I haven’t really thought about it a lot, but if I had to pick the greatest album of the year so far, I think I would choose Craig Finn’s new album We All Want The Same Things. I did already share the God In Chicago video a while back, but needed to quickly praise this again, because it’s such a special record and half of these songs could also be candidates for the song of the year award. The songs God In Chicago, Rescue Blues, Be Honest go above any kind of rating scale I can set up. I really enjoyed the earlier solo albums too, but maybe I still felt that they didn’t completely reach the level of The Hold Steady. I don’t have any doubts anymore. This is just as brilliant as The Hold Steady if not more. Craig Finn is a magnificent songwriter and We All Want The Same Things is a spectacular album.

Craig Finn Website

One more recent song love affair while we are at it. There’s dozens, because I’ve only updated a few times during the past couple of months. This one is from the new self-titled Joan Shelley album that is due out very soon on the 5th of May. A stunning folk song from most likely wonderful album. I haven’t heard the whole thing yet, but I fully trust the talent of Joan Shelley and the guidance of executive producer Dwight Lightning. By the way, I wholeheartedly recommend following her dog Dwight on instagram. Checking out if Dwight is up to something is like a daily routine to me these days and I also tell about Dwight’s actions to my wife and my cat. Sure I loved Joan’s music before I knew about Dwight, but somehow that marvellous dog has made me even a bigger fan of Joan Shelley. A great supporter for her. This is Where I’ll Find You from the forthcoming Joan Shelley album.

Joan Shelley Website

Another huge song addiction during this flu-ish vappu weekend has been Leah Senior’s Pretty Faces. It’s the amazing title track of her forthcoming album that is due out 26th of May on Flightless Records. Leah Senior is a marvellous Australian folk singer-songwriter and Pretty Faces is her second album. The debut full-length Summer’s On The Ground is also rather spectacular. Unfortunately yours truly was an ignorant fool when it came out and it took me until 2016 to find that treasure. However, since then I’ve been looking forward to hearing more music from her and now that wait is over. The first outtake from the new album is available, I’m badly in love with the song and have listened to it a few dozen times during the weekend. This is Pretty Faces from the forthcoming Leah Senior album.

Leah Senior Website

Lately I’ve let things slide and haven’t done anything blog-related. Unfortunately this doesn’t pay the bills and I just haven’t found the energy for this after coming home from the dayjob and I’ve spent the little spare time I’ve had just lying on the couch watching hockey games. Somewhere along the way I also lost the spark a little bit and have really struggled to convince myself that it’s worth it to still carry on. I’m sure I’ll get things back on track again, but no idea will it take me days, weeks or months. Maybe a little tongue-in-cheek worst case scenario for the blog is similar to the break up of my all-time favorite band The Posies. So that onechord.net as an active way of life might be over, but it won’t completely disappear and I will keep on writing whenever I feel like it.

On the other hand. F#&= everything I just said. There’s still the songs and the love I have for the songs. So let’s do this. Today I found out that huge personal favourite Canadian Taylor Knox is getting ready to release his debut album and I again felt the need to share this news with the world or the seven regular readers that I still have. Lines EP that came out a couple of years ago was brilliant and I have huge expectations for this new Afie Jurvanen-produced album. The first outtake Running Into Love is a really wonderful pop song and I can’t wait to hear the rest when the album Love drops into our hearts on 9th of June. This is Running Into Love. Thanks Taylor for giving back the spark.

Taylor Knox Website