The Fifteenth Annual Jaybee-bies: Well, THAT Sure Sucked

Executive Summary:

2025 was everything we feared it would be, and more.

• Personal: I'm getting over (I hope) an illness.
• Music/Personal: Due to the above, I did the world a huge favor and stopped "playing" guitar for a while. The world took no notice. So I had no choice but to start again. This time with a focus on having fun. You've been warned.
• Music: Per my last post, I'm feeling more alienated than ever from the current music, probably due to thoughts on mortality. Jazz, Blues, and Oldies were great, as usual. Otherwise, I kept looking for the weirdos. Thank god I found some.
• Politics: After a long year, I'm seeing a little bit of daylight. How about you?

Humans:

Best:

• Some judges
• A very few congresspersons
• Janet Mills
• Many, many others who, in my current state, I just can't bring to mind. Feel free to write in your favorites.

Worst:

Some old winners (Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Jesse Waters) are working extra hard at being awful just to keep up with the new kids:

• All the tech bros with no balls
• All the media outlet owners who really don't give a shit about media
• Elon Musk
• Laura Loomer 
• Nick Fuentes (do I really have to point this out?)
• Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas 
• ICE
• Mike Johnson
• Pam Bondi
• Stephen Miller

Best Books:

I managed to read some books this year, none of which changed my life, but many that taught me things, some of which I might have been better off not knowing. I hope it's all made me a better person.

• Peter the Great by Robert Massie - Great Russian history. I see Adam Driver in the title role. 
• The Age of Revolution 1789-1849 by EJ Hobshawm - A tad (or two or three) drier than Massie's book, but it's got such a grasp of the entire era, it's worth it.
• The Killing Fields of East New York by Stacy Horn - History on a much smaller scale. Not to worry, there's still plenty of evil here to go around.
• The Family by Ed Sanders - Just some light reading before tackling Infinite Jest.
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion - Even less sixties nostalgia than The Family.
• Small Town Talk by Barney Hoskyns - Even less sixties nostalgia than Bethlehem.
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace - I read it on my tiny iPhone SE, which took nearly all summer. And as I did with Gravity's Rainbow, I ended up frustrated, annoyed, and wanting to read it again, maybe this time with a highlighter.
• The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin - Chuck D patiently explains it all to us. Great first line: "Listen up, motherf*ckers."

Best Movies:

• Wake Up, Dead Man
• Okay, Superman

I don't even remember if I saw anything else. I simply have to get out more!

Best TV:

I was stingy with my time this year, so I was reluctant to commit to an entire series. Mike Schur is a safe bet, though:

• A Man on the Inside

I simply must stay in more!

Best Concerts:

Do the 40th anniversary screenings of Stop Making Sense and Clue count? (Answers: Yes and No)

Music Awards:

Most Work (But Worth it): 

   Can

Most Work (And Possibly Not Worth It): 

   Luckily, nothing this year.

Most Surprising (and Not Necessarily in a Good Way): 

   Heartworms

Best Nostalgia:

   Louis in London

Best Artist:

   Cindy Lee

Best Albums of My Year:

1. Cindy Lee: Diamond Jubilee (2024) - A dark time, indelibly stamped by this odd, lonely, beautiful record.
2. Handsome Family: In the Air (2000) - Cindy Lee swapped for Johnny Cash, the cold tundra swapped for the country, where everything is Very Normal. Right.
3. Duke Ellington/Charles Mingus/Max Roach: Money Jungle (1962) - Seemingly effortless group creation on the fly.
4. CMAT: EURO-COUNTRY (2025) - Containing great tunes, great singing, and sheer gusto.
5. Lester Young with the Oscar Peterson Trio (1952) - Improvisational genius improvising away, accompanied by a crack trio, none of whom are exactly slouches either.
6. Hurray for the Riff Raff: The Past is Still Alive (2024) - This simple, straightforward country rock album patiently waited for me to catch up to it. I feel so dumb!
7. John Coltrane: Crescent (2024) My Coltrane sweetspot appears to be just before he takes off for the stratosphere. An excellent intro to his work.
8. Geese: Getting Killed (2025) This one gets extra credit for conceptual integrity.
9. Adrienne Lenker: Bright Future (2024) - Oh so fragile and yet it outlasted other, more "muscular" records.
10. Otis Redding: Dictionary of Soul (1966) - Of all his not-quite-great albums, this one is probably the best.

Honorable Mention: The Pretty Things, Oklou, The Housmartins, Waxahatchee, Iggy, Dijon, and Louis Armstrong

Best Compilations:

1. Slim Harpo: The Best of...

2. Big Joe Turner: The Very Best of... 

3. Little Richard: The Georgia Peach

The Album I Listened To Most but Had the Least to Say About It Due to Density (Mine, not the music's.):

 Boards of Canada: Music Has the Right to Children

Songs:

• Some of the best songs I heard this year can be found here. It's a weirdly folk/country/hard rock hybrid. Good luck!
• And since Cindy Lee is not on Spotify, here's a link to hear the entire album. I recommend you play it really early, or really late:

Conclusions:

I've been listening differently this year. Circumstances persuaded me to look to the past in hopes of finding something timeless. So I took my eye off the new and the shiny. A well rounded person would do both.

