Why This?

This is a newsletter. You may be rightfully asking yourself, “A.C., I already get like eighty newsletters each week. Why in God’s name should I add yours?” This is an extremely fair question, and I will try my best to answer it.

Two of my primary interests in life are writing and music. I spent a lot of time in grad school engaging with both as I wrote as a music writer for an arts magazine (what’s up, Little Village) along with running a weekly radio show for years. After I left Iowa City, I tried to keep writing, but it was about topics that I did not really want to be the public voice of, especially in the location in which I reside.

As a result, my writing went slightly dormant. There was copyediting and proofreading for a while, which was nice, but one can only take so many half-baked ideas from MBA students before the task becomes rote. While there were some writing tasks, it was hired gun work rather than being actually interesting to do.

For these reasons, I undertook a career shift and started using my hands as an aviation mechanic. I enjoyed the work even if I didn’t enjoy the people that I worked with. Let’s say that I would hear the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” used with less irony than I would prefer. I did, however, get some phenomenal audiobook listening done there. So many classics. However, I got far less music listening done. As a result, my personal music listening declined during my time as a mechanic.

After an unfortunate night and without warning, my time as a mechanic came to an end. I got back on my feet and moved into the nonprofit world. I now clean up after and socialize dogs and cats working at an animal shelter. The job is rewarding emotionally if not monetarily, but there is a massive benefit to me: I have a considerable amount of time to listen to music. In addition, it has freed my mind of the burden of considering if a repair I made that day would lead to someone’s death. I have since filled that space with thinking about music.

This newsletter serves as a way for me to write about what I’ve been listening to and provide folks such as yourself, fine reader, with some cool shit to listen to. Will you vibe on everything I write about? Probably not, but that’s not the point. You should be able to find an album or two each week that piques your curiosity and maybe sends you down a rabbit hole of some sort. Think of me as a concierge, pointing you to things that you might not have thought about or known about.

My goal is to keep the newsletter short from week to week, focusing on albums that I really want others to listen to. There’s no incentive for me to go full review mode. There are other outlets with staffs that can do that. I’m a dude with a laptop running Linux. I don’t need to beef with anyone, especially when there’s so much cool music out there that next to no one is writing about.

With that out of the way, I’m going to start this whole enterprise with a rundown of what my favorite albums from 2024 were. There’s two reasons for this. First, lists, love them or hate them, are fun. That’s just a true fact. Second, this will introduce you to my taste. You’ll learn about the biases that I bring as a reviewer. Any reviewer who tells you they listen to everything with the same level of consideration is lying. They can like everything, but they are going to know certain things better than others. I’m no different. Cool? Great.

With this now done, I welcome you to The Rinse. Let’s see where our journey takes us.