February 17, 2025
Our Favorite Albums
To kick off the first edition of The Quill we will be getting to know our editors music taste, and take a look at some of our music recommendations. We want to celebrate our different tastes and share with you some of the genres and artists we love within this section. This week, our editors have free range to pick whatever they feel is their favorite album of all time. We hope you find some new bops and join us in jamming out!
Unreal Unearth
Hozier
Choosing a “favorite album” is almost an impossible task for me, as I’m sure it is for many others. I tend to listen to a little bit of everything from rock to folk, oldies to modern hits, and everything in between. My favorite artists are all over the board when it comes to genre and include Hozier, Teddy Swims, Billy Joel, Chappel Roan, and many others.
The album I would say is my favorite at the moment is Hozier’s Unreal Unearth (and the accompanying EPs and singles). Hozier is a singer hailing from Ireland who is most known for his songs “Take Me to Church” and “Too Sweet” and has a whole discography full of alternative/indie songs. Unreal Unearth is his his most recent album and is just over an hour of near perfection. It was written during COVID, after Hozier read Dante’s Inferno, and is heavily inspired by the narrative poem. It pulls themes from the epic and gives them a modern twist that both reflects the past and is applicable to the present.
This album is not the type where every song sounds the same; rather, each song is vastly different, giving you a wonderfully rounded listening experience. I definitely recommend listening to the album in the order it is presented, but if listening to the whole thing isn’t your style, I would suggest starting with the songs “Francesca,” “Damage Gets Done,” and “Anything But.” I give this album a 10/10, no skips (except for maybe the instrumental interlude), and I hope you love it as much as I do. Happy listening!
Aftercare
by Neesa Barrett
Moody, intense, and sharing the struggles of love and mental health, Nessa Barrett is an alternative, dark, electro-pop singer-songwriter. Her newest album, Aftercare, was released on November 15, 2024 and had a deluxe edition with six more songs added on February 6, 2025. The singer kicked off her tour on February 4th in Minneapolis. Now let’s dive into the album itself!
Every single song on the 15-song album, the second album released by Nessa Barrett introduces a new vibe based on the similar themes of love, s*x, and the consequences of it on every track. This album marks the artist’s signature sound and style, evident even though she’s released only one other album, a few EPs, and singles in the last four years. This new release is a vulnerable piece for the singer that goes over more than the artist’s typical lyrics of deteriorating mental health and broken hearts. The songs branch off into a powerful, storytelling ambiance with the music in the background clashing with the addictive deep emotions in the singer’s voice. Each song offers its own vibe. For example, “Stay Alive” speaks about the destructive mental balance of staying alive for the same reasons one might consider the opposite. Nessa says in the song that “There’s beauty in the pain, pain, pain, pain, pain/The sh*t that I would die for/Is the sh*t that I’m alive for,” all while she’s screaming over divine summits of synthetic majesty. While “Given Enough” represent the lyrics of repeating “Haven’t I given enough?” The lyrics portray the message that a toxic, back-and-forth relationship isn’t right. Adding percussion and strings, the song speaks powerfully about how consuming love is and how vulnerable it can make a person. Nessa Barrett is a powerful singer-songwriter, with the potential to rise up the ranks and become bigger than ever with her soul-touching lyrics.
—Jenna Fintelmann