In this case I mean literally. I spent the whole week absorbing one Italian Prog album after another, and while I genuinely liked everything I listened to (I really, really loved the Errata Corrige) I really needed to cleanse the palate when it was over. And since I had so much music come in over the week it spurred me to not only focus on that for this playlist, but for next week’s theme as well. Lots of new music, and music new to me this week, even if the length of one of the tracks makes this a shorter playlist than normal. Let’s dig in; I’ll see you on the other side.

• David Bowie – “Station To Station (Live at Nassau Coliseum ’76)”
• Nite – “Cult Of The Serpent Sun”
• Jason Isbell – “Foxes In The Snow”
• Bob Mould – “When Your Heart Is Broken”

Can David Bowie be called prog? “Station to Station” is one of my favorite songs and albums by the legend, and I recently grabbed two live albums: the Live Santa Monica ’72 and Live Nassau Coliseum ’76, from which this killer version is taken. You can never, NEVER have enough Bowie in your life…Few bands are mixing extreme and traditional metal better than Nite right now, and their just dropped album Cult Of The Serpent Sun is fantastic, so consider this title track a tease for when I review it next week…

A few weeks ago I bought my first acoustic guitar, which I call out because in the 30 years I’ve been playing I never owned one, and barely ever played one. The first thing I learned on it was “Cover Me Up,” one of my absolute favorite songs in the world by the man Jason Isbell, and his new solo acoustic album is exactly what my heart needed when the world started getting too crazy to even look at…When it comes to Bob Mould, I was a Sugar guy before I even knew who Husker Dü was. The man continues to be a vital creative force, and this track from his new album Here We Go Crazy is another instant classic…

• Agender – “Damaged Girls”
• Blind Golem – “Green Eye”
• Tiktaalika – “Fault Lines”
• Steven Wilson – “Objects Outlive Us”

I really love the dry, crisp attack of post-punk, and Agender are one of those great discoveries that more people need to know about. So now you do, and there’s no excuse to immediately go out and gab a copy of their new album Berserk, and maybe grab their 2022 release No Nostalgia while you’re at it…I mentioned Blind Golem in a previous playlist, and their Uriah Heep worship couldn’t be more up front as when they actually cover the band, so here’s a taste of what that sounds like. Long live the Heep, and long may Blind Golem worship them…Charlie Griffiths might be mostly known for his incredible skills as 1/2 of the guitar duo in the progressive rock/metal band Haken, but solo he’s taken on a completely different persona. Tiktaalika is his outlet to unleash the best 80s thrash I’ve heard in a long, long time and this 100% is going to be in the list for my favorite albums of the year…

Finally, I said this was mostly non-prog (unless you count the Bowie), but the new Steven Wilson is here, and a lot of pundits were touting it as “his return to prog” – probably because The Overview is basically two long tracks, at 23 minutes and 18 minutes. Here’s the thing, though: Wilson has gone on record stating he has a very different perspective on what “progressive” means, so people should settle down and take it for what it is. To me it sounds like an extension of the work he’s been putting out, and is progressive in the way he’s playing with random electronic noise and finding how they fit in his concept. I’m still digesting it (review will be this week) but the first track, the 23-minute suite “Objects Will Outlive Us” has really grown on me…

Be safe, be good to each other. See you next week.