. . . the proposed morning routine went to hell in a hand basket. Last night’s gig was brutal on the body and I slept in until 9. I’ve had zero alcohol in two days, but all night the body was complaining and the sleep was mediocre. Get up. Dogs and coffee, breakfast. The stupid smart phone. And then errands to run, business and pleasure. To the bank, deposit checks, pay band members, then, a trip to the neighborhood record store, for which I have $90 worth of gift cards burning a whole in the pocket. I both love and hate going to the record store not knowing what I want. I love it, because the end result is a mystery, and, at least in the case of my favorite place to get music, lots of time to chat with Stephen or Emily, the proprietors of Daily Records. I hate it because I have difficulty deciding, granted, part of the fun, but frustrating, because, like today, I find what I want within 15 minutes of browsing the new releases, but then I have to go through the entire store alphabetically at least twice to make sure I haven’t missed something. I ended up purchasing those initial discoveries in the new releases. The good records from 2025 haven’t really emerged yet, so today I grab two recently released 2024 albums, both from Nordic artists who’ve I’ve been eyeballing (earlobing?) for quite some time, Aurora’s What Happened to the Heart? and Laufey’s Bewitched: The Goddess Edition. I’m spinning the Aurora right now and there is much to dig about it. She’s a brilliant artist, stylistically drawing from a wide variety of sources, but it’s like if Enya was more like Madonna, or if Bjork was just a little less nuts, or if Kate Bush was from Norway. She’s got a crazy great voice, her lyrics are smart, the musicianship is terrific (check out the drums at the end of “Your Blood”) and she is lovely. Maybe, since Bjork, the most winning personality of any pop star I know. Watching her interviews, you get a pretty clear window into that playful, irreverent personality. Laufey, whose name pronunciation requires a tutorial, is an Icelandic singer songwriter who seems to be single-handedly bringing back vocal jazz (a la all the famous mid-century crooners) to young listeners. So it’s a Nordic January for me. For the rest of the day I will be listening and napping, and then this evening a slightly belated New Year’s gathering with four of our best friends. A wonderful day, all in all, despite its deviation from what I had hoped to establish early as a January routine.
michael jarmer 