Everything changes, and I ain’t immune. Years ago I would spend hours beneath headphones, poring over my favorite albums. These days I sneak in a few listens on the commute to and from work.

Of course, albums really aren’t en vogue anymore — not in the era of streaming and playlists. Music is consumed on a more micro scale. That’s OK with me. Moments are all I really have time for anyway.

With that in mind, here are my five favorite music moments of 2019.

5.) Gail Ann Dorsey descends from Olympus on The National’s “You Had Your Soul With You”

Matt Berninger projects a commanding presence — he’s got the baritone, the beard, the imposing frame. It’s why it’s so striking when the legendary Gail Ann Dorsey — longtime David Bowie bassist — swoops in out of nowhere toward the end of “You Had Your Soul With You” and, to paraphrase Nas, murders Berninger on his own shit. Her voice is so stately it feels heavy in your ears, especially when she’s delivering lines like “you have no idea how hard I died when you left.”

4.) boygenius form like Voltron on “Me and My Dog”

Aside from being a really great band name, boygenius is the side project of three fantastic individual songwriters in Phoebe Bridgers, Julian Baker and Lucy Dacus. My favorite song on their self-titled EP is the Bridgers-penned “Me and My Dog,” which is filled with lovely surprises: the banjo quietly tucked into the corners, the blue-sky Nashville harmonies, the gentle backbeat that drops out for maximum effect, and the perfect final image of escaping heartbreak by hopping into a UFO with no one but your dog, floating above the emotional carnage below.

3.) Those shimmering Danielle Haim background vocals on Vampire Weekend’s “This Life”

When Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin came out, Wayne Coyne said that “if someone was to ask me what instrument do I play, I would say the recording studio.” It’s always been one of my favorite rock and roll tropes — a marquee band holes up in a studio in Berlin or the south of France or Jane Seymour’s haunted mansion to create a Statement Album featuring a distinctive, cohesive production and sound.

Not many bands fit that bill these days, which is why I really love Father of the Bride — especially “This Life.” The production is precise and exquisite, like the reverb gate on the second handclap in every other measure, or the crisp spaghetti-western guitar playing the counter melody. Best of all is shimmery tremolo on the backing vocals of album-MVP Danielle Haim. Glorious.

2.) Big Thief tear a white-hot hole through “Not” on Colbert

I don’t get out much these days, so when I found myself in Chicago for a conference this fall, I had big plans to take in some blues or jazz and stay out really late — maybe even past 10 p.m. Instead I discovered Big Thief and stayed in my hotel room watching YouTube videos until I fell asleep.

Big Thief released not one but two excellent albums this year, but the real highlight was this ridiculously amazing performance of Two Hands’ “Not” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. I mean, just watch — the tightly coiled energy, the interplay, the way the camera spins to capture the intimacy. The drummer who looks like he just stepped out of a yacht rock video from 1986, the guitarist who communicates really effectively through head wobbles, the bassist who was definitely in Korn (ok, maybe not), and Adrianne Lenker at the center, lobbing absolute fireballs. It’s all so fucking great I can barely stand it.

With respect to moment no. 3 above, rock music is really live music, and live music is really about storytelling — energy and knowledge passed down through performance, across generations. We take what we like and burn down the rest. There’s that old line about how only 20 people saw the first Sex Pistols shows, but everyone who did started a band. Hopefully some kid saw this and it changed their life.

1.) Sharon Van Etten, halfway through this life on “Seventeen”

“Seventeen,” from Sharon Van Etten’s Remind Me Tomorrow, has been described as Springsteen-esque, which I think just means driving, vaguely anthemic, and acceptable to basic-bastard Midwestern palates like mine (we love the Boss because he LARPs as one of us). Van Etten has said the song is actually about her relationship with New York (the anti-Midwest!), benchmarking her personal growth against the eternal churn of city neighborhoods — the downtown hotspots that fade into irrelevance, only to be born again as boutique juice bars, or whatever.

