Over the past decade I’ve been coming slowly uncoupled from any awareness of recently released music. This would be an entirely normal statement if I were a little bit older, but I’m only 28. So I made a mid-year resolution to listen to more new music, and to that end, I recently started a review series on this blog, called “New Music,” where I will listen to recent albums and share my thoughts.

As a teenager I listened to a lot of dubstep, EDM and later the indie rock and neo-psychedelia of the 2010s. But toward the end of high school I got obsessed with Bob Dylan, and I spent the next three or four years listening almost exclusively to him. This was the closest I’ve come to being an insufferable superfan of anything. That Dylan listening laid the groundwork for a slow, then sudden, shift in focus to country music, which really hit during the Covid lockdown and kept me busy through the Biden administration. The first country music that I liked was the 1950s and ’60s honky-tonk style that plays on Willie’s Roadhouse on SiriusXM, which primed me for my recent phase: ’50s music (also powered by SiriusXM, this time ’50s Gold). More recently, I’ve been going even further back into classical music.

All of which has left me feeling increasingly alienated from the human race, like an 80-year-old man before my time. What is everyone listening to? Where is music going during the time I’m alive? I haven’t been keeping track. New Music is an attempt at reversing course.

My first entry includes five albums from the last two months. I think I’ll keep roughly that lookback window and try to do a couple of entries a month, at least. I’ve got another one almost lined up already.