Get Excited, 2010! The New Year in Music

By this point -- a mere two-ish weeks into the new year -- I usually find that the novelty of said new year has worn off. The excitement gives way to how overwhelming the opportunity of a new year can be, for me, anyways. I also tend to get discouraged by cold weather and the encroaching spring term.

But this year is different. Maybe it's because I've managed, between this forum and my schoolwork, to effectively make studying music my job, but I can't seem to stop being excited for what will happen this year in music. Though I've been trolling magazines and music websites for their picks for 'the most anticipated albums of 2010', and though I've been disappointed and entirely unsurprised to find few women on these lists, there is good news. New albums from Quasi, M.I.A., and the Shondes and then there's the new record from Christina Aguilera, which will allegedly feature songs produced by Le Tigre and Ladytron.

What really makes the lack of "mainstream" attention to female musicians tolerable though is everything that seems to be developing locally. Concrete information like tour dates and record release dates are scant but still, so much seems to be happening. Things seem quiet, but I have this feeling that the local bands whose work I attempt to chronicle here are regrouping and planning. You can just tell that new music, tour dates, and new projects are being set up. That friends are talking with other friends about new bands, art projects, and other types of collaborations. That stuff is coming.

For those of you who want names: my faves Zombie Dogs mentioned last year that they're working on a 7". Little Lungs has a 7" coming out for real on Salinas Records next month, and they're scheduled to tour through March. Their friends, (who are technically not local, but whatever) P.S. Eliot, have a 7" coming out too, and have some tour dates posted, and are in talks with my faves from way back, The Two Funerals. A joint PS/TTF tour, as well as a split release, might well be in the near future. In the meantime, TTF is working on a new release for The Cottage Records.

It's strange. it doesn't sound like much, but the handful of conjecture, speculation, and pseudo-gossip is more engrossing and uplifting than all the magazine and website lists of new releases put together. Or maybe it's not strange at all: crossing days off of your calendar as you get closer to a confirmed release or show date is great. But talking with your friends and bands about what they're up to, even when they're not entirely sure, supplies you with a kind of hopeful, blissful feeling that anything is possible, where a calendar really can't.

Hump Day Treat, Almost New Year Edition

Normally on Wednesday at Rock and the Single Girl, I find myself looking back -- either for a video of an old favorite, a recent find, or maybe a band or song I'd heard about awhile ago but never had a chance to investigate.

But it is, after all, just a few hours until a new year begins, and I find myself instead looking forward to what new music will come out of 2010.

And so today we're serving up a live video from one of the bands I am most excited for: The Shondes. Hailing from Brooklyn, and with several national tours and a heartbreakingly good debut LP already under their belts, The Shondes are preparing to release a new record next year, and I could not be happier to support them. Check them out on this bright, cold, final hump day of 2009.