But hey, what does she know — to me, “Seventeen” is about parenthood, being “halfway through this life,” that point where space and time warp and fold over themselves and the linear progress of existence becomes curiously more circular. Suddenly, your antennae conduct forgotten and unknown signals — memories of yourself as a child, visions of yourself as your parents, fantasies of your child as a grown-up. You talk to them all.

Van Etten has a little boy about the same age as mine, and while she’s clearly singing to her younger self in “Seventeen,” I wonder if she’s thinking about the future, too. Because when I listen, I picture my own youthful escapades, sure. But mostly I imagine my son — in this cloudy dream now a teenager, running through dark city streets with friends, singing and laughing, full of blood and life, making questionable decisions, the person I know the best in the world but also a stranger, on the cusp of a new epoch, brave and free.

I’ll tell you about Quinnesec, where I grew up. It means “smoky water” in Ojibwa, after the mist said to rise from the adjoining Menominee River, though I’ve never seen it. There’s a desolate east-west railway that carries lumber from hardwood forests to the paper mill where my father worked; my grandfather would take me there to collect the track ballast, passing it from his rough hands to mine. A gas station, a hunting goods store. Confederate flags hang in windows, even though you can’t go much further north — the wind gets bitter by October and snowfall can top 100 inches per year.

I haven’t been there in a few years now, and there’s a decent chance I’ll never go again, which is strange to think. My parents moved away to be closer to my son, their only grandchild. Good friends remain, but I’m more likely to connect with them at a concert or game in the city.

I’ve been thinking about Quinnesec lately after discovering the music of Jason Isbell. I stumbled across a set of his online and immediately recognized a kindred spirit — a small-town refugee, a baby-faced romantic, a political shit-talker on Twitter, a confident father but one with the years and wisdom to know that things can get fucked in a hurry. And man, let me tell you — he writes rural songs that are real. Not like that modern country shit, and not even like The River-era Springsteen, which is obviously great but also utterly unearned and insincere. New Jersey ain’t Alabama, where Isbell grew up; the Boss wouldn’t know a thing about Upper Peninsula miners.

“She said, ‘It’s none of my business but it breaks my heart’
Dropped a dozen cheap roses in my shopping cart
Made it out to the truck without breaking down
Everybody knows you in a speed trap town

Well it’s a Thursday night but there’s a high school game
Sneak a bottle up the bleachers and forget my name
These 5A bastards run a shallow cross
It’s a boy’s last dream and a man’s first loss

And it never did occur to me to leave ’til tonight
And there’s no one left to ask if I’m alright
I’ll sleep until I’m straight enough to drive, then decide
If there’s anything that can’t be left behind”

- Speed Trap Town

Yeah, I feel that.

So this is my origin story. I was 14 when my universe bloomed — we signed up for dial-up internet through the county ISD and I suddenly had access to the entirety of music history. I couldn’t listen to all of it — this was long before Spotify, or even Amazon or Napster, and there were no record stores in town. But I pilfered every sketchy file I could find online and scoured allmusic.com essays on rap, jazz, punk, and more (many years later I drunkenly added the great Stephen Thomas Erlewine as a Facebook friend on a lark — and he accepted!). I could talk about it, too, in chatrooms where other small-town weirdos gathered to feel like they were part of something bigger, a mystic tradition accessible only to those willing to bend the knee, a loose affiliation of teenage shaman apprentices in headphones.

In this cauldron of rural loneliness and nascent technology a rock-and-roll heart was alchemized, and ever since it’s been the face that I’ve presented to the world. Carbon-based lifeform, hominid, music fan — roughly in that order. And so I couldn’t wait to introduce my son to the brotherhood. He’s had the rock-and-roll onesies, bongos so he could practice his best Bonham, the Radiohead lullaby CD. He points and shouts “guitar!” whenever he sees such a beauty in the wild. But when I’m picking him up from daycare and I watch him in his car seat happily twitching and contorting to some goddamn Smiths song or something I think: am I screwing him up forever?

