SOUND BITES

  Alright, enough messing around. Let's cozy on up to the top 10. 15 THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM History Books October 27, 2023 • Rich Mahogany/Thirty Tigers Highlights History Books Autumn Michigan, 1975 It's not easy for a band to come back from nearly a decade away and simply pick up where they left off; it makes sense, then, that The Gaslight Anthem don't really try. Instead, their sixth album takes a more measured approach that's somewhat akin to a juiced up version of Brian Fallon's solo records. I personally would have preferred a little more fire in the collective belly, but otherwise everything there is to love about this band is fully intact. 14 ROYAL THUNDER Rebuilding the Mountain June 16, 2023 • Spinefarm Highlights The Knife Now Here - No Where Fade Coming a long six years after the enthralling, expansive WICK , Royal Thunder reemerges down one member with a somewhat stripped down sound in turn. Having said this, singer/bassist Mlny Parsons has long been the s...

  Behold! The bottom quarter of my top 20 albums of the year! What patterns emerge through positions 20 through 16? What clues lie here as to what's higher up? How many other questions can I come up with to generate a false sense of intrigue and mystery? 20 SPIRITUAL CRAMP S/T November 3, 2023 • Blue Grape Highlights Blowback Talkin' on the Internet Better Off This Way An American band of upstarts that takes sonic cues from many of the punk and indie darlings from the other side of the pond, Spiritual Cramp pack a ton of crackling energy and sharp wit into their songcraft, resulting in a record that helped to break the group through to a more diverse cross section of fans and aging music snobs like myself. Think a less unhinged, more melodic Viagra Boys and you're starting to get the idea. 19 FOO FIGHTERS But Here We Are June 2, 2023 • Roswell Highlights Rescued The Glass The Teacher Informed by the tragic passing of longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins, Foo Fighters' eleven...

  Well, well, well. If it isn't Sound Bites temporarily coming back to life, suspiciously close to the end of the year. That must only mean one thing; well, aside from the author being supremely lazy and neglectful to his blog yet again. Yes, dear reader, it's time for Year in Rock. Look, I'm out of excuses as to why I can turn from cranking out content at a record pace to a full year of radio silence; suffice to say, this blog certainly isn't a priority in my life (which I have been rebuilding since my last post, but that's all personal stuff I have no desire to steal bandwidth from more deserving and important things). Sound Bites will continue to exist as a mausoleum for my personal music tastes, but it's not pivoting into self-help territory, nor is it roaring back to full-time status. I'll check in periodically, so as to say when there's something worth sharing. It might be once a year, it might be more frequently, but I definitely won't be gett...

  Well, that was quite the year, huh? While the impact of Covid is still being felt, the gradual relaxation of lockdowns and mandates allowed for 2022 to feel like a proper "back to business" year in the world of music; whereas a great number of albums saw delays in the immediate wake of the pandemic, by the beginning of 2022 the floodgates were beginning to open. Several in-the-works releases that otherwise could have seen releases in 2020 or 2021 ended up coming down the hopper this year, as evidenced by the record-setting amount of reviews I posted (nearly a hundred, up from a previous record of 70). Not only that, there were also plenty of artists with pent up creative energy going super-sized with their output in 2022, whether deciding to split their projects up into portions, going for double albums or, in one notable case, repeating an outlandish stunt of releasing five albums in the same year. Of course, the outside world played a huge part in the records that came ou...