So then, how could you, dear reader, gain any useful knowledge about this year? You're busy, you want to have fun. Why am I dragging you to the old abandoned mine shafts? It's always been the conundrum of my approach. 

The other issue is ranking some new records against many that have stood the test of time. It's almost as though the new music doesn't belong on the list at all. But I'd rather think of it as how I feel about these records right now as opposed to for all eternity.

And yet, on Bluesky, I'm seeing more and more folks mixing the old and the new on their lists of books and records in the name of describing the year they had. As the inventor of this approach, I approve.

The circumstances I mentioned above pulled me away from playing guitar for a while. Time was looking more and more limited, and I decided listening to actual pros was a better use of it than playing mediocrely (yes, I just made that word up). I fight the same war on the reading/writing front. Why write a word when there are so many great books to read? I don't know, but I will anyway.

I eventually drifted back to theh guitar, ignoring the voice asking me what the point was to trying to get better at this point. Then Son Michael bought me a new guitar - a nice electric one I really have no business playing. But Mike said I had a rough year and should "have some fun", whatever that is.

On the real-life front, I've gotten past my horror, or at least compartmentalized it. Elvis C was wrong, you know. One can be disgusted by events, but given how many people get hurt, there's never a justification for feeling merely amused.

Have a great new year anyway.

25, or 5 to 4

The Situation:

So there I was, doing my usual musical wandering throughout the year, or so I thought. 

I'd wandered so far, in fact, that I'd not gotten a single album released this year. I finally realized this in early December. (A lie.)

Was the year so bad, news-wise or personal-wise, that I - consciously or not - didn't want any actual music stamped upon it? Well, sort of. Let's face it, I'd been slacking off for a while. 

Hang the DJ (and Some Listeners): 

Is it that I don't listen to the radio enough? Other than traffic and weather, does anyone listen to the radio anymore? Sirius XM is just another vast wasteland, this time of music we've already heard enough of. Only people who like music listen to it. Clearly, no one who loves music does. 

I don't remember when I originally made a distinction between these two types of listeners, but to keep things short, I'll just say that the Likers are, in fact, the destroyers of music. All they want to hear is what they've heard before. They are the ones ultimately responsible for the same old sh*t being replayed endlessly on the radio. Music Likers are the ones who, well, like it this way. Well, f*ck them.

Music Lovers, on the other hand, have odd tastes and are always exploring. This motivates them to seek out the new and the weird, thus ensuring that new, weird music continues to be created. And even when that new, weird music ultimately gets co-opted and commercialized, it's the Lovers that help keep the cycle of creation going, thus ultimately pleasing everyone. 

ANYWAY.

Back to the Situation:

Even if I listened to the radio and actually found some channels providing new music, how, given my/our time constraints and the vast amount of new music, can I distinguish between the flavor of the month and the timeless classic? You really can't unless you commit to living with it for a while. And let's admit that most of that music leaves its underwear on the floor and snores. So after a couple of weeks, you realize you hate it. Thanks, flavor of the month, but let's just be friends. It's not me, it's you. 

By this time of the year, Best of the Year lists are sprouting like weeds. The advantage of these lists is that the writers have gone through the infatuation-to-breakup cycle described above, and their choices now are based on the hard-won experience of picking up 2025's musical underwear and deciding if it's really worth it or not. 

I'd rather let this process play out before jumping in. The resulting smaller pool of music is much easier to navigate. Sure, I'll miss some good music, but the risk of time wasted in a sea of "okay-ness" is just too great.

So I try to aggregate some of these lists and look for patterns, like which records keep getting mentioned. I then weed out the ones by artists I've already gotten records from. That enabled me to skip high scorers like Rosalia and Bad Bunny. Paramore fan Son Michael will do the heavy lifting for the Jaybee family, keep me apprised of Hayley Williams.

And after failing to pull the trigger any number of times, I finally settled on the five records below:

Geese: Getting Killed

The lead singer sounds like Karl Wallinger with a cold. Hey, too soon? Karl did pass away recently...

The loping off-kilter tunes renew my love for imperfection, whatever that is. The execution is deceptively sloppy. You'd think they're all jumping out of bed after an alarm starts shrieking, but then seconds later, they're charging right at you as a unit. These guys are sneaky!

Further listens reveal a twisted but urgent sensibility, which wouldn't mean a whole lot, except that the band is all in. Just when you think the singer has lost his way crawling up his own ass, the drummer bashes you (and the band) in the head, and everyone's on the same page again.

They also understand the concept of pretty, but don't lean on it. They are committed to seeing each song through to its illogical conclusion, which means each one of them has something to offer and often, delight.

I greatly admire this record, but I don't quite love it. Checking the bathroom floor as we speak...

