Eclectic Grooves

I never would have thought that the list for my favorite albums of the year would be postponed until the end of January, but such is life. Last year dealt me one crazy unexpected twist after another, leaving me with very little energy, time or motivation to give to this project. The latest part of my medical journey is taking place in two weeks, so I'm writing this post as a form of catharsis to deal with the anxiety over the procedure that I need to undergo soon. Over the past two months I have been tirelessly working on listening to a plethora of music from 2018, eventually weeding my list down to 10 favorite albums and 10 honorable mentions.  I feel that these twenty albums are the most deserving this year, despite what the mass media and public opinion would like you to believe. This year's list was mostly a result of things that I discovered by reading blogs like Aquarium Drunkard, Doom and Gloom from the Tomb and Raven Sings the Blues, with a few things that I searched ...

Considering that my girlfriend and I were forced to evacuate our apartment last fall due to the sloping of the landscape, I'm sure it hadn't come as a surprise to anyone that the Favorite Albums of 2016 list didn't come to fruition before the end of the year. However, after receiving a recent request from someone in the comments section, I decided to post a posthumous list of my favorites from last year. While this isn't the usual exhaustive list that I have posted in the past, I still hope that you find something on here that perks up your ears. 1) Steve Gunn- Eyes on the Line On Steve Gunn's latest LP, he manages to mostly keep the song lengths under five minutes, while still packing them with plenty of extended guitar breaks. It's a more punchy, upbeat affair than Way Out Weather , further establishing Gunn as a singer-songwriter who is just as likely to launch into a blistering guitar solo as he is to gently lull you into a trance with hi...

It's hard to fathom that I've been kicking around this mortal coil called the blogosphere since 2006. In the current social media addicted world, a music blog seems to be about as relevant to current times as parachute pants and jean jackets. But, in the fall of 2006, when I first decided to try my hand at spreading the word about music through the now antiquated format of a blog, I stumbled upon a peculiar corner of the internet named Prostrate Before a Periwinkle. Aside from the off-putting name, it was a brilliant resource for discovering esoteric artifacts from a wide variety of musical genres. Even though the link for the blog has not been active for several years, it is still possible to view small traces of it via The Wayback Machine , a magical portal into the internet's graveyard. Back in September of 2007, I posted on Eclectic Grooves about the impact that Prostrate Before a Periwinkle had on my listening habits, and contributed a new ...