Dustin Hates Music

This shouldn't come as a surprise. The Menzingers are one of my favorite bands (A few years ago I was hesitant to call them a top 5 band, but it's safe to say that they're easily a top 5 band for me now), so I knew that I'd enjoy  After the Party  to some degree, even if it didn't end up being my favorite. But not only is it my favorite album of the year, it might have become my favorite Menzingers album over the last 11 months. "Lookers" was my favorite song released in 2016, and if I'm being completely honest with myself, it was also my favorite song of 2017. At the very least it was my most listened to song of 2017. Like many people around my age (or just people in general), I have a lot of inner struggles with the concept of "growing up" because... well, what does "growing up" even mean? When you're younger you look up to adults and assume that they know what they're doing, but then you hit an age where you realize t

In terms of most plays accumulated in the shortest period of time, I'm pretty sure Katie Ellen would take the number one spot on this list. In just two weeks, I racked up 300 plays from this album, and another 100 by mid-August. I already called Sløtface's Try Not to Freak Out  the type of album that I needed in 2017, but Cowgirl Blues  *is* the album that I needed this year. As an album that is, at least on the surface level, a break-up album that was released in mid-July and as someone who broke up with a girl I'd been dating for seven years in mid-July, it was unavoidable that it would become one of my favorite albums of the year- and maybe even of all time. It's still pretty early to definitively call that one, but it really does feel like an essential part of my being after this year. I had even flirted with the idea of getting a tattoo inspired by the lyrics to "Bleeding Heart" (the tattoo never happened). I'm not much of a song-writer, but Cowgi

In case you didn't know, there's a lot of music on Bandcamp. Probably way too much. But I appreciate the efforts that the staff there makes to highlight new(ish) acts and/or albums by putting up regular features, interviews, and album streams on their homepage. Sløtface is one such band that got a homepage story. And I'll be honest: I only clicked on the story because of their name. It's an intriguing one, to say the least (their old demos spell the band's name as "Slutface" which is also how the band pronounces their current spelling). But their name isn't why I kept listening, it turns out I really loved the music. The energy on Try Not to Freak Out  is huge, and insanely catchy. There are a million and one pop culture references (one of my favorite things), including Patti Smith, Beyonce, Queen, Nancy Drew., James Bond, and, if I'm not mistaken, Ryan Adams, and choruses that got stuck in my head for days on end. Honestly, as far as ranking m

What do I even say about this album? I listened to it after reading about Charly Bliss for the first time on The AV Club in April. My immediate reaction was wondering how I hadn't heard of them sooner. As a rather large consumer of pop music, Guppy  was everything I didn't even know I wanted from a band in 2017. I know that this album has been near the top of plenty of publications' end of year lists and I'm pretty sure they all go into great detail about what makes this album so good. Charly Bliss have all the makings of what made 90's power-pop and garage bands so fun, and if we lived in another era, they would have certainly been a mixtape band. I can imagine it now: "Scare U" for your high school crush, "DQ" for your younger cousin who just needs a nudge in the right direction to start liking good music, "Glitter" for yourself after your high school crush inevitably turns you down (or a heartbroken friend). It's all there.

I didn't expect to like this album as much as I did. I saw Alex Lahey's name on some "best new artists" list, read a comparison to Courtney Barnett and thought it sounded like something I might enjoy. As it turns out, she doesn't really sound like Courtney Barnett. If anything, Lahey is kind of like the Green Day to Barnett's Nirvana- the music is peppier, the choruses are sweeter, and overall there's a very different personality going on here even if they both display a knack for slacker sensibilities. Anyway, back to I Love You Like a Brother : I've always been able to appreciate break-up albums and songs, but this year I learned a hard truth: they don't hurt as much when your heart is still intact, but they hurt way, way more when it's not. Rejection isn't fun to begin with, and it's only worse when it comes from someone you thought wouldn't ever do it. This past fall I pulled all of the classic moves of someone who had been

There are a few recurring themes in a lot of my favorite albums this year: trying to make sense of life, accepting or defeating inner demons, and moving on to the next challenge or fork ahead. All of these point to finding some closure for the messier things thrown at us in life. Clearly this is important to me, especially with the year I've had and how I've forced myself into positions where I needed to reflect upon myself and decide what my next steps were and which of those steps would make me either a better or happier person, or both. Iron Chic's You Can't Stay Here  is a little different. Sure, they use a lot of the same motifs: death and grief and regret, and so on, but while shouting about your problems and fears over the loud is cathartic, it doesn't necessarily mean things are going to get better. That said, even if Iron Chic's version of closure is "maybe one day it won't be so bad, let's shout it out and we'll see what happens&

The first time I listened to Stranger in the Alps , I remember thinking that I enjoyed it, but that I wouldn't end up listening to it much outside of when I was going to bed. Anything with even slightly slower tempos than what I normally listen to is calming to me, so naturally I found the music on this album soothing. Then I started listening to the lyrics, and I changed my tune. I don't really need to sing the praises of Bridgers' lyricism any more than nearly every music critic already has (there are plenty of reviews out there and it's not hard to find them), but, I will. Like all great songwriters, she has a way with words that cut deep in a very specific way that makes it almost like you're reading her diary, but that also sum up the way a complete stranger can relate and feel like the song is about them. I have no idea what actually happened to Bridgers that drove her to write "Motion Sickness" but I sure as hell feel like she could have mined t

