn't say that Motopony sounds just like Bon Iver (maybe a little) but there is a similarity in that, at its heart, this is a guy with a guitar playing folk music, but then it pulls in all sorts of eclectic instrumentation and stylistic influences and becomes a wonderfully diverse (yet cohesive) collection of songs." There are several songs on this album that are just beautiful. Key tracks: "God Damn Girl," "Wait For Me," "Wake Up."

4. Various Artists - National Parks Project









Here's an album that seems to have flown under just about everyone's radar, and that's a shame. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Canada's national parks, the National Parks Project was created, a film and accompanying soundtrack album with contributions from a whopping 39 musicians. As a big fan of Canada's indie music scene, it's not surprising that I've found much to enjoy in this album, with contributing artists including some of my favorites (Mark Hamilton of Woodpigeon and Casey Mecija of Ohbijou) and a whole host of others, such as Kathleen Edwards and Besnard Lakes' Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas. What did surprise me was how well it actually works as an album. There's a tremendous variety of sounds, but it all flows together pretty well, and I can imagine the songs here would go well with the scenes one might encounter in national parks - much of the music tends toward the pastoral or the atmospheric in sound. With twenty tracks, It's a pretty long album, but it's well worth listening to the whole thing. Key tracks: "Welcome to the Dark," "Sunblood," "Mystic Morning," "Wapusk," "Kathleen Lake."

3. Moving Mountains - Waves









After two albums of epic post-rock music with emo vocals, Moving Mountains decided to change things up, leaning more toward the post-hardcore side of their sound with an album of songs that are generally heavier and more to the point. Although I do miss their more drawn out post-rock numbers, this album still has the essence of what makes Moving Mountains' music great, with soaring melodies, heavy riffs, and plenty of emotional intensity. If you are into the sort of music that comprises the rest of my list, there's a chance this won't be your cup of tea, but sometimes it's nice to just rock out. Actually, this is the one album on my list that I'd describe as great workout music. Key tracks: "Where Two Bodies Lie," "Furnace Woods," "Full Circle."

1. Okkervil River - I Am Very Far and Ohbijou - Metal Meets (tie)









Two albums stood well ahead of the pack for me, and when it came down to it, I couldn't decide which one was my favorite. (I previously reviewed both.) Okkervil River is my favorite band, so I was expecting to love I Am Very Far, and it didn't disappoint. The band definitely pushed their sound to new places, with a variety of instrumentation making this their biggest sounding album. At times raucous, at times gorgeous, and with more of Will Sheff's reliably brilliant lyrics, it's another outstanding addition to the Okkervil catalog. That another band released an album I ended up loving just as much is a testament to how much Ohbijou has grown as a band. They, too, really explored new places with their sound, adding synths and heavier guitars to help create lush dreamscapes, with the string section and Casey Mecija's angelic vocals reminding the listener that this is still the Ohbijou we know and love from their previous releases. Yet this is definitely their most confident-sounding, and in my mind best, album so far. Key tracks: "We Need a Myth," "Show Yourself," "Wake and Be Fine," "The Rise" (I Am Very Far), "Niagara," "Balikbayan," "Anser," "Scalpel Blade" (Metal Meets).