Weekly Album: Postmortem

Hello and welcome to the Postmortem for the Weekly Album project that I've done this year. It is insane to me that I actually made it this far and managed to listen to every album before the year was over, as there have been points in the year where I thought for sure that this whole thing was going to fall apart at any moment. Before we get into the real meat of this post, I just want to say thank you to all the people who have read all these posts.

Statistics and Data

To start, I'm going to be doing a little bit of data analysis. The most basic aspect of this would be finding the mean and median score of all the albums I listened to this year. The mean ended up being 7.826 and the median was 8. The scores also had a standard deviation of 1.491. So what does this really mean for the albums? It means that on average I enjoyed the albums that I listened to as the mean score is rather high and the median score, being the score that is roughly in the center of all the scores, is also high. The standard deviation here means that on average the scores varied from the mean by 1.491 points, so on average my scores would be in the range of 6.335 to 9.317. All of this indicates to me that I seemed to enjoy the albums I listened to. 

 

Another important aspect of all of this is what kind of music did I listen to the most. The generalized Pie Chart below shows the percentages of each major genre that I listened to, with anything that didn't fit in the main categories summed into an "Other" category. I felt that it was right to combine Indie and Emo due to their ties and vagueness in genres, but anything labelled under Indie-Pop did not go into the Indie category. 

 

 

 

So based on this it seems I listened to a lot of Rock and Indie music, but it is also important to get into specifics on those. Below is a much less generalized Pie Chart which shows individual genres, except for anything that had a percentage smaller than 1%.

 

 

 

Apologies for the small font size. Based on this, the most represented genres would be Indie Rock, Alternative Rock, Progressive Pop, Midwest Emo, and Indie Pop. I do think that it might be fair to mix some of these genres together, but this is just what the raw data shows. The real question here is what genres did I like the most? To find this out I sorted all the albums with their genres by score, and only looked at albums with a score of 8 or above. This score is what I would consider to be the minimum score of a really good album, so it would be a good indicator of what genres I like if the albums with those genres have a score of 8 or above. Based on this, Rock shows up 21 times, Indie shows up 13 times, Pop shows up 9 times, and Emo shows up 5 times. It is important to note that this is doing a lot of double counting, as many albums have a mix of these genre tags. I do think that this kind of shows that I tend to like a mix of Indie and Rock, which I think is an accurate measurement. 

 

A fun piece of data to me is seeing when many of the albums that I enjoyed this year were made, as this can give me clues as to what eras to look into for more music. The Bar Graph below shows the amount of albums I listened to per year, with only the years I listened to an album represented to make it easier to understand.

 

 

 

So based on this we can see that the year with the most albums from was shockingly 2025! Though 1999 is in a close second place, only 1 album less. I will say though, the late 90s in general beat out any other era of time when it comes to what I listened to, which does not surprise me at all. A lot of that Indie, Emo, and Alternative Rock stuff I listened to this year was from the late 90s. That is just when that stuff existed for the most part. So what era did I like the most music from? To figure this out I once again only looked at albums with a score of 8 or above, and then sorted by year. The results of this are shown in a Bar Graph below.

 

 

 

This bar graph indicates to me that I really enjoyed music from the 90s. Looking at these albums, only 3 of them were from before 1996, so I would say the late 90s would be the most liked era for music based on the albums I listened to.

A fun piece of data to look at is what were my least favorite albums this year. I decided the criteria for this would be all the albums I gave a score below a 6. These albums (in order I listened to them) are:

• Animals - TTNG
• How To Leave Town - Car Seat Headrest
• Deathconciousness - Have a Nice Life
• Up High In the Night - Arlo
• Phantom Island - King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
• One Week - First of October

For the most part, I wouldn't say I outright disliked these albums, just that they were not my thing or were disappointing in some way. I think they all had some good qualities, for example I liked some of the songs on One Week. But the good outweighed the bad just enough to go below a 6. These are just extremely average albums. 

I would say the most important piece of data to collect from this is what albums did I like the most? What albums did I give that mythical, 2 digit number... a 10. I gave 7 albums a score of a 10, and those are (in order of when I listened to them)

• Switched On Bach II - Wendy Carlos
• Long Season - Fishmans
• Everything is a Miracle Nothing is a Miracle Everything Is - Kickball
• Thank You, Guitar - Cyrus Pireh
• Song Cycle - Van Dyke Parks
• This Afternoon's Malady - Jejune
• Yeti - Amon Düül II

This 7 albums have the legendary status of being the best albums I listened to for this project. Looking back on this, I can say I think I am correct about all of them. Many of the albums I listened to this year I didn't give much thought after the listens I gave it for the review, but I came back to these albums multiple times after the review, except for Yeti as I just listened to that yesterday for the review so I'm giving it a little bit of time. I also know that I came back to Song Cycle the most as I listened to it so much it showed up in my Spotify Wrapped. How about that for an album that had an impact on what I listen to.

Conclusions

To wrap everything up, I think I can say that this project was mostly a success. I found a lot of albums that I enjoyed, and some that I really truly loved. I do wish I varied up the music I listened to more. In an ideal world, there wouldn't really be a clear winner in terms of what genre I listened to the most. That came about just because of my trouble finding albums to listen to on my own, so I would just gravitate towards stuff I had a feeling I would like or was already on my radar. 

