Best of 2018

1) YOB - Our Raw Heart

Another return from years past, but anyone who knows me knows this isn't a surprise. YOB are and will forever be a favorite band of mine. In comparison to previous albums this can be seen as a more minimalist approach. Given what Mike was going through while writing this album, mortality seems to be the primary focus on display.

This is an age when people have been discouraged from thinking about the existential conflict with religion, the funeral industry, the framing of later years as a golden age of travel and freedom from a life of work. There's so much music to choose from that deals with life, love, full days, and fun nights, much less music that deals with death. Our Raw Heart pulls the veil aside and makes you feel all the things you might feel during the decline of one's existence, confusion, anger, sadness, those emotions people spend so much time avoiding. I've always believed a little more exposure to these feelings in a safe place makes people more resilient, more prepared to step outside of their existential comfort zone, less apt to panic and commit violence.

This isn't to say one should spend all their time in existential doom. I have undoubtedly over-corrected and lived most of my life in observance of death and I don't for a second advocate that as a sustainable strategy. But, if you are someone who doesn't spend much time with the idea of non-existence, you could do yourself a favor by giving this a couple spins, reading why Mike wrote it, reflecting on how it makes you feel.

Thanks Mike for doing what you do, for enduring pain and channeling that pain into something beautiful, something unforgettable, something that has defined a part of who I am.