Back in the early 2000s I met this guy Sean. Like my friend Erik, my high school friends Mike and Steve, or Henry Rollins, he was another curator. Each had or have their pocket, and with Sean it was the indie rock and pop that suddenly blasted off at the beginning of the millennium, stretching onward. He would send me huge .zip files of albums to check out, and it was through him that I was drawn into bands like Tegan and Sara, Deerhunter, Stars, and more. I would take everything and load it into a playlist I playfully titled Wallet Chains, after the accessory that was maddeningly popular at the time, and that Sean himself wore around the office with pride.

For some reason this week I looked back and fell back…hard. It triggered the realization that it had been years – in some cases over a decade since I engaged in a lot of music I love simply because I was obsessed with something else (prog, the Dead, you name it). So this is a quick look at what I turned and tuned my ears to over the past week in that vein.

Continue reading “(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 73: Revisiting Wallet Chains”