Because this romantic self-destructive sad bastard shit is stupid, but it sure is a powerful kind of stupid. Rob Gordon said it best — what came first, the music or the misery? Even now, well-aged and wanting for very little, I’ll still partake when the winds blow the right way. I’ll indulge in my desolation and put on a Jason Isbell song and invite over some demons for cards and a tallboy. There’s a comfort in tapping into the communal ocean of misery that stretches back to my adolescence and, well, the adolescence of humanity, I suppose. What better vessel than pop music.

Is it worth it? For me, yeah. Hell yeah. But you can get stuck there, like an insect in amber. We all know a few lost boys with those deep-set flying saucer eyes and think shit, that could have been me. Was I playing with fire by strapping a Strat onto my son’s back before he was even born?

I hope not, because ever since God kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden, man, parents have been messing us up. It’s just inevitable. A speed trap town, a husk of a suburban mall, the heart of the city — nowhere is safe. To step into the river of parenthood is to wade into millennia of mistakes and regrets and therapy.

But that’s totally cool with me. Being a father means sticking your hand directly into the electric current every day for the rest of your life. That strikes me as pretty rock-and-roll. All you can do is accept the joy and dance to the music.

Fittingly, this writing exercise is ending where it started: en route. This time, I’m at the Jet Rock Bar and Grill in the Philadelphia airport. Def Leppard is playing, loudly. Several different college basketball games are on several different TVs. Hello, America! Beer please.

Also fitting: at some point this morning, as I was lopsidedly hustling through Spanish airports due to overpacking my shoulder bag and underpacking my backpack, my improvised fingernail finally tore off. RIP, nail: you were like the guy in the movie who died peacefully after fulfilling one final mission.

A few things I’m taking back from Spain with me:

— A bagful of falsetas and techniques that will keep me busy for years, as well as an expanded understanding of the sturm und drang one can create with six strings and a piece of wood. A well-played flamenco guitar is an orchestra in the maestro’s lap. In one of his greatest compositions (and that’s saying something), Saint Joe Strummer conflated the sound of flamenco with bombs — bombs from the Spanish Civil War, and bombs from the IRA and Basque terrorist attacks that were roiling Europe when song was written. Sounds about right. Can I hear the echo from the days of ’39?

(Jesus, what an amazing song “Spanish Bombs” is.)

— A renewed desire to write, and an enhanced enjoyment of the act itself. I’m a lazy writer. Most of the time, I’m not a writer at all. I know, I know — writing is a habit. I’ve heard it said a million times. But getting into good habits is hard. And for me, writing is like the agonizing process of endlessly scrolling through the selections on Netflix — you just never find exactly what you want. But developing a daily habit made it easier, and sometimes kinda sorta maybe even a little enjoyable, too. Almost.

— A soft spot in my heart forever for Cruzcampo and cafe con leche.

— A new appreciation of my ability to improvise, as I spent most of my time in Spain not knowing what the hell I was doing.

— A thankful heart for the friends and family who made this trip possible — especially my wife, who bravely shoveled snow in my absence.

Leaving, of course, is always hard. But with respect to Brian Wilson, I can’t wait to get back to the States — back to the best wife in the world and a new business that seemed to grow exponentially in the time I was gone, thanks to the tireless efforts of my partner-in-crime.

I was picked up at my apartment at 8 a.m. this morning (that’s, like, 4 a.m. Spanish time, especially on a Saturday) by a bleary-eyed, profoundly nice employee from the school I studied at — his name was Carlos. We jammed my luggage into his tiny VW and set off for the airport. His English was quite good, so we chatted about my trip. When we got to the departures drop-off, I thanked him profusely for his generosity and kindness.

“De nada, Scott,” he said, taking his time to annunciate an unfamiliar name. “Come back, we will wait for you.”

The Giralda bell tower lords over the center of Sevilla, visible from miles away; for many years, it was decreed that nothing in the city could be built taller. It’s the last remaining section of the old mosque, which was torn down and replaced by the Sevilla Cathedral after the Reconquista.

