Welcome (back?)

For the 25 months between December 2010 and January 2013 I wrote album reviews on a blog I called 'Never Mind the ARIAs'.

 Fiercely uninterested in anything related to the charts, passionate about anything written before 1990 and very, very opinionated, NMTA was my safe space to explore new music and connect with fellow music-lovers around me.

It blew my mind the first time a uni classmate struck up a conversation with me based on my scathing review of The Kooks' Junk of the Heart.

It blew my mind again when a colleague read my Gotye review as pre-concert research.

I became hooked on the conversations my writing was generating.

Hooked on the connection music brings, be it listened to or written about.

When the excellent Bernard Zuel walked into a guest lecture at my university in late 2012, he told us he was "a dead man walking".

Music writing was dying then and it still is now.

But I have never written about music for popularity. For me, music writing has always been a way to process, internalise and pay homage to the art form that has shaped my life and career for well over a decade (and counting).

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I'll Write Instead is a sneaky Beatles reference to I'll Cry Instead - but with an uplifting twist in honour of the fighting spirit this lockdown.

I'm not sure where I'll start, but I know I want this blog to be filled with the music that is inspiring me right now - the new and the classic - and my unfiltered thoughts on its DNA.

If you're here for the first time, welcome! If you've been here since 2010, welcome back.

Let's get this show on the road.