I'm gonna do a shorter overview of stuff I wrote this year, because I did less freelancing in 2018 than I have in years past, but I really liked some of the stuff I did do.

For Spin, I reviewed the good, the bad, and the ugly of Trump-era political rock albums by Superchunk, Mudhoney and Thirty Seconds To Mars.

For Vulture, I wrote about the state of Young Thug's career in 2018, and surveyed Aretha Franklin's career via her b-sides.

For Complex, I updated (and, in my opinion, improved) my old list of the hardest beats ever, and wrote about the rise of TV shows about hitmen.

For The Dowsers, I made playlists of raunchy sex-themed rap songs throughout hip hop history, Future's best work with Zaytoven leading up to Beast Mode 2.

For Noisey, I reviewed Tha Carter V, and continued my long-running Remix Report Card column.

For City Pages, I updated some of my old Deep Album Cuts playlists with new songs and new essays, including Brandy, Paramore, Taylor Swift and Elvis Costello.

And of course, I wrote a bunch of my usual stuff here on Narrowcast, including about 20,000 words in December about my top 50 albums, top 100 singles and top 50 TV shows of 2018.

One of the reasons I've been doing less freelancing is because I've been focusing more on making music, and I released a lot of stuff I'm proud of this year. I released an EP by my main songwriting outlet Western Blot, and the first single from the full-length album coming out in 2019. The trio I play drums for, Woodfir, released its second EP of a couple of our fastest tunes. I compiled and released every song recorded by another band I played drums for, Golden Beat, that I adored and that broke up a couple years ago. And I contributed drum loops for a couple tracks on Doc Heller's recent album.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28, 2018 at 8:31 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.