You get to the top via a circling series of wide, gentle ramps, rather than steps, which makes for a blissfully easy journey. According to legend, a lame bell-ringer had the ramps installed so he could ascend to the summit on his horse, like a boss.

The Giralda plays a prominent role in much of Sevillian lore, including the anthem of Sevilla Futbol Club, “Himno Centario.” According to the lyrics, it looks proudly upon the team from the Sanchez Pizjuan stadium.

Here’s a few seconds of it that I captured last night:

Seeing a football match in Spain is an explosion of sensory input — it’s hard not to be overwhelmed. The Sanchez Pizjuan (also known as La Bombanera de Nevrion, after the barrio its located in) is a concrete red-and-white cavern, capable of seating more than 40,000. The supporters groups launch fireworks on their march to the stadium, filling the neighborhood with noise and sulfur. The outside grounds are chaos — little stands manned by immigrants push knock-off scarfs and shirts, rowdy ultras sip Cruzcampo and toss their empties on the ground, and police are everywhere, keeping the peace on horseback (which also requires having to be extra-careful where one steps).

Inside, the fans are wonderfully animated, standing in their seats to shake their fists vigorously and yell (in that strangled, smoky, raspy Spanish I’ve come to enjoy) at refs, away players, home players, fellow fans and pretty much anyone within (or not within) earshot. And the seats are small and narrow — so whenever a goal seemed imminent, we all jumped up with our arms pinned to our sides, like we were wearing straightjackets.

Sevilla came up a little short — despite getting a goal just before stoppage time, they couldn’t score the one more they needed to advance in the Copa del Rey. I, however, did score — a SFC scarf, the one and only souvenir I’ll be taking home from this amazing trip.

Correctly shaped nails are vital to creating the distinctive tone that defines the music. Too short makes for a dull sound. Too long and they get caught on the strings. And if a nail has a crack, it’s only a matter of time before it snags on something and — God forbid — tears off. So if you ever see me inspecting my nails, or filing my nails, or generally fretting about my nails in any way, this is why.

It’s weird. I know.

Two weeks before my trip, the nail on my ring finger tore nearly clean through, at a frighteningly deep angle. Had it come all the way off, it would have taken 6–8 weeks to grow back.

Clearly, that was not an option. So it’s currently held together by a MacGuyver-esque concoction of fiberglass, extra thin super glue, and nail hardener. Remarkably, it’s worked so far — and with only one lesson to go, I think it’s going to go the distance.

One lesson to go! Hard to believe. Tonight represents my last big adventure — in a few hours I’ll be heading to La Bombonera de Nervion to watch Sevilla FC try to overcome a two-goal disadvantage against Espanyol in the second leg of a Copa del Rey quarter-final. I’m bone-tired and could go for an early bedtime tonight, but the match doesn’t even begin until 10 p.m. What a mad country this is.

Then the lights popped on, the musicians started hocking their CDs, and I high-tailed it out of there — because Casa Anselma seemed like the kind of place where weird shit happens after a certain hour.

Last night appeared destined for a particularly Spanish brand of failure. My plan was to check out a tablao — a large flamenco hall where troupes of dancers, singers and guitarists perform highly choreographed and professional routines. Aficionados scoff at the concept, believing them to lack duende. That said, they do feature a level of mastery not seen in the neighborhood bars.

I made the 30-minute walk to my first choice, Tablao Los Gallos, only to find it closed until February. I next tried Tablao El Arenal, but reservations were required. Accepting defeat, I started back to my apartment and tried to stop at a tapas bar I passed on the way, but it was shuttered.

Strike three, you’re in Spain.

So it was midnight by the time I got to Casa Anselma, a legendary haunt in Triana. It’s a tiny place with no sign on the door. A half-circle of chairs two rows deep surrounds the stage, so you’re no more than 15 feet away from the action.

