What I've Been Listening To [March 2025]

Welcome to the inaugural post of the What I've Been Listening To series!

I listen to a lot of music and I do a horrible job of keeping track of it. I was somehow convinced to start using Last.fm in order to help me track my listening habits. I want to do better to not only see what I've been listening to, but I want to be able to share music that I enjoy with more people. I'll do my best to highlight artists, albums, and songs that I've been grooving to month by month.

With that said, let's talk about some bangers that I enjoyed back in March.

Combat - Stay Golden

On New Year's Eve, I ended up buying Counter Intuitive Records's discography. For the low low price of $1, you can own over 100 albums on Bandcamp forever. It's one of the greatest deals in music.

Now I've loved some bands on the label, but the one that stood out to me and made me bite the bullet was "Insignificant Other". I don't know why I waited so long to buy this collection, but I'm glad I did.

I don't remember exactly when I started poking around the internet, but on occasion I'll peruse one of my favorite sites, Brooklyn Vegan. It's a website dedicated to music. They do yearly roundups of various genres and I wanted to know what their list looked like for punk music.

So I found the article for "50 best punk albums of 2024" and just started scrolling. As I approached the number 1 slot, an album stood out to me because I recognized the art. It was included in the bundle I had bought. And that album was Combat's Stay Golden.

Stay Golden is basically part rock opera in two acts. With a wonderful opening piano that immediately leads into the outstanding title track, this album is a very personal story of Combat's Holden Wolf and what life has been like since the band's previous record. It's a high-energy emo/punk album that feels right at home amongst bands like Prince Daddy & the Hyena and it was even produced by Origami Angel's Ryland Heagy.

Holden Wolf also did a track-by-track breakdown of the album as well.

Cheem - Guilty Pleasure (Deluxe Edition)

I don't remember how exactly I came across Cheem. I think their music came up on autoplay sometime last year and I ended up "liking" their song "Snag". They would pop up more and more in my suggestions but I just brushed them off again and again.

I think the album art for the regular edition of the album really grew on me despite only listening to the one song. So I finally started listening to them, and man have I been missing out.

Cheem is a Nu Metal/Nu Pop band that has 2 guitarists, a drummer, a lead singer, and a rapper. They feel like the natural evolution of mid-2000s boy bands that I grew up loving. Cheem's sound is pretty unique. Having a singer and rapper both with insane voices is a delight and the band isn't afraid to swap genres mid-song. They play around with all kinds of sounds and it's something that I wish I started listening to earlier.

Guilty Pleasure is exactly what it says on the cover. The band is indulging in the sounds and styles that they want to create. Not caring at all about what's popular, this is a record all about having fun, and you can't help but smile when listening to this record.

Japanese Breakfast - For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women)

I've previously talked about Japanese Breakfast's Jubilee here on the site, so I was excited to hear new music by Michelle! As soon as this album was announced, I pre-ordered the CD and vinyl record. Japanese Breakfast absolutely knocked it out of the park once again.

Jubilee's "Paprika" was a song that immediately graced your ears with incredible production and For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) is the same. Its opening track "Here is Someone" smacks you across the face within the first minute.

All of the singles "Orlando in Love", "Mega Circuit", and "Picture Window" immediately captured my attention and I had them both on loop when they were released. As soon as the clock struck 12, I immediately played this album and was not disappointed.

Michelle puts it best in this post on her Bandcamp.

Over the course of promoting this new album, I’ve often been asked to clarify the difference between melancholy and sadness. I think of melancholy as a kind of anticipatory grief, one that comes from an acknowledgment of the passage of time, from the recognition of mortality and finitude. In some way, too, I think it marks the artist’s condition, constantly observing through that lens. "Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy," Virginia Woolf writes. I wanted this album to capture the moments where that knife slips. When people want too much, when they cede to temptation, when they are seduced and punished.

While Jubilee was a celebration and filled with joy, this album takes a more somber tone. You can feel how much more Michelle has grown as a musician and this album is nothing short of incredible.

Thanks for checking out this issue of What I've Been Listening To! Hopefully, I can keep this up, and I've already got a few bands lined up for next month's issue.