\n– Briefly appeared in Stephen Malkmus’s “Shadowbanned” music video<\/a>
\n– My gabber techno project Fine Jewelers released a track called “Running Mix”<\/a>
\n– Published a couple of poems over on Wax Nine’s poetry journal<\/a>
\n– Was quoted in Nick Soulsby’s Lydia Lunch biography The War Is Never Over<\/i><\/a>
\n– Released a collaborative track with Mary Lattimore for the Distant Duos series<\/a>
\n– Put together a mix of mostly sedate and obscure tunes for Silvox Recordings<\/a>
\n– Made yet another mix, this one Christmas-themed, because why not<\/a>
\n– Appeared on Lydia Lunch’s The Lydian Spin<\/i> podcast<\/a>
\n– Contributed poems to a new book and audio cassette release entitled Medicine For A Nightmare<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n
Whew, that’s surely more than you ever wanted to know! I can also be followed on both Instagram and Twitter under the handle @mattkorvette if you’d like. And if you ever considered reaching out to drop me a line, by all means, now is the time! Actual communication with real people has never felt more valuable, especially if you want to tell me about the best record I’ve never heard. Now, onto my two faves of the year!<\/p>\n
Xylitol<\/b> I’m Pretty Sure I Would Know If Reality Was Fundamentally Different Than I Perceived It To Be<\/i> (Thrilling Living)
\n![](\"\/images\/1120xylitol.jpg\")
It was an unprecedented year for all of us, constantly reacting to bad news and worse news and the arrival of new tragedies before the other recent tragedies could be fully mourned and processed. Go figure, then, that the most artful and contemporarily-reckoning musical response I’ve heard comes from Olympia’s Xylitol! Their earlier EP was great, but this new one absolutely destroys, distilling the overstimulated sense of disbelief we encounter on a daily basis with force and wit. It certainly contains my favorite punk lyrics of the year, with “I Want A Refund” constantly echoing through my head as I continue to wander through my daily tasks and not see my friends, wondering if there will ever be a point to all this. Of course, the music absolutely rules too: Xylitol have somehow found a way to distill Negative Approach’s formative moments into a bludgeoning device, mutated and evil but also timeless, too. My vinyl copy was actually pretty defective, skipping all over the place, though I realized it started to skip less with each consecutive listen. I literally played this record over and over again until it made it through without malfunction – if that shouldn’t be my record of the year, what should be?<\/p>\n
Sweeping Promises<\/b> Hunger For A Way Out<\/i> (Feel It)
\n![](\"\/images\/920sweeping.jpg\")
Even as I age, both mentally and visibly (okay, mostly visibly), I love that new music continually knocks me out, pumps me up, invigorates my spirit and leaves me feeling better than I was before it came along. That’s certainly the case with Boston’s Sweeping Promises and their full-length debut (care of the crucial Feel It Records label). I’m not sure how they found each other, but I’m thrilled they did, as this band comes hurtling out of the gate fully formed, clearly enlightened by the best punk and indie-rock of the past forty years and using that knowledge to create their own musical language. These songs are immediately gratifying and comprehensible – tough-as-nails scrappy post-punk with melodic hooks – but there’s an internal logic going on there that can’t be matched to anyone besides Sweeping Promises. Plus, vocalist Lira Mondal has the most forceful voice I’ve heard in a rock band in forever, distinctly bursting with emotion and range. I hear Mission Of Burma, I hear Erase Errata, I hear Desperate Bicycles, I hear Sleater-Kinney, but honestly I’d rather just throw on Hunger For A Way Out<\/i> than any of those others right now (well, except for maybe the Desperate Bicycles’ “Advice On Arrest”, which I really need to make into my ringtone). It’s crazy that they came out with this, people loved it, and they were able to play a whopping zero shows in support of it. Can you imagine how great it’ll be the first time we get to see Sweeping Promises on a stage? It’s one of the bright thoughts keeping me hopeful through the end of this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Top Singles of 2020 1. Xylitol I’m Pretty Sure I Would Know If Reality Was Fundamentally Different Than I Perceived It To Be 7″ 2. Healer Resurgence 7″ 3. Lolina Who Is Experimental Music? 12″ 4. DJ Central Passion 12″ 5. P22 Human Snake 12″ 6. CS + Kreme howwouldyoufeelwithoutthatthought 12″ 7. Ishai Adar feat. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-year-in-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12923"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12972,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12923\/revisions\/12972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}