Once the two musicians started playing, every few minutes a new character would waltz in the front door, like a scene from “Cheers.” There was the old lady who sang sad soleas while playing with her hands and chided the crowd for not taking enough photos. The gregarious fellow who hopped onto a chair and clapped wildly while two women danced sevillianas. The dapper gentleman with the fedora, who busted out some surprisingly adept footwork on the dance floor. Everyone knew each other, everyone was having a great time, and everyone was hilarious, even though I had no clue what they were saying. Just a bunch of townies shooting the shit, and me playing voyeur.

Once it was over, I walked into the crisp night and grinned. Hardly anyone was on the streets but me — for the first and certainly last time on my trip, I had outlasted the famed Sevillian nightlife.

Except for whoever was still at Casa Anselma — who knows what was going on there.

The student petitioners, whom I wrote about earlier, are back at Las Setas this week. One stopped me, and when I tried my best “No hablo Espanol” shtick, she said, “What do you speak? English? German?”

Busted.

Turns out the students are volunteering on behalf of UNICEF’s Syria campaign. She was from the Czech Republic and had spent some time in South Carolina, was fluent in six (!) languages, and very nice. So when I passed her again in the afternoon, I asked where I could find a quiet coffee shop to sit and write.

“Ah, you’re talking about weed, aren’t you?”

Huh?

Apparently she had recently returned from studying in the Netherlands, and when people ask about a “coffee shop” there, that’s what they mean. I was very grateful for this encounter, because it meant I wasn’t the only one misinterpreting cultural clues in Spain.

Traveling to this country is an exercise in embarrassment. These are just a few in the long line of indignities I’ve experienced:

— Locking myself out of my apartment on the first day, and having to text the landlord

— Not knowing how to close the blinds, and having to text the landlord

— Walking into a restaurant, asking for a seat for one (“Uno, por favor.”) and having one beer pushed in front of me instead (I eventually just seated myself and they got the message)

— Ordering food at the bar, carrying it to a “table” (really just a barrel you can stand at), and being charged a service fee because I was in the “service” section

— Walking into any given restaurant and signifying I’m there to eat by making the universal gesture of shoving food into my mouth, because most Spanish restaurants also serve as bars, cafes, general meeting places and other things I don’t completely understand

— Letting a waiter “recommend” a meal in Spanish, which turned out to be an expensive steak (ok, that was probably just dumb)

— Walking a significant distance to any given restaurant and finding it closed, because Spanish restaurants open and close whenever the hell they please, I think

— Yoyo-ing and retracing my steps around Sevilla’s labyrinthine streets, because they wrap and twist around with no logic or reason

— Failing at buying train tickets

And so and and so on. If you plan on traveling to Spain, you best be prepared to laugh at yourself. And if you need a little humbling, it’s a great place to get it.

Spain’s RENFE trains are magnificent beasts — comfortable, high-speed bullets flying across the countryside. They even rock gently back and forth — so while I had planned to watch the Andalucian landscape pass on my way to Cordoba, I closed my eyes instead.

I had only a few hours in Cordoba, thanks in part to an epic struggle at the train station. I tried to get the latest train back to Sevilla (9:30 p.m.), but I utterly failed at communicating that to the ticket lady. After a vigorous one-sided negotiation, we settled on 7:30 p.m.

Cordoba was once the capital of the Islamic Empire in Spain, called Al-Andalus. At its height in the 12th century, it was arguably the greatest city in Europe, if not the world, home to philosophers like Maimonides and Avarroes. It played an integral role in preserving the Greek and Roman knowledge that was lost on much of the continent during the Medieval period.

Its most famous landmark is the Mezquita, a mosque turned Roman Catholic cathedral considered one of the greatest examples of Moorish architecture. Given my condensed time frame, I decided to make it the focus of my visit.

I arrived around 1:30 p.m., and my timing was poor — the Mezquita was briefly closed for the afternoon and wouldn’t reopen until 3 p.m. After killing a bit of time wandering around the old Jewish Quarter, with streets so narrow that two people can barely pass shoulder-by-shouler, I entered the Mezquita with everyone else who had been waiting for the 3 p.m. re-opening. Like a mushroom ejecting its spores, the crowd immediately dispersed in all directions and began taking photos, filling the dark mosque with flashes of iPhone light.

