YOU ARE HERE: zharth.net / Zharth's Music Log / Week 169 (21st Century Discoveries)
(Originally finalized on November 14, 2025)
Preface: We started this quarter with a theme that walked us up into the 21st century, and I thought we could close it out with something similar. Although this music log - dedicated to the blues and rock genres - is largely constrained to the classic rock era (the '60s and '70s, and occasionally the '80s), I wanted to take at least one week to highlight some of my favorite music from this millennium.
Granted, contemporary music is not my expertise (in case that wasn't made clear enough during my one-off theme dedicated to '90s music). With that in mind, I think you'll find the music this week to be pretty consistent with what we usually listen to - albeit with one or two exceptions. That said, the criteria for selection this week is music released within the last two and a half decades, most of it by artists who were not active prior to the year 2000. And it's music that I like enough to keep coming back to, not stuff I listened to once and then forgot.
As a final note, I'm excluding two prominent artists that I've become a huge fan of in the 21st century (namely, Joe Bonamassa and Miley Cyrus), since I couldn't possibly do them justice with a single song selection. But, if I'm feeling up to it, I may dedicate a week to each of them next quarter - which I plan on making the final quarter of this music log. And when I say that this time, I actually mean it. ...I think.
Monday: Silvertide - Ain't Comin' Home [Show And Tell, 2004]
Comments: This is one of the first "contemporary" (at the time) bands that I discovered, and is still, to this day, one of my favorites. Talked up by a fan turned street team member from Philly on an online classic rock discussion forum I used to frequent, I got in on the ground floor. Saw them a few times live, even got to hang out with them backstage! They were all set to record a live concert DVD, and if plans hadn't fallen through, you might very well have been able to see me in the audience. Sadly, with all the talent this band had, after releasing just one full length album, they evaporated into thin air.
Tuesday: Lance Lopez - Time [Wall Of Soul, 2004]
Comments: In college, during the height of my musical awakening, I stumbled upon an independent record label dedicated to guitar-driven rock and blues music, called Grooveyard Records. It's how I originally discovered Joe Bonamassa. But it also turned me on to Lance Lopez, who drew my attention by not only covering two of the greatest guitarists of all time - one known (Jimi Hendrix) and one not so known (Robin Trower) - but showing good taste in choosing two of their best deep cuts (Spanish Castle Magic and Shame The Devil, respectively). Lance wields his axe with a fire and aplomb matched by very few in the history of guitar legends. Every album of his I've picked up has been fantastic.
Wednesday: Walter Trout & Friends - She Takes More Than She Gives [Full Circle, 2006]
Comments: It was through a collaboration with Joe Bonamassa (featured on this very album) that I was introduced to Walter Trout - a singular talent at guitar, who also boasts a powerful voice. Technically, Trout has been active at least since the '80s, when he played first for Canned Heat and then with John Mayall (who guests on this track), but I consider his 21st century material as a solo artist to stand on its own. Although I'd also recommend We're All In This Together and Survivor Blues, this album is particularly good; I'd be hard-pressed to find a single dud on it.
Thursday: Stonefield - To Whom It May Concern [Stonefield, 2013]
Comments: If you follow this music log, you should already be acquainted with Stonefield, Australia's 21st century answer to The Pleasure Seekers (which was the prototype for The Runaways). Although this four-piece band of sisters veered into psychedelia afterward, their full-length studio debut is a more straightforward retro rock affair. It's a killer album, from start to finish. It's just a shame that I can find so many obscure bands from the '60s and '70s on YouTube, but despite this more recent band's high caliber, a search yields only bread crumbs...
Friday: The Pretty Reckless - Sweet Things [Going To Hell, 2014]
Comments: Let's be honest. Marketing works, and I'm not ashamed to admit that when you put a naked lady on an album cover, I'm going to sit up and take notice. Better still, when the model is actress Taylor Momsen (she played Cindy Lou Who in the live action adaptation of Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas), and it's her band, which plays hard rock, and leans heavily into the trope of the Catholic schoolgirl gone bad - really bad. But those are just the first impressions that get your foot in the door. I wouldn't still be listening to this album today if it weren't one of the best things released in the last thirty years. Seriously, I don't think there's a bad track on it.
Saturday: Blackpink - Ddu-du Ddu-du [Blackpink In Your Area, 2018]
Comments: K-Pop (Korean pop music) is definitely having a moment in our culture right now. Normally, it's not the kind of thing that would break through my defenses. But when the female answer to BTS came out with a documentary on Netflix, it caught my interest. By the time I finished watching it, I was hooked. Their subsequent albums have also grown on me, but I practically became obsessed with the first one I got my hands on - which was released for the Japanese market and features the songs sung in Japanese (which, as a lifelong fan of anime, gives it a comfortable familiarity).
Sunday: Godspeed You! Black Emperor - The Sad Mafioso [F# A# oo, 1998]
Comments: I'm making a deliberate exception to my Y2K cut-off to include this band, since it was such an important musical discovery for me. It introduced me to a whole new genre of music (post-rock), which is characterized by dynamic transitions between ambient passages and swelling crescendos. I first heard this song in the film 28 Days Later, in which it plays during a pivotal moment after the protagonist wakes from a coma to find that the world has lapsed into an apocalyptic wasteland. This piece, titled "The Sad Mafioso", is part of a larger movement, but it's as good an introduction as any to the band. I recommend anything you can get your hands on by them.
