#227 (of 365) "Focus" Velvet

Well, here we are. The highest ranking song from 2024 on this countdown. Which is quite impressive for Velvet, a tiny Brooklyn area band of college-aged shoegaze rockers, but not very impressive for the year of music as a whole, since nothing made the the top 200 all-time. Considering I'm ranking music from (roughly) 1980 to 2024, that's 44 years covering 226 tracks above this one, so that's 5 songs per year and 2024 has 0 above this. Is this a failure of "new indie rock music" to inspire me like it once did? Or am I (more than a little) too old to be uncovering "new indie rock music" that would inspire me if I happened to hear it? Or is it the fractious landscape and/or lack of money in rock music these days that has led to less bands forming, making good enough music to reach my ears? Or some combination. I surely don't know. But on the "I'm not too old" front, I present Velvet, a band that had barely formed when I heard them outside the 18th Ward Brewery in Williamsburg in 2023, during a "shoe gaze" day of free performances by up and coming bands for the New Colossus Festival (which is awesome, by the way). Anyway, Velvet played, as did Buff Ginger, another band that got a newer song on this countdown, and I went home and downloaded what I could find of their music, which wasn't much at the time--just a handful of songs--but I loved them all. They have since put on some 10 or 12 shows at tiny venues in Bushwick like Trans-Pecos, which holds maybe 50 people, and I've seen them play 4 or 5 times. Every show they seem to suggest this might be their last performance, as the band's members contemplate leaving music or going away to college (I'm guessing) but they keep coming back (mostly, I think on winter breaks or the summer) and I'm seeing them next week. Are most of their audience college-aged or younger? Yes. Do I feel really fucking old attending their shows? Yes. Is it incredible to be into a brand new band as it's "up and coming" like all the bands I discovered when I first moved to the NYC area twelve years ago? Absolutely. Because sometimes you find a band that records your favorite song of the year, even if the year of music doesn't quite reach the heights of the music of your youth.

"Focus" - Velvet // Romance (2024