A few years ago a friend of mine and I started making a playlist for every month, in a sense to act as a piece of nostalgia, as something of a musical fingerprint of a moment in time.

February. A pretty dang good month. Aside from some fun health problems and getting my wisdom teeth pulled, that is. So it must have been pretty awesome otherwise to make up for that.

Most of these tracks are random perusals back through my library, a couple new releases (Beach House and Magnetic Fields, mostly) and a step back into exploring dubstep a bit more.

And then there’s that 30 Seconds to Mars track. Can someone explain to me why it’s not cool to like them? Listen to the song in the attached playlist (and all the others, of course) and tell me it’s not a solid pop song.

1. The Gaslight Anthem – “The ’59 Sound” (The ’59 Sound)
2. Wilco – “Theologians” (A Ghost is Born)
3. The Gaslight Anthem – “Here’s Looking At You, Kid” (The ’59 Sound)
4. Ryan Bingham – “Change Is” (Roadhouse Sun)
5. Yeasayer – “Ambling Alp” (Odd Blood)
6. Beach House – “Zebra” (Teen Dream)
7. Beach House – “Walk In the Park” (Teen Dream)
8. Magnetic Fields – “You Must Be Out of Your Mind” (Realism)
9. Wu-Tang Clan – “Deep Space (Jay Da Flex & Yoof remix)” (Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture Vol. 2: Enter the Dubstep)
10. Wu-Tang Clan – “New Year Banga (Rogue Star remix)” (Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture Vol. 2: Enter the Dubstep)
11. DJ Hidden – “Death at a Distance” (Death at a Distance)
12. 30 Seconds to Mars – “Kings and Queens” (This is War)

September was a month of new albums that punched me square in the face (Jay-Z, David Bazan, Fun., The Avett Brothers), seeing Joshua James live and buying all his material that I didn’t already own, and a few things I bought and/or listened to during my trip to Australia.

October has begun, and with it will surely come an onslaught of contemplative and dark albums. David Bazan and Joshua James got a jump start on that, but I think my must-have fall album for 2009 has yet to unearth itself. I am taking suggestions.

1. Jay-Z – “Jockin’” (The Blueprint 3)
2. Lily Allen – “I Could Say” (It’s Not Me, It’s You)
3. Jay-Z – “D.O.A. [Death of Auto-Tune]” (The Blueprint 3)
4. Bruce Springsteen – “Nebraska” (Nebraska)
5. Bruce Springsteen – “Highway Patrolman” (Nebraska)
6. Jay-Z – “Young Forever” (The Blueprint 3)
7. Fun. – “At Least I’m Not As Sad (As I Used to Be)” (Aim and Ignite)
8. Fun. – “The Gambler” (Aim and Ignite)
9. Joshua James – “Wilted Daisies” (Build Me This)
10. Wilco – “Via Chicago” (Summerteeth)
11. Joshua James – “Coal War” (Build Me This)
12. Clues – “You Have My Eyes Now” (Clues)
13. Joshua James – “Lawn Full of Marigolds” (Build Me This)
14. Jonsi & Alex – “Daníell In The Sea” (Riceboy Sleeps)
15. David Bazan – “Hard to Be” (Curse Your Branches)
16. David Bazan – “Bless This Mess” (Curse Your Branches)
17. David Bazan – “In Stitches” (Curse Your Branches)
18. David Bazan – “Bearing Witness” (Curse Your Branches)
19. The Avett Brothers – “I and Love and You” (I and Love and You)

Happy Friday to you all. If you get a chance, watch the live version of “Via Chicago” on Wilco’s Ashes of American Flags DVD. If not, this version will suffice. If it doesn’t bring you close to tears, something might be wrong with you.

Hey, it’s half a month late, but at least it’s here. I’m back from Thailand (plenty to share, but I’ll get to that later), so here’s June’s playlist. It’s full of good old classic rock sounds and a few randoms from new releases and old favorites. And the Bruce/Wilco closers were what I played in the Land of Smiles when I was thinking about home.

