30 Days in 60 Minutes: February 2018

Featuring Jeff Rosenstock, The Wonder Years, Soccer Mommy, 90s white guys with dreads and the acceptance of dull music months

There have definitely been times over the past 20 or so years where I’ve considered putting an end to this monthly mix project. I’ll feel like the format puts unnecessary restrictions on what I choose to listen to, sidelining genres that don’t fit well within them (rap, metal) or forcing me to gorge on new music when I’d rather hear stuff I actually like. Because otherwise, how else am I going to find 60 minutes of music that moves me in any given month?

And yet, the deliverables always come because I recognize the importance of doing these for posterity, since I don’t really journal or take a lot of pictures or anything else that keeps a record of my existence for future reference. These are a way to capture prevalent musical trends, or phases in my own listening habits and, at a base level, to help me remember what the hell was actually happening in my life at that time. Sometimes, a sequence of songs will capture the ineffable essence that comes with a month of new relationships or new work stresses or travel. Other times, they’re kinda duds that reflect a month where nothing much happened.

Maybe there just wasn’t much compelling music being released at the time, or my attention was focused elsewhere or that nothing significant was happening with work or relationships or the world at large; I tend to find this happens most often in February or March, which frequently turn out to be sorta dead months for music. That appears to be true in 2025, I’m looking at Metacritic’s upcoming release schedule and there’s gonna be a lot of mailbag episodes of Indiecast.

That wasn’t true in 2016 and 2017, years I split between California and Kentucky, getting into and out of relationships, transitioning from jobs to a career. 2018 was…a normal year. I had the same job and girlfriend from the previous year, I didn’t move apartments, let alone cities, and even the experience of Donald Trump being president felt…if not normal, no longer as shocking on a daily basis. What even were the big albums from that year? According to Pazz & Jop, Kacey Musgraves, Janelle Monae and Cardi B, all of which feel extremely 2018. I don’t know if there’s ever going to be an “Obama-core” term to encapsulate pop culture from the first Trump administration, but those three albums sum it up quite nicely. Pitchfork’s AOTY was Mitski’s Be the Cowboy, which felt and still feels like a, “yeah, I guess” choice. Even in my little world, 2018 was a dull ass year for emo, sort of like 2017 in that it lacked any emergent scene or major masterpieces (aside from Nearer My God, which barely qualifies as “emo” at all) without even the benefit of an Always Foreign or Science Fiction that at least signaled the end of an era.

But the important thing is that, when I revisit this mix full of pretty good songs, I really remember an otherwise unmemorable February 2018, which is the whole point. I tell my eating disorder patients that recovery is often times a stretch of completely boring, unmemorable meals, ones that don’t cause paralyzing fear or crippling FOMO or linger in your head for hours afterwards; sometimes lunch just provides nourishment that gets you from point A to B like it does for normal-ass people. And sometimes months of music are like that too. 2018 was dull in the moment, but I guess that’s what makes it so rich for reappraisal.

Nada Surf - “Blizzard of ‘77”

I always love looking up still-active alt-rock B-teamers on Apple Music because, as these things go, there’s a good chance that the lineup has at least one guy in the picture who was clearly a recent addition. Hence, “huh, when did Better Than Ezra have a black guy in the band?”

I only have vague memories of seeing “Popular” on MTV, but I’m going to assume that none of the people in that video ended up being a “white guy with dreads.”

There’s a 90% chance that alt-rock B-teamers are going to have an anti-vaxx guy and maybe a 50% chance they’re going to have a white dreads guy, but I wouldn’t have expected that from Nada Surf, as there was not a spec of 311 or Sublime in their DNA and also, they’re one of the few bands from the Summerland Scene that actually had a viable career in the 2000s.

Let Go had a pretty interesting critical reception - every review fixated on them being the “Popular” band and completely disappearing afterwards. And most of the reviews were very, very positive, with the exception of the one I actually read at the time, the Pitchfork 3.8 which was written very much in the 2002 house style. There were plenty of albums with this kind of split that I loved (Wood/Water, Read Music/Speak Music, everything Jimmy Eat World did), and in theory, Let Go should’ve been one of them. When Let Go was released, I had just graduated college and was living with my parents while I figured out my next move, and the one thing I had to look forward to was drinking in the basement while watching MTV and playing NCAA College Football; I caught the “Inside of Love” video once and, needless to say, it landed a direct blow during this most profoundly down bad time of my life. I never saw it again, except when it pops up during a scene in Six Feet Under where Claire is making out with her boyfriend (earlier in the episode, she gets blazed to “Naked As We Came,” peak 2004 achieved).

I somehow never got this CD, even though I have little doubt it was a $6.99 Best Buy special. My understanding from the hype was that “Popular” is their “Creep” and Let Go is their stunning artistic reinvention a la The Bends, but every time I listened to it, said reinvention essentially turns into “what if Marcy Playground made The Photo Album.” There’s one song in French and one song about listening to Blonde on Blonde that’s called “Blonde on Blonde,” all of which drives home that this is a band that isn’t nearly as smart or art as it thinks it is. This song kinda goes though.