On Warmer Music's Favorite Songs of 2012 [30-21]

Oh another year, another set of best-of lists. This year, having contributed to both PopMatters and Spectrum Culture (as well as their respective year-end list-making) I've been exposed to more music and forced to think harder than ever before about these rankings. Ignoring for the moment that this entire exercise is, in the grand, or even medium-term, scale of things, fairly insignificant, it's been a humbling experience.

You see, the more I listen to music, learn about music and write about music, the more I realize just how functionally infinite is the pool of recorded creativity and just how little of it any one person can hope to survey to even a cursory degree. With that in mind, my caveat for this year's lists of songs, albums and concerts is even more forceful. These aren't definitive (God knows I'd seriously revise last year's list now, given half the chance), they aren't exhaustive (you know how exhausting it was just to do this one?) and their very premise is riddled with holes, exceptions and other qualifiers.

But what kind of music snob would let quibbles such as those stand between them and a good arbitrary ranking? Not I, good people, not I.

Six Chicago Records To Soundtrack Your Spring

I'm somewhat ashamed to admit this but for a long time I never really did my homework when it came to the local Chicago music scene. When I first got into "cool" music in high school, I was living in the suburbs and focusing on the big musical guns - your Clashes, your Pixies, your OutKasts. As I went through college, I began to delve deeper but, living away from my hometown as I was, I didn't get much beyond Kanye, Wilco and a few other Chicago heavy-hitters. 


Since moving into the city after college I've worked my way way deeper and deeper into the city's pool of local artists like an old man slowly lowering himself into a steaming hot bath and it's been equally invigorating. Although I know I'm just scratching the surface, I've loved having the chance to start seeing groups multiple times around town, discover new artists and generally start to feel the sense of community that scenes build. It takes a certain kind of artist to choose to make it in Chicago. Working out of the coastal spotlight one has to have a bit of humility. The winters require fortitude and both the frenetic nature of local gigs and the difficulty to be noticed sure require a good work ethic. It's all these traits that help tie Chicago musicians of various stripes together. 

Concert Review - Radar Eyes (w/Outer Minds & Bare Mutants) at The Empty Bottle, February 7th 2012

Chicago felt cold and desolate last night. A barren, winter Monday with nobody on the streets - it reminded me of nothing so much as my first February evening in Poland, with a sense of gloomy Slavic dread hanging in the air. Then again, that might just have been the Polish deli's on Western rubbing off on me as hustled from my car into the welcoming womb of the Empty Bottle. 

I had high hopes for the evening which were immediately vindicated as I waltzed in the door without paying. The show was part of the Bottle's glorious free Mondays series and tonight we'd be treated to three of Chicago's fastest rising bands, all courtesy of local noise-pop label Hozac Records. It was the record release party for Radar Eyes' self-titled debut full-length and it seemed like the whole Chicago indie scene (or at least those not seeing Jeff Mangum) was out and ready to party.