In what seems to be a recurring theme with at least half of my favorite albums this year, I didn't realize just how much I liked Cayetana's New Kind of Normal  until a few months after its release. This album came out in May and I remember listening to it once and thinking "oh yeah, this is pretty good. I need to listen to this a lot" but I never got around to listening obsessively the way that I had planned. And then September came, and I flirted with the idea of moving to Philadelphia. On my bus ride there, I couldn't resist listening to New Kind of Normal  and it was right then that it struck me that this album was what I needed to hear. I was in the middle of a funk when this happened- I had completely stopped talking to my ex at this point and the only other person that I felt comfortable enough with to have deep conversations wasn't returning any of my texts- so hearing the repeated refrains in "Too Old for This" and "Easy to Love"

I fell in love with Sincere Engineer and Rhombithian  while laying down on a hotel bed at Disney World while there for a wedding. Of course, I would have fallen in love with it regardless of where I was when I first listened to it, but I think where I was, both physically and mentally, is vital to just how much the album spoke to me at that time. Unlike a lot of my favorite songs about broken hearts and breakups, I find Sincere Engineer's songs to be... I wouldn't say optimistic, because saying something like "what am I supposed to do now / when you're still not around?" or "The rejection still kind of hurt / not as much as the one from you though" is far from optimistic, but there's something in the music that I find hopeful. Or maybe it was because I was feeling hopeful at the time... I was at a wedding, after all, but I also had stayed out until 3am having a really nice conversation with a friend the day before and all of it together had put me

Do you ever wait a really long time for something and once you finally get it, it doesn't nearly live up to the expectations that you set for it in your head, and even though you can appreciate that it's fine for what it is, you still can't help but hear a nagging voice in the back of your head that says its your own damn fault for not enjoying it as much as you could be? I felt that way about Star Wars: The Last Jedi . But in no way is that how I feel about Freya Wilcox & The Howl's Tooth & Nail , which I've also been waiting on for two years. This album lived up to pretty much every expectation that I had for it. Of course, I've been lucky enough to see every song performed live countless times well before it's release, but it's so nice to finally be able to take these songs with me on the go. One of the more thrilling bike rides I took this summer involved needing to go three miles in fifteen minutes so I put this album on to get my blood

I first saw Nervous Dater in early 2016 when they played a show with CUTTERS and Semiotics. I couldn't remember a single song they played, but I remember really liking their energy and I bought the A Hundred Beers  EP and listened to it a bunch. The next thing I knew, my Facebook feed was clogged with posts about Nervous Dater and seeing everyone else's excitement about the band got me even more excited. Then I embarrassingly lost track of them for awhile and I hadn't been aware that they were in the process of recording anything at all, let alone an LP (which is weird because I follow the band on Twitter where they're relatively active), but I managed to catch them at a show with Cold Wrecks the day after I moved. The timing was perfect: I was in the need of a pick-me-up, and getting to hear "Kelly Said" reminded me how much I was looking forward to hearing new music by them. That's when they announced they'd be releasing Don't Be a Stranger  

My two favorite songs on Bad Cop/Bad Cop's debut album, Not Sorry , were "Like, Seriously?" and "Support." I enjoyed the album as a whole, but those two stood out in particular as really powerful and moving. I had high hopes that their second album would have more songs like those two, and holy crap did Bad Cop/Bad Cop fulfill on that secret wish of mine. Warriors  is straight up fire. The sickeningly sweet harmonies of old have thankfully stayed, but the band's lyrics are sharper, resulting in a much more vicious (well, as vicious as pop punk can get) album. It's angry, it's catchy, it's political, it's personal, and it's SO good. Warriors  is exactly the type of punk album that 2017 needed. Or at the very least, it's the type of punk album that I needed in 2017. You can stream Warriors  below. Recommended tracks: "Retrograde," I'm Done," "Womanarchist," "Amputations," "Warriors,&qu

Getting to hear new music by bands that I like rules. It's consistently one of the things that I look forward to every year. Even if I don't end up liking the new music as much as I thought I might, I'm always excited by the idea of listening to it for the first time. You know what's even better though? Getting to listen to new music by a band that I like that I didn't even know was coming. Sure, sometimes EPs and LPs will slip by me and I don't hear about them until months later, but other times they're unleashed unto the world with little to no announcements. AJJ's Back in the Jazz Coffin  was one such release this year. Lemuria's Recreational Hate  is another. A few months ago, Lemuria started selling mystery LP and CD bundles on their website, which I think most people assumed was some sort of demos or rarities collection (or at least I assumed that). It was an exciting idea to hear something kind of new by a band that's been relatively q