1. Dr. Dog – “The Old Days” (Fate)
2. Paolo Nutini – “Keep Rolling” (Sunny Side Up)
3. Aesop Rock – “Nickel Plated Pockets” (Daylight EP)
4. M83 – “Gone” (Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts)
5. Radiohead – “Lucky” (OK Computer)
6. The Knife – “We Share Our Mothers’ Health (Trentemoller remix)” (We Share Our Mothers’ Health single)
7. Dirty Projectors – “Useful Chamber” (Bitte Orca)
8. The Hold Steady – “Citrus” (A Positive Rage)
9. edIT – “Artsy Remix (feat. The Grouch)” (Certified Air Raid Material)
10. The Gaslight Anthem – “The ’59 Sound” (The ’59 Sound)
11. Mathew Good – “Champions of Nothing” (Hospital Music)
12. Manchester Orchestra – “Colly Strings” (I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child)
13. Passion Pit – “Moth’s Wings” (Manners)
14. The Veils – “Sit Down by the Fire” (Sun Gangs)
15. mewithoutYou – “Allah, Allah, Allah” (it’s all crazy! it’s all false! it’s all a dream! it’s alright)
16. The Dear Hunter – “Mustard Gas” (Act III: Life and Death)
17. Bruce Springsteen – “Born to Run” (Born to Run)
18. Wilco – “I’m the Man Who Loves You” (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot)

Regular posts return this week as I slowly collect my brains post-travel and try to spit them out for you to read. Meanwhile, enjoy the music!

May of 2009 is a month that will go down in history. A whirlwind period of spiritual revelation, long-distance hopes and dreams, multiple successful “used music” days, inspiring new releases from mewithoutYou, Passion Pit and Iron & Wine and the death of musical icon Jay Bennett.

1. mewithoutYou – “Every Thought a Thought of You” (it’s all crazy! it’s all false! it’s all a dream! it’s alright)
2. Akron/Family – “Sun Will Shine (Warmth of the Sunship version)” (Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free)
3. Glasvegas – “Flowers and Football Tops” (Glasvegas)
4. Silversun Pickups – “Growing Old is Getting Old” (Swoon)
5. Gallows – “London is the Reason” (Grey Britain)
6. Blitzen Trapper – “Furr” (Furr)
7. Starfucker – “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” (Jupiter EP)
8. The Smiths – “How Soon Is Now?” (Meat is Murder)
9. Smashing Pumpkins – “Cherub Rock” (Siamese Dream)
10. Roman Candle – “Why Modern Radio is A-OK” (Oh Tall Tree in the Ear)
11. Smashing Pumpkins – “Porcelina of the Vast Oceans” (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness)
12. Passion Pit – “Moth’s Wings” (Manners)
13. mewithoutYou – “The Fox, the Crow and the Cookie” (it’s all crazy! it’s all false! it’s all a dream! it’s alright)
14. Iron & Wine – “Love Vigilantes” (Around the Well)
15. Iron & Wine – “Kingdom of the Animals” (Around the Well)
16. The Knife – “Marble House” (Silent Shout)
17. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Skeletons” (It’s Blitz!)
18. Mat Kearney – “New York to California” (City of Black & White)
19. Bruce Springsteen – “Jersey Girl” (Live 1975-1985 box set)
20. Cage – “Grand Ol’ Party Crash” (Hell’s Winter)
21. Wilco – “Misunderstood” (Kicking Television: Live in Chicago)
22. Bruce Springsteen – “Atlantic City” (Live in New York City)

I’d make you an imeem playlist, but it doesn’t appear to like me right now. Sorry.

Gary Laderman is onto something with his recent piece, Wilco Worship and the “Churn” in American Religion.

He looks at the growing numbers of non-religious and unaffiliated in national surveys, pointing out a shift in the fractured religious landscape of our generation. Then, in the giant void labeled in such surveys as “non-religous,” he wonders if there is something that these people are using as a replacement that can’t be measured in such a survey.

The conclusion he reaches is music. Concerts, performance, band dynamics.

Music is much more than what you hear. It inhabits and alters the body, but at the same time has the potential to create disembodied, nonmaterial bonds among individuals that tie them together in memorable, often ritually appealing ways. It is a definitively social and somatosensory experience that can, in some cases, bind American communities together through a shared sense of the sacred, achieved during extraordinary moments of transcendence and regeneration—like those often reported by participants in the revival-like, religious atmosphere of momentary collective musical communities found in jazz clubs, rock shows, and raves, to name only a few.

Is music a religion? Are concerts church services? Explicitly, no. But as the non-religious population continues to grow, we have to wonder where people are going to experience the divine with a like-minded community.

I would say that, at some of the lowest points in my faith, live music was certainly one of the biggest things that kept me from denying the existence of a higher power that could work within and among people. And, as I’ve said before, some of the most religious experiences of my life have been at concerts.

