The tick-tock of time trips on and here we are again, old friends. Said the Gramophone. Best songs. By now I hope you know the drill. This world needs some kindnesses--it wants more peace, liberation, and music shared between strangers. So here's a pistachio, a ripe pear. Here are my 100 favourite songs of the year 2023; songs I love much more than doomed submarines (or basketball). Earlier this year, I published by third novel--a book called Do You Remember Being Born? It follows the story of a fictional 75-year-old poet, Marian Ffarmer, who is hired by a Big Tech company to collaborate with ..read more

Hi everyone! Can you believe it's been a year? It's been a year. You deserve a hug, a rest, a fruitcake. Here's some plain green tea, here's a priceless emerald, here are my 100 favourite songs of 2022: songs I love more than new kings, cold soup, or downloading my private data from an obsolescing social media network. This was a good year for music. There was something encouraging about the weather: a sense that somehow despite all the economic forces stacked against them, musicians were up to stuff. Scenes were happening. New sounds were blowing in. Said the Gramophone is an old blog and we ..read more

Hello world! We're still standing. Here are my 100 favourite songs of 2021: songs I love more than sand-worms, insurrections, and successfully traversing the Suez Canal. Said the Gramophone is an old blog and we publish rarely. Writing about these songs is a tradition now almost two decades old and at this point it feels deeply seasonal -- at the end of November I start feeling like I imagine pumpkins must feel in August; or bears as the first frosts appear. I have something to do now. A habit that's made its way into my bones. In 2021, I listened to as much or more music than in any year I ca ..read more

Taqbir - "Sma3" [bandcamp / vinyl] The genius of punk is eternally on the move, a fugitive spirit inspiring the crabby, smart, and sensitive around the globe. My favourite new jam is by woman-fronted Moroccan Taqwacore crew Taqbir. Blasting out of Tangier, their four song EP is a furious gust of universal hardcore. A fluid phased-out bass drives the lead song "Sma3." Accompanied by gloriously distorted guitar and bouncy drums, it is as invigorating as an espresso shot after a night of restless sleep. The vocals are powerful, fresh, vital, and fueled by a surfeit of rage at hypocrisy and greed ..read more

Bonnie "Prince" Billy - "Thick Air"[buy on bandcamp] Until the beginning of June, Nova Scotia was under third-wave lockdown, and now we're in Phase 2 of reopening. It seems we're climbing out of the tunnel, or coming round the valley bend, or opening the shutters. I don't know, global pandemics seem to lend themselves so readily to metaphor, but in the moment none of them feel really right. Admittedly, that's pretty low on their list of negatives, but a good metaphor would have helped, as I surfed through all the different eras, all the new normals packed tightly into the last fifteen months ..read more

These are my 100 favourite songs of 2020: songs I love more than solitude, take-out and the immune-responses of bats. What a hell year. What a nightmare. What an endless shit parade. 2020 was a fuckin Grand Canyon of Wretchedness and yet, and yet, it was also suffused with a sense of resilience: the sense of coming-through. We have lived inside an avalanche. We have sunk to the bottom of the sea. We have survived isolation and deprivation and loneliness and loss; we have ordered deliveries; we have strived; we have applied alcohol to our hands. We have come this far and promise me we will keep ..read more

Jane Inc. - "Steel" "I can finally think," the hum and the vibrating earth. Earth shifted in pillars. Pillars rearranging in patterns and letters and guts. "I can finally hear," the clouds and the piteous sky. Sky part, a place to drop in. Drop in, centered, Age of the Skateboard Teen. A pop-up epoch, one eon only. "I can finally have," the gears and the movers within. A rubbing electric ripping, hair with a life of its own. That gaze, that tube of ethereal navy throb, through which you can see your favourite thing. Jane Inc. is power. Power on, up, and through. "Steel" is reflexive, out-of-b ..read more

Yes, something's coming ..read more

Eleanor Friedberger - "The River (Destroyer cover)" [buy on bandcamp] Tougher times, these days. There's something circadian about it - you're up, you're down, eventually you're up again. "There's something circadian about it!" I've shouted this now: shouted it in an alley, at a friend six-and-a-half feet away. What a world. "You study your braille / you listen to the hail outside," Eleanor Friedberger sings. When Dan Bejar recorded this it was shiny, sturdy, blasted by cloud-coloured light. Here now it's a doomed demo, a recording never finished or properly released. Here now it feels like ..read more

Bad Bunny ft Sech - "Ignorantes". Today I played with my son in the living-room, a game of pigs and yeti, scampering over mountaintops, and as I did so I listened to Bad Bunny, because I have taken to listening to new music while we play, these days, because I can't listen to music the ways I normally do. The reason I was listening to Bad Bunny was because I like what I've already heard by him, but mostly because Nat likes him, and I trust her taste (with the exception of Berlioz, ai ai ai), but at a certain point I was listening not because of Nat, not because of anyone else besides Bad Bunny ..read more