Music Monday: Start of 2025 Playlist

And now, we have my second playlist of 2025, covering the stuff I was listening to for the first four months of the year! There’s some more catch-up from the end of 2024, but also a lot of new releases too! I really enjoy putting these together and talking about the music that I’ve been enjoying (and I’d even like to think that my ability to write about music is improving too), I just wish the whole “building playlists and getting it formatted and published” side of things was a little quicker.

Anyway, I’m off to enjoy the rest of my Memorial Day, but first, my usual quick reminders: a lot of these artists (especially the smaller ones) have Bandcamps where you can support them directly! And if you’re interested in these articles and would like to know when one gets published, I have an email list that I use to notify when new things get published! (It’s separate from my baseball mailing list too, for anyone on that one as well).

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Note: Only one song is missing from each list, which might be a first for these? Alpha and Natsume’s collab “Idea” isn’t on YouTube, but it is on Soundcloud. Meanwhile, Alpha’s solo effort “everything” is not on Spotify (or their Soundcloud, for some reason), but there is the YouTube video in the playlist. Also, I'm still doing that 'album title in single quotes' thing to make formatting a little easier.


The Playlist (but as an article)

Great Grandpa: I didn’t really know what to expect from Great Grandpa’s ‘Patience, Moonbeam’ going in other than liking the early singles, which I saw getting some praise before the album dropped. I wasn’t really familiar with their earlier records (which were from a few years ago anyway, as the band has been on hiatus since 2019 or so), and while I pay some attention to big stuff in the indie rock scene, I feel like I usually don’t stray as far into the more folk-ish side of things? I don’t know, maybe people more in tune with those sides of things will have different opinions, but I think so far, ‘Patience, Moonbeam’ is my favorite album of 2025.

It all just sounds so amazing, lush and layered, warm and intimate. But it’s all in service of such pretty arrangements, too, full earthy guitars and stacks of voices and string sections. There are just so many small parts that stand out in my memory because of how good they sounds, but also how good they are in the song, from the cello mirroring the melody on “Never Rest”, to the pedal steel guitar on “Junior”, the mirrored vocal harmonies of “It’s funny how I need you/Damn” on “Emma” and “Doom”, the drums and pianos on closer “Kid” (really, everything on “Kid” is amazing, it can easily bring me to tears when it all comes together).

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom's Map is a Blessing and a Curse

 

It’s been a little while since I wrote about video games, huh? My most recent one at this point was my two-part review of 'Cassette Beasts'; I’m still pretty happy with that one, and developers Bytten Studio have gone on to some big things with the game since then (including multiple updates, an entire multiplayer mode, some DLC, and even a BAFTA nomination). I’ve actually been working on a lot of video game pieces in the time since then, but it can be slow-going.

It probably doesn’t help that what I’m covering in those pieces are indie games, and those can bring special challenges. Since they aren’t as big, you do kind of have to introduce people to the game to some degree, which is kind of its own art. Some of them are small enough that they won’t have much attention, and I want to do them justice since they might not get all that much coverage outside of that. But even the ones that get more attention, I’d like to do more than just give a recap and a basic recommendation; I want to bring something unique to the discussion, y’know? That in and of itself makes for more effort, and on top of that, I can feel a little out of practice sometimes.

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Instead, I figured I’d do something a little easier, to sort of work my way back up to those pieces. See if I can kind of shake off the rust a little. What if I covered a single, bigger game, something that I didn’t really have to explain or contextualize, and only tackled a few things rather than feeling the need to delve into every part of it?

So to that end: ‘Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’ came out last year, and I had a pretty good time playing through it! It’s more or less a perfect attempt to bring the more open-world feeling of “Breath of the Wild” to the 2D Zelda format, which is a wild achievement in game design that breaks the traditional format open in some interesting ways. Nintendo once again tapped Grezzo to develop this one, and they bring back the toybox art style that they used in the ‘Link’s Awakening’ remake from back in 2019. It’s still gorgeous, and I’m so glad that there’s now an original game in the series using that look.

I’ve wanted to see a game with playable Zelda for ages now, but I had always kind of taken Nintendo’s explanation of (paraphrased) “we want a game that stars Zelda to play differently than the games starring Link” to be more of an excuse for why it hadn’t happened yet. But the Echoes system is actually a fascinating choice, and I enjoyed it a lot. Scouring the map for every possible item to copy felt like an interesting twist on the traditional Zelda hunt for items, especially since some of those new echoes ended up granting you movement options that opened up the map.

Music Monday: End of 2024 Playlist

Last time I made a big playlist article, I mentioned that it felt a little shorter than usual, and wasn’t sure if it was a trend or something. As it turned out, it was not! I was in the mood for finding new music the last few months, and then Year-End lists gave me a lot more to dig through on top of that (I still have a bunch of stuff from those earmarked to check out once this is done).

In the interest of time, I’m just going to jump right in. As always, if you like any of this stuff, definitely check out the full releases the songs are from; almost all of the songs are standing in for recommendations of the full album or EP. And maybe also consider supporting the artists in some way; a lot of them are small acts with Bandcamp pages, the platform that already gives the best compensation to artists (and Bandcamp Fridays, days where the site gives their cut to artists as well, will return in 2025 starting in March). Now for the YouTube and Spotify embeds:

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(As a reminder, if you'd like to know when a post goes up here, I have an email list! It's only used for new posts, and it is separate from my baseball article mailing list!)

Notes: As usual, not everything is on every list. Alpha’s music isn’t on either platform, but it is on their Soundcloud for those who want a non-Bandcamp option. The Spotify list is also missing iZme’s “Vivid” and the Live Session version of Knower’s “Overtime” (although I did substitute the studio version there). The YouTube list is missing two of the songs from SYM1 and one from The Only Humans, plus the Cheem song was only available as part of the full EP, so I left that one out too.



The Best Stuff:

Jamie Paige: Jamie Paige’s last album ‘Bittersweet’ was one of the earlier things I found when I started regularly browsing Bandcamp a few years ago, and I wound up listening to it a lot, as well as her follow-up singles and backlog. Several years later, and she’s finally released her next full album, ‘Constant Companions’, and it feels like it lived up to expectations. More of what I liked, but also new in ways that differentiate it so it feels fresh. She’s on a bit more of a kick with vocal synths here than on ‘Bittersweet’, but even that feels like a natural evolution, and she does some fun things with them.

There’s something about her songwriting style that just naturally draws me in, bursting with joyful energy and electric hooks, full of layers of synths and instrumentation, with recurring motifs and callbacks that can feel like their own ideas, and lyrics that lean can lean on big feelings but also a sense of humor, plus hint of sci-fi and fantasy ideas that can lend themselves to the idea of a bigger text and differentiate themselves from a lot of other songs, which can draw out emotion in fun, unexpected ways. Even stuff like the opener, "Dyad", about her desire to do both stuff like her last album and playing around with more Vocaloid songs, gets recast in both a more fantastic (a conversation between a person and a digital singer) and mundane (it’s literally recast as separation from someone you love and wanting connect with them), and that sort of layers are fun to think through and make it so easy to relate with.