I don’t know who needs to hear this, but taking a break can work its magic if you let it.

When I wrote back in March about needing to step away from the widescreen picture of music writing and its surrounding world, it was hard to imagine what returning to it could look like. The burnout was real and the emotions toward what its culture had evolved into were beyond indifferent. I’ve been adamant that I’ll never come back in the same capacity as I did before with publishing 10+ writeups each week while keeping tabs on the online discourse and fielding press inquiries daily, and that still remains true.

After some recalibration, especially in listening to music with more intention and freedom outside the boundaries of album cycles, release dates, and bullshit demands to get posts up quicker than the next site, I found myself being able to breathe, to enjoy, and consider music without any expectations in needing to commit thoughts on it to word right there and then. And so ironically enough, this was the catalyst to how I began writing again — but in private. For the first time since I launched my first site in 2010, it once again became a self-rewarding passion project to have, to own, and make the rules for. Gone was the stress to get what I am writing about published onto a timeline that will just chew it up into the void anyhow, and more importantly, gone was the burden of needing to write about (almost) every single song or album the passed my personal litmus test. That being said…

+rcmndedlisten is hitting the restart button. The new norm will either be one or none in terms of posts per day. It’s quality over quantity from here on out. Paying much attention to the album cycle properly is a dead concept on these pages as well (no offense to any labels and publicists working very hard behind them.) As for that hollow social media white noise, it has no influence here any longer. I’ll be publishing posts from private to public after a certain amount accumulate, and then drop them on X and Instagram like a throwback to the magazine days where you’d usually be reading about new music once or twice a month (edit: this was too much content work for one day. Let’s just say they’ll make their way out there into the wild whenever I’ve the bandwidth.) There’s nothing to gain at this stage from being engaged with what’s happening over there on the daily anyhow, and I’d argue that every publication would be better off without their shadows looming at this stage.

This lightens the workload on my end, and above all, will hopefully help highlight only the most exceptional of new music. There’s always the option to take a break at any point in time, too, be it a few weeks, a month, many months… or for good.

Thanks for sticking around.

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+rcmndedlisten