October brought a new Radiohead album, reminiscence of past autumns (hence the A Perfect Circle and Further Seems Forever songs), which then led to searching for more autumn-esque music (Neutral Milk Hotel, Neko Case, Amos Lee), a Briertone concert, me trying really hard to learn to love Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (I’d always found it boring), a few other new releases (Rogue Wave, Band Of Horses, Fiery Furnaces) and Rhapsody finally putting Sunn 0))) albums in their catalog/me making a Halloween playlist.

1. Neko Case – “Things That Scare Me” (Blacklisted)
2. Rosetta – “Red in Tooth and Claw” (Wake/Lift)
3. Emmylou Harris – “Red Dirt Girl” (Red Dirt Girl)
4. Neutral Milk Hotel – “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea” (In The Aeroplane Over The Sea)
5. Von Südenfed – “Fledermaus Can’t Get It” (Von Südenfed)
6. Amos Lee – “Night Train” (Supply And Demand)
7. Band Of Horses – “Is There A Ghost” (Cease To Begin)
8. The Fiery Furnaces – “Duplexes Of The Dead” (Widow City)
9. Briertone – “Cheers” (Sojourners)
10. Radiohead – “15 Step” (In Rainbows)
11. Radiohead – “Bodysnatchers” (In Rainbows)
12. Rogue Wave – “Lake Michigan” (Asleep At Heaven’s Gate)
13. A Fine Frenzy – “Come On, Come Out” (One Cell In The Sea)
14. Ray LaMontagne – “Jolene” (Trouble)
15. Jakob – “Malachite” (Solace)
16. Radiohead – “House Of Cards” (In Rainbows)
17. Briertone – “Strawfoot” (Sojourners)
18. Further Seems Forever – “Light Up Ahead” (Hide Nothing)
19. A Perfect Circle – “Passive” (eMOTIVe)
20. Further Seems Forever – “Make It A Part” (Hide Nothing)
21. Further Seems Forever – “All Rise” (Hide Nothing)
22. A Perfect Circle – “The Package” (Thirteenth Step)
23. Wilco – “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot)
24. Sunn 0))) – “Bathory Erzebet” (Black One)

I wish I could say I wasn’t so busy right now. There are a lot of things I’d like to write here about (the DRM-free EMI deal being just one of them). But instead I spend all my spare time working on other projects. Hopefully that won’t be for too much longer.

But for now, here’s my March Monthly Playlist. It should be pretty clear what albums I was in love with this month.

1. Belle and Sebastian – “This is Just a Modern Rock Song” (Push Barman To Open Old Wounds)
2. Sondre Lerche – “The Tape” (Phantom Punch)
3. The Arcade Fire – “Keep The Car Running” (Neon Bible)
4. The Arcade Fire – “Intervention” (Neon Bible)
5. Daniel Lanois – “Sonho Dourado” (Friday Night Lights Soundtrack)
6. Air – “Photograph” (Pocket Symphony)
7. The Arcade Fire – “My Body Is A Cage” (Neon Bible)
8. Life In Your Way – “Reach The End” (Waking Giants)
9. The Arcade Fire – “Windowsill” (Neon Bible)
10. Sherwood – “Song In My Head” (A Different Light)
11. Wilco – “Misunderstood” (Kicking Television: Live In Chicago)
12. A Tribe Called Quest – “Jazz (We’ve Got)” (The Low End Theory)
13. Sherwood – “For The Longest Time” (A Different Light)
14. Port Royal – “Zobione Pt. 2″ (Flares)
15. Laura – “Fugitive” (Mapping Your Dreams)
16. Laura – “Ariadne” (Mapping Your Dreams)
17. Jesu – “Tired Of Me” (Jesu)
18. Mogwai – “Kids Will Be Skeletons” (Happy Songs For Happy People)
19. Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy – “Television, The Drug Of The Nation” (Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury)
20. Sherwood – “Home” (A Different Light)
21. Andrew Bird – “Armchairs” (Armchair Apocrypha)
22. REM – “Sweetness Follows” (Automatic For The People)
23. REM – “Man On The Moon” (Automatic For The People)
24. Tom Waits – “Jesus Gonna Be Here” (Bone Machine)
25. Tom Waits – “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up” (Bone Machine)
26. Mims – “This Is Why I’m Hot (Blackout Remix)” (Music Is My Savior)
27. AFI – “Love Like Winter” (Decemberunderground)
28. Modest Mouse – “Dashboard” (We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank)
29. The Weepies – “Gotta Have You” (Say I Am You)