#blockdiscography

Block’s “Over And Over” Is A Raw Nerve There are songs that are polished to a high sheen, every note in its place, every emotion carefully calibrated for maximum impact. And then there are songs that feel like they were ripped from the artist’s chest, still beating and bloody, and offered up to the listener as a kind of sacrifice. Block’s new single, “Over And Over,” is firmly in the latter category. It’s a raw nerve, exposed and humming with a nervous energy that is both unsettling and deeply compelling. