(Denver-based NCS writer Gonzo helps us kick off the New Year with reviews and recommendations of four albums released this month.)
Beyond being miserably cold and generally lacking in the “stuff to do” department, January is customarily the month of pure crap. Big-screen movie releases are usually garbage. Music releases tend to be few and far between, and bands tend to (wisely) avoid touring due to the weather. Nobody wants a broken-down trailer in rural Nebraska at 4 a.m. in subzero temperatures with all your gear stuck in it.
So given all that, I was fully prepared to scrape from the bottom of the barrel for this month’s column. Evidently, this January is built differently.
Not only do I already have almost 60 songs on my best-of-year Spotify playlist, but I had to narrow this column down to just a few bands I wanted to include. Separate reviews of other unexpectedly awesome shit may follow – granted, if my fellow NCS scribes don’t beat me to it. (Which is likely.)