Hello, friends. Arriving as it has on the final day of the year, this month’s episode of Gray Days and Gold contains not just the usual new finds but also tries to correct the historical record by shining a light on a handful of artists who released wonderful music earlier in the year that we hadn’t previously found an opportunity to include, focused as ever on our ‘M4’ pledge of maximum melody and moderate melancholy.

(My year-end Best Of will follow in coming weeks, in the form of a blog post and Spotify playlist, since it’s always too much music to compress into a single show.)

You can listen to this episode via the embedded player just below in this post—if you don’t see it, try turning off your ad-blocker then reloading the page—or on the Mixcloud website, via the Mixcloud mobile app, on your Sonos system, etc.

There’s also a considerably more barebones iteration of this episode’s playlist on Spotify (minus my commentary, as well as many songs that are missing from their library).

If you like what you hear, please support the artists. You’ll find buy links to all the tracks in the bulleted list below.

Gray Days and Gold, December 2021

1. Pablo O’Connell, “Christmas Time Is Here” (2021) • BUY
2. Michael Nesmith, “City” (1994) • BUY
3. Testbild!, “Adios Pamplona” (2021) • BUY
4. Landslide Purist, “Sewn Up” (2021) • BUY
5. Wyndow, “When Winter Comes Shadowing In” (2021) • BUY
6. Ryuichi Sakamoto, “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” (2021) • BUY
7. Sufjan Stevens & Angelo De Augustine, “You Give Death a Bad Name” (2021) • BUY
8. Craig Fortnam, “Witchy Grid” (2021) • BUY
9. Aimee Mann, “You Don’t Have the Room” (2021) • BUY
10. Heirloome, “Cycles” (2021) • BUY
11. Étienne Coppée, “Autour de moi” (2021) • BUY
12. Michael R. Oldham, “Song for Uncertain Times” (2021) • BUY

As always, thanks for listening. If you have questions, suggestions, etc. please feel free to contact me. And if you’d like to receive these posts via email, you can sign up here. Take care, and happy new year!