Pop punk and hardcore punk are two of my favorite genres of music. My first musical obsession was Green Day, and after my uncle found I had started listening to punk rock (like a lot of people, after discovering Green Day I quickly moved to the Ramones and The Clash), he gave me copies of Group Sex  and Complete Discography  for my birthday. They're the two genres I've been listening to for nearly all of my life, and I'll have a special place for both of them in my heart. That's what makes both Direct Hit! and PEARS so great in my mind. One moment they can be playing happy-go-lucky pop punk with a catchy sing-along chorus, and the next they're screaming their throats raw and breaking down. They're a perfect match for each other on this split LP. Sometimes I'm critical of split albums, but sometimes split albums are made up of previously released tracks and I can't help but wonder what the point of it is. Other times, I love split albums, and those ti

I'm a sucker for pretty much everything AJJ puts out. I was on vacation when they released Back in the Jazz Coffin  (with nearly zero announcements about it beforehand) and the moment I was able to connect to the internet I went ahead and bought it. It's short, it's sweet, it's sad, and it's basically what I was hoping for from AJJ. Unlike pretty much everything they've recorded since Can't Maintain , the songs on Back in the Jazz Coffin  are largely performed by the core duo of Sean and Ben. But it's not some kind of attempt to recapture the glory days of People Who Can Eat People... (although the timing of its release did come right before AJJ embarked on their People Who Can Eat People...  tour, so perhaps while not a "back to basics" release, it's at the very least an homage to that period of the band's history) this is most definitely a modern day AJJ release. It's just simply recorded by two members of the band rather than

Let me get this out of the way: I didn't listen to Survival Pop  as much as I wanted to this year. I was excited to get to listen to new music from Worriers, and I loved that I got to see them live at least once this year after failing to make it to their shows a few times in a row. That said, Survival Pop  came out at a point in the year where I was struggling with a lot of personal demons and, even though these songs would have been exactly what I needed at the time, it didn't find its way at the top of my playlists very often. So how then, exactly, did it end up as one of my favorite albums of the year? I may not have listened to it a lot, but that doesn't mean I didn't listen to it at all. I never got around to making an emotional connection to this record (as I'm sure I will as time goes on), but that didn't stop the songs from worming their way into my head. I'd often find myself humming melodies from various songs, particularly in November, and th

I had never listened to Limp Wrist before I hit play on Facades . That was a mistake. To make things clear: I was aware of them, but if I'm being honest,It wasn't until I saw the cover of Facades  show up on Bandcamp's home page that it occurred to me that maybe I had the wrong idea about the band after all these years. And after reading the album's description it dawned on me that I definitely had the wrong idea about the band to the point that they were a completely different band. As it turned out, I had been thinking about Limp, the Fat Wreck band from the '90's, and that was a large reason for why I never dove into their discography. Anyway, Facades  is really good. It's everything that hardcore should be in today's world. It's vicious, it's political, it's in-your-face, it's... part rave? The last three tunes on here throw a huge curve ball, taking on an almost industrial-dance vibe but they don't completely turn me off fr

Every year, without fail, I start listening to a new album by a band I've known about for awhile, but never cared enough for to call myself a fan. Previous acts to win me over a couple of albums into their careers include Elway (with 2015's Better Whenever ), The Menzingers (in 2012 with the release of On the Impossible Past ) and Samiam (2011's  Trips  was a fantastic album and I believe it to easily be one of their top 3 albums). In keeping up with tradition, 2017's "hey I'm a fan of these guys now" artist is Nothington. I saw Nothington play with Teenage Bottlerocket and Masked Intruder back in 2012 and I felt like they were the odd band out on the bill. Their music seemed like it was right up my alley (Gruff vocals with a southern twang? Get me a flannel and a PBR, stat!), but I didn't really care much for the songs that I listened to later when I got home. To be fair, in 2012 I had already fulfilled my Fest-approved punk quota with The Menzing

I know I'm breaking some kind of unspoken rule by including this one. [Edit: I'm aware that it's not unspoken at all] Yes,  Songbook  is mostly a compilation of older recordings: eighteen of its twenty-nine tracks are compiled from Turner's previous studio albums. And yes, out of the remaining eleven songs, ten of those are re-recorded versions of previously released songs (and six of those ten are re-recorded versions of songs that already appear on this album!). But you know what?  Songbook  is also great. When it comes to Frank Turner, I'm not as big of a fan as everyone suspects. I think that when he write a good song, it's a really good song. But I don't think every song he writes is good. That's not a slight against him or anything, it's just that not all of his work resonates with me. Songbook , however, collects almost all of my favorite songs by him and I don't have to skip around songs or switch albums to hear other songs I like. I

I guess it's a good as of a time as any to start counting down my favorite releases of 2017. To start off my list, I've got Robot Bachelor's debut album, The Third House Boat Album . The title is pretty literal, as this easily could have been released under the House Boat name and it would have passed as the follow up to House Boat's sophomore album (released way back in 2012), The Thorns of Life , despite only have one member of House Boat in its line up. It's so close to being a House Boat album that for awhile Spotify had it listed as by both Robot Bachelor and  House Boat (at least I recall both artist names showing up under the album. I canceled my premium account in August and I rarely use the free version outside of embedding album streams). Anyway, as far as modern pop punk goes, Robot Bachelor does it right. The vocals are snotty, the lyrics are self-deprecating, and the melodies are catchy as hell. There's not a single song on here that cracks