I always have a tough time with these introduction things when it comes to End of Year lists.  The temptation is to sum up the year with some anecdotes about what it meant to me and how the music I loved played into it.  Yet what could I say about a year that was such a mixed bag for me?  On a personal note, my mental health took an all-out nosedive last year that I’m still trying to claw my way out of, yet my partner and I got engaged and are looking forward to spending the rest of our lives together (not that we weren’t already, but you get the point).  The weight of the worst depression and anxiety I’ve ever faced affected my ability to connect to a lot of the music I heard last year, yet I started a column on here that lead me back to a genre of music I had not seriously kept up with for some time, and in doing so I found a little piece of myself again.  Years are years are years, and life is cyclical and spiralic in nature.  I won’t pretend there weren’t good things to come out of last year, just as I won’t pretend there won’t be hard times in the year ahead.  But I will always have a carefully curated soundtrack to help me along the way, and below represents what helped me get through 2019.   Continue reading →