Magnificent Moorish arches? *point and click*

Random Latin phrases carved into the marble floor? *point and click*

Orange grove in the plaza? *point and click*

Sacred golden altarpiece? *jump in front of it, turn camera on yourself, point and click*

And you know, I was doing the same damn thing (minus the selfie part). Why? I have no idea. The human need to capture events on camera is fascinating to me. I suppose it’s because we are desperate to affix some sort of permanence to our lives, when we know there really is none. My day at the Mezquita is already history, just like Al-Andalus, with new moments constantly arising in its place.

But I wonder how many experiences in my life I’ve been less-than-present for — or wasted, even — because I was so intent on getting that perfect photo.

On my way out I sat on the south steps overlooking the ancient Roman bridge, listened to a street musician play “My Way” on her violin, and — yep — snapped one last picture. Why not? Maybe this is the one that will last.

I passed through a residential neighborhood where I hadn’t yet been, and came across quite a sight: taking up the entirety of the road, a group of 16 men wearing towels on their head (I don’t mean that in a derogatory way — they were wearing towels, literally) were slowly pushing a giant wooden cage-like structure. Twenty or so more people, dressed in their Sunday best, walked behind them, saying encouraging words (at least they sounded encouraging to me). Cars slowed to a halt behind the procession, content to let them do their thing, as though this was a regular occurance and not weird at all.

What the hell? I didn’t want to take a photo, because it seemed like a solemn occasion, but it looked like this:

It took a half-hour of Googling, but I finally figured it out.

Semana Santa is the last week of Lent, the week immediately before Easter. I knew that Holy Week was a huge deal in Sevilla, where churches from all over the area send processions to the Cathedral in order to have their sacred statues blessed. It’s by far the city’s biggest and most famous event.

What I didn’t realize is that the procession is such serious business that it requires practicing three months ahead of time. Those towel-headed guys are called costaleros — apparently, their movements are orchestrated by an overseer through a pattern of knocks. In April, they will be responsible for carrying statues from their local parish to the Cathedral and back — for some, the trip will take most of the day. No wonder they’re already getting into game shape!

Like my dude Jehovah, on the seventh day I rested.

It was necessary as I’ve been going pretty hard for a week straight — getting up early for lessons, staying out late for shows, and walking several miles each day from destination to destination, as it’s the best way to get around in this town.

But it wasn’t planned. Apparently I had too much fun in Triana the night before because I woke up with a bit of a headache. Now, if you’re under 30, listen up closely, as this will affect you someday: the physiology of your hangovers will change, and instead of starting bad and getting progressively better, they will start mild and reach peak rage sometime in the early afternoon. Yes, it’s as horrifying as it sounds. No, there’s nothing you can do about it. Wisdom’s a gift but you’d trade it for youth.

Finally recovered, I headed out for dinner and passed a lone accordion player hunched against a closed storefront in one of the dark, quiet alleyways south of Las Setas. He was playing beautifully and there was no one but me to hear him. How funny — a city that literally teems with people out walking at night, and he chooses to ply his trade in the one place that lacked an audience.

Maybe he was just comfortable there, and there’s something to be said for that. I sheepishly admit that I nearly walked into a McDonald’s this afternoon — not only because it represented comfort, but because I’m convinced that greasy food is the closest thing to a hangover cure that exists on this earth. Besides not getting one in the first place, I suppose.

Speaking of comfort, I headed back into Triana again tonight. With no more magical flamenco to be found, I made one last stop at the Memphis en Triana. Its website claims that it features a “rock & roll and blues museum,” which is really just a bunch of black-and-white photos tacked to the wall. I sat under them and sipped a beer, listening to American exchange students gossip and noting that “Johnny B. Goode” played twice in the 30 or so minutes I was there. Oh well. My trip half over, it felt nice to make a mid-set break and recalibrate. It’s only rock and roll, but I like it.