A-

CMAT: Euro Country

Jesus H Christ, this was overwhelming on first listen. The first three songs are fantastic, each in different ways, thus relieving my anxiety that "all pop music sounds the same (to me)" or "pop music is not offering anything new". 

She manages to cover a lot of bases here. The opening and title song reminds me of a mellower Sinead O'Connor, the second would sound great on a country station, and the third is just good old rock and roll. And it's not like she's just dipping her toe in. It's hard to believe these three songs are even on the same album. But it works.

The rest of the album couldn't possibly keep up that level of quality, so she very shrewdly doesn't try. She just does a few midtempo crowdpleasers and lets us all relax a bit. And then the last four songs pick things up again for a fine finish.

She writes melodies with the best of them, sings great, and is quite funny. Oh, and Irish!

A-

Heartworms: Glutton for Punishment

So, I hated this on first listen. A young lady singing superciliously. A band that is practically clinical in its precision. Oh, I know that sounds like LOADS of fun, but I assure you there is no fun here at all. That would be wrong.

But it's probably great for younger men than me, who don't value humor enough. A little of that good old British sarcasm would have gone a long way.

Second time around, I took in the dynamics, which were really not bad. The young lady has a good voice. Very agile. Very sure of itself. Not completely over the top. Is it the actual music that leaves me cold?

Third time, how utterly boring. These dramatic peaks and swoops don't do a thing for me other than induce nausea. Old age, I'm guessing. Mine, not hers.

I was so afraid that trying another genre and not liking it would make me feel old. I was wrong. It's when I'm in a familiar genre and the music sounds alien to me that makes me feel old.

It's weird, though. I have it on right now, and it's not outright bad. In fact, it's pretty well produced and engineered. It's just, well... f*cking annoying. The young lady who's singing is sure technically proficient, but I find her totally unconvincing. It's the actual proficiency itself I find annoying. 

I say all this to anyone who listens to this record and is baffled by my reaction. Is it because she sounds like she's got it all figured out? Is it because she's convinced she's good and I'm not? (Convinced, I mean.)

This one is making me rethink my rule of going into new albums cold, meaning no previews?

If it was terrible, I could at least have a good laugh about it. As it is, it makes me hate my life.

C+

Dijon: Baby

Now licking my wounds and seriously considering using previews (the aural equivalent to checking the pool for water before diving in) before purchases, I retreated into the past. Early one Friday morning, I'm scrolling through my Amazon (as opposed to my iTunes, as opposed to CD or freakin' LP) library and, who do I see but poor old D'Angelo! The album in question, Black Messiah, works pretty well at 8am. But less than halfway through, it hits me that I've been toying with getting this Dijon album. Per my last post, soul is not my forte, but throw in psychedelic, and you've got me interested, so I took the plunge.

It's not quite as dense and lo-fi-determined as D'Angelo, which is probably a good thing. The main thing post-Heartworms is that it's not ANNOYING. What a relief!

And once taken on its own terms, it turns out to be the work of an energetic young man with a winning enthusiasm that never descends into a "I'm working hard so you're sort of obligated to like this" vibe. In fact, all sails by with melodic, rhythmic, lyrical, and ambient charm. Damn near adds up to capital-J level Joy! It's not quite there, but small-j level joy is fine, too.

A-

Oklou: choke enough

First listen: a little light, too pretty. FRENCH. But hear me out!

Second: Pretty and mellow (but not in that real negative way) dance music.

Third: The songs - well, the melodies anyway - are taking shape for me. There is some autotune on the vocals, but it's used for rhythmic, rather than melodic, effect. So I'll let it go this time. 

Fourth: The prettiness should have worn thin by now, but hasn't. And the overall atmosphere hasn't turned into an Enya-fest either. The details are emerging, so I'll go out on a limb and say she's doing pop music. Dance/Electro/Ambient pop music, which may be my favorite kind because the "Ambient" sort of cancels out "Dance", which means I can just sit on my ass and listen, by which I mean, not do any actual dancing.  

Mrs. Jaybee says she sounds like Ariande Grande. I sure wouldn't know.

There's also a modesty here that is miles better than that other record I won't name. Alas, what makes it pleasant also takes away from its impact.

B+

Pulling Rank:

So my best of 2025 is looking something like this:

1. Geese

2. CMAT

3. Dijon

4. Oklou

Let us not speak of Heartworms. To paraphrase my new mayor, I hope to never utter her name again, and I wish her the very best over on that other side of the Atlantic, where they seem to like that sort of thing.

But did this last-minute catch-up work? Kind of, but it wasn't fun. It wasn't organic. I would much rather have picked these records up throughout the year. But that just speaks to my lack of confidence in finding the records that speak to me. Assuming they still exist. 

Looking Behind and Ahead:

Next time, we'll see how these records stack up against the rest of the music I've been listening to this year.

Based on the final results of all those end-of-year polls, I'm sure I'll be picking up more 2025 music next year, but what I really want to do is pick up 2026 music at that time.

Hopefully, it will suit me, or I will grow into it. If not, I'll just go back to wandering. I'll wear an ID tag so you all can steer me home again.