 

So what now? Well I think based on how easy it was for this project to spiral out of my control, I think I might slow down for next year. I still greatly enjoy listening and reviewing music in this format, but I think next year I'll do every other week instead of every week. This will also give me more chances to make blog posts about other things, which I feel I lacked this year. It was a lot to listen to the albums and then write the review, and it would take away from the energy I wanted to give towards other blog posts. For example, that is why the Eggy review became my King Gizzard rant post because I could not find the motivation to write it besides for an album review. So look forward to more rants or maybe other post formats! Have a Happy New Year and thank you for reading. 

Weekly Album: Week of 12/25 - 12/30 - Yeti

This week I listened to Yeti by Amon Düül II. I wanted to end the year off on a good note with an album from a band that has been on my radar for a while from a scene that I really love, but just never really gave them the time of day. Amon Düül II were a German Rock group from the 70s that fit in that Krautrock/Kosmische Musik/Psychedelic Rock or whatever you would like to call it scene at the time in Germany. I certainly wanted to end the year on a good note, and by golly did I! This is a fantastic album! It the missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to this style of music to me and also how other bands are influenced by it. Yeti is a much more fuzzy and rocking album than a lot of the other music I've heard from this scene. This album just comes at you on the rocker numbers. It has fun jams and is just really interesting and engrossing to listen to. It reminds me a lot of late 2010s Osees (at the time Oh Sees) which makes sense because John Dwyer always said he got a lot of inspiration from these German bands. He always cited Can, though honestly I feel like that era of Osees sound a lot more like this album. The rockers are just some very amazing fuzzed out Psychedelic numbers. Amon Düül II are not afraid to get more experimental and not so rocking with it too, which is always the fun part about these bands. A song like "She Came Through The Chimney" is the prime example of this on the album. Things relax a little bit with some clean guitar and bongos while these wild melodies play in one year and these beautiful strings play in the other ear. What a fantastic little track, and it really serves as a great interlude in the middle of the album. Everything about all of this just works in my brain so fantastically. The production is perfect for this kind of sound and is actually quite good for the era. Everything sounds rather clean and I can hear all the layers pretty well. The main album does all this with some real brevity for an album of this nature, but this is just where the fun begins. There is another 23 minutes of improvised jams acting as the album's second side which are just great fun to listen to. They really go all out and wander wildly. It feels insane that some of these jams start the way they do considering where they end up. I truly love this album and am extremely glad I listened to it and that it was my last album of the year. 10/10

It has been a pleasure reviewing all these albums for anyone reading this. I know there aren't many of you out there, but I want to say thank you to those that are here right now, or whenever you are reading this. Sometime this week, though I plan on it being up tomorrow, I'm going to do a Postmortem of sorts on the Weekly Album project. I'll just be talking about my thoughts and feelings on it and also doing a little bit of data analysis about all the albums. See you then!

Weekly Album: Week of 04/09 - 04/15 - Deathconciousness

I was supposed to listen to Deathconciousness by Have A Nice Life during the week of April 9th to April 15th, but I didn't. So I listened to it this week instead. This album has been a bit of a nemesis to this weekly album project. It's absurd length scared me into not listening to it on time when I was supposed to, and it led to my Spring spiraling out of control when it came to my albums and I missed 7 in total because of it. I saved this one for last out of the missing ones due to this significance. I think I tried listening to this album 3 different times counting the original time, and I kept getting scared off by the length. After listening to it, I now realize that the length is not scary but rather excruciating. I can only take so many beatings against my ears before I want to call it quits, and I was right at my limit with this album. The album just does not sound very interesting which I was greatly disappointed by after finally getting past the first couple songs. The first one especially is quite enjoyable and was what I was hoping the rest of the album would be like. Instead the album is just some loud and poorly produced Shoegaze-esque music that I just can't jive with. I found it rather uninteresting and forgettable. I enjoy noisy music, or heavily layered music, but Shoegaze just does that stuff in the wrong ways to me. I really wish I had more to talk about with this album. It just is not my thing at all and I was bored the entire time. Sorry to my friend who suggested I listen to it. 4.5/10

Weekly Album: Week of 05/21 - 05/27 - Broken Door

I was supposed to listen to Broken Door by Propser during the week of May 21st to May 27th, but I didn't. So I listened to it this week instead. I believe when I found this album I was looking for more experimental German rock from the 1970s as this is what that is. I will say compared to other bands from the same era they are a bit more straight ahead when it comes to their Rock, but they also bring some Jazz to it to which is really fun. They also have a little bit of a feel closer to Space Rock bands, specifically the golden era of Hawkwind which would've been around the same time and while not quite Space Rock they sound a little like Pink Floyd at times. Both of these are good things as it all comes together to make a nice blend of sounds that makes them stand out from other bands of the era but still feel like they fit within that scene. Another thing that is a bit different is Prosper has more vocals than a lot of the other bands from that scene. Only really Can are known for really singing but especially when they had Damo Suzuki as the vocalist were a little more out there with the vocals. These feel a lot more in line with the more straight ahead feeling Rock that I was describing earlier. There is even some hints of Pop fun on this album with the song, "Your Country".  That has some fun melodies in from every instrument and has such a fun drive to it. This is an interesting album that changes up a genre I hold near and dear to my heart just enough to be unique but still enjoyable. 8/10

Weekly Album: Week of 05/14 - 05/20 - Hornet Disaster

I was supposed to listen to Hornet Disaster by Weatherday during the week of May 14th to May 20th, but I didn't. So I listened to it this week instead. I discovered this album through being a fan of the Twitch streamer Northernlion. The Northernlion fan/stream editor known as the Librarian posted about how a song on this album sampled Northernlion. This song was "Chopland Sedans" the title and introductory sample coming from a stream where NL was playing a quiz on the website Sporcle where he had to figure out the name of an NBA team based on a series of images. One of these was an image of a man chopping wood, a plane landing, two sedans, and between the sedans was a (presumably) English historical figure who I didn't recognize. This led him to jokingly say "It's the Chopland Sedans" when really it was the Cleveland Cavaliers. That line was then sampled in the song off of this album, leading me to discover it. Right off the bat I need to talk about how long this album is for how similar most of the songs are. This album is 1 hour and 16 minutes long according to Spotify. This is already a length that scares me a little bit, anything over 50 minutes starts to feel excessive to me and would need to be justified by some really cool songs that cover a bit of a wider range, either through jamming or just by varying how they sound. This album does neither of those things. Almost all of the songs are this kind of Emo influenced Indie Rock and Power Pop. While it does stray from this occasionally, such as on the track "Ripped Apart By Hands", most of the album stays in this style with similar tempos and song structures most of the way through. This makes the album a slog to get through! It pains me because on a song by song basis, the songs are pretty good! They hit most of the marks for what I want out of music like this. They have fun melodies and they rock pretty hard. There is fantastic guitar work all over the album. I will say the production quality is quite lacking, but I think that it is a bit of an intentional choice to add to the noise of it all, but it does clip rather often on so I take some issue with it. Even the lyrics are interesting, from what I can tell they make a lot of callbacks to other songs on the album and share some connected themes about relationships and the struggles of them. But due to the album's length it all blends together and doesn't sound as interesting as it would if it were shorter and more concentrated. I think it would be quite interesting to see an edited version that takes the 10 to 12 best songs on the album to really concentrate the album's best qualities. 6.5/10 

Weekly Album: Week of 05/07 - 05/13 - Hounds of Love

I was supposed to listen to Hounds of Love by Kate Bush during the week of May 7th to May 13th, but I didn't. So this week I listened to it instead. If my memory serves me correctly, this album was recommended to me by a friend. I've said before in some previous reviews that I've always had a soft spot for 80s Synthpop and similar styles, so I was actually rather excited to listen to this album going in. For the first half of it, however, I was extremely confused. The first five tracks on the album, which are considered part of the "Hounds of Love" suite are these long pop songs in which nothing happens musically. All of those songs have nearly the same chords and the same instrumental (per song, they don't all have the same instrumental) going the entire time underneath them while Kate Bush sings. It makes for extremely uninteresting music and is not what I was hoping for at all. These songs are saved from being truly and utterly boring by the fact that Kate Bush has a nice voice and can write good melodies. It does not help that these songs are rather long for Pop songs, as none of those five tracks are under 3 minutes in length. I love repetitive and long songs, but they need to do that with a purpose.

This all changes once I reached the second suite on the album, entitled "The Ninth Wave". While there is still a lot of repetition in the songs the instrumentals are actually interesting and fit that style! Kate Bush also gets weird and progressive with it in this suite which I really love. All of the songs in this suite sound so much more unique and refreshing compared to the first one. Each songs stands apart from the others in sound and mood. The songs , "Under Ice" and, "Watching You Without Me" almost feel like pieces of Kosmische Musik from Germany in the 70s with the way they repeat. Kate Bush's vocals also don't falter at all during this suite, so all of this combined creates some really nice Progressive-Pop that I actually enjoyed. I'd make a deal with god for the first suite to be as good as the second. 7.5/10

Weekly Album: Week of 04/30 - 05/06 - Up High in the Night

I was supposed to listen to Up High in the Night by Arlo during the week of April 30th to May 6th, but I didn't. So this week I listened to it instead. I am not insanely familiar with Arlo, I've only heard things about them as one of their members, Shmedly, has ties to a lot of other California Power Pop/Rock bands, namely Ozma and Weezer. I don't have a lot to say about the album, the songs are fairly standard Power Pop influenced Indie Rock affairs. They sound almost like Jets to Brazil at times which is a little bit interesting. The thing that stands out the most to me with this album is the production. I don't know what tin can the vocalist is singing into, or really what tin can the whole band is recording into for that matter, but it does not sound great. This kind of music really benefits from much cleaner production and this is just too dirty and low fidelity for my liking. This album is nothing special and I cannot see myself listening to it again when there are just much better bands with similar or adjacent sounds. 5.5/10