Develop taste, buds
ISSUES #7
letter from the editor
At the website year end lists dot com you can find an unsettling number of links counting down the best movies / tv shows / books / poetry / albums / podcasts this year had to offer. (I’m not sure when we got so list obsessed as a culture, but if the year end lists dot com archives are any indication, it was around 2011. TV shows became worthy of listicles in 2014, podcasts in 2018.) Nobody enjoys the end of the year more than a list maker, with maybe the obvious exception of a list reader.
Writing a list of the best of anything over any time period kinda makes you a snob*. Claiming a top five or top 50 sort of implies that you believe yourself to have no blind spots. That your taste is taste, and that others ought to respect it. Out of everything on offer, your selection has been made, and it has been written down for posterity.
Snobs love to flex on the unwashed masses, but these days the masses get to flex their faves too. With Big Algorithm quietly compiling the data, none of us has to think to identify our Top 5 Artists (see: most listened to) of the year. The day before Spotify “Wrapped” would you have been able to identify your favorite song of the year? Maybe our taste should be evaluated by something other than minutes listened. What album surprised you most this year? What lyric got stuck in your head longest?
As the volume of content grows and platforms increasingly claim exclusive knowledge of our taste, the line between active selection and passive consumption blurs. We pay less attention to what we listen to, or when we’re listening, or if we really listen at all. If Discover Weekly does a good enough job, it takes away our need to seek, to evaluate, to think. Algorithms aren’t designed to present you with exciting left turns, they feed you more of what you like so you don’t get up and look somewhere else.
Let your circle be your recommendation engines. Listen to the radio. Have Shazam at the ready but also ask the person who put on the music what is playing instead if you can. Tell your weirdest friends to make you a playlist. Let your normie friends connect to the bluetooth once in a while. Go see live music with your friends. Start bringing earplugs! Developing taste is a journey, and it’s better to link up with pals.
~ pat
ISSUE 7
A friend once said that boys can’t describe smells. She was probably right. It made me wonder if I really know how to describe anything.
Last year I wanted to gain a better understanding of what I like about music. I created a spreadsheet to log what I listened to because my brain works well inside a grid. The document includes columns for album details like name / year / release date / album length / first listen? y/n. I jot down free associative descriptions into a column labeled tasting notes. For the purpose of comparison, I try to quantify how I much I like an album on a scale of 1-10 using entirely nonsensical math functions (for example, an album I really liked, Erika de Casier’s Lifetime, felt like 33/3.7)**.
I definitely didn’t listen to everything (I logged 72 albums that came out this year plus 144 that came out prior to this year, 137 of which I was listening to for the first time). The doc is not meant to be exhaustive, just an archive of what I came across and how it made me feel. The result of this exercise was more colorful language and clearer thoughts. Here’s a selection of some of my favorite notes from various albums of 2025:
Erika de Casier, Lifetime:
drums like familiarity, shoulders just start moving. songs about longing, departure, the chase, the fading. ethereal like above us and within us and behind the ears
Colin Miller, Losin’:
hushed like a mumble. chugging along like a slow freight train crossing. sparse and vulnerable. rural like roads that used to be highways, water towers, ditching church
Larry June, 2Chainz, The Alchemist, Life is Beautiful:
less than the sum of its parts. like when you dress different on vacation than you do at home and you don’t pull it off. tropical but why? attractive but unremarkable
MIKE, Showbiz!:
a full meal. retrospection, introspection, confident, gathered. good for feeling inspired good reminder to call your mom good reminder to love your homies
Lily Allen, West End Girl:
hell hath no fury! pop music as destruction; catchy, diabolical. incredibly well built songs. forgot how impressive her voice is. details, drama specificity. evisceration
Every publication gotta have the music issue, so these scattered thoughts are mine. The final article scans of 2025 are compiled of music issues past, profiles on artists who put out music this year, and companies trying to sell you new ways to listen.
Read if you like music / listened in 2013 / went to shows in 1993 / are shopping for a sound system
Shouts this year to Panda Bear, Cameron Winter, Astrid Sonne, Brown Dog, Earl Sweatshirt, Big Thief, MJ Lenderman, Mac DeMarco, Laraaji, Dick Stusso, among many others, for some memorable live performances. Shouts to all my pals who brought me with them or came along with me.
“tasting notes” are divine poems
🐐