Combining the hours spent listening to this post-release, and the hours I contributed with a post-concert depression binge is easily the reason it sits comfortably at number one for the month. There was a singular afternoon where I drove around listening to Egg, the standout song off the album, on repeat. It is a contagious good mood of an album, and one that I suspect is going to stick to the top three list for a while.

I had some April Angst to work through with help from Turnstile’s 2018 album, and it conveniently prepped me for the releases of singles off their upcoming album, Never Enough. A classic early sound from the hardcore band that can be listening back on with a nostalgic sigh as the band moves towards atmospheric frustration.

I mean, what can I say, a classic. I played through the album easily twice a night before bed every day of April, my vinyl needs a rest. I can now come out of hibernation fully and shake off my Led Zeppelin II album.

From East Detroit, siblings David, Bobby, and Dannis Hackney had shifted their music tastes towards bands like Black Sabbath and the Stooges and the frustration and vivacious live music they created out of it that grew popular in the underground scene. Their seven singles, compiled from tapes recorded between 1975 and 1990, were compiled and the world got …For The Whole World to See and I could not be more grateful. Death’s warm approach to proto punk feels like well-worn wood underfoot, homey and comforting in the guitar. Shout-out to the record store clerk I traumatized when I spotted a cassette of this on his desk and quickly went into a rant on the early stages of punk lyricism solidified through this band, he was a prisoner of that conversation. If you too desire to spook the people around you, start with “Rock-N-Roll Victim” because it shares your frantic desire for connection.

I had to admit to myself recently that I was in the midst of a Third Eye Blind phase, which just feels too stereotypically ‘in-my-twenties’ of me. Despite my convictions to listen to every single album released in 1999, I had never actually sat with the entirety of Blue until this month. A mistake on my part, and one that can be rectified on yours as well, their combination of heartbreak lyrics and sunshine guitar melodies feels like the end credits of a coming-of-age 90’s movie. Love yourself by watching 10 Things I Hate About You, playing this album through the busted-out speakers of an early ‘90s Toyota Corolla, and soaking in the UVs  as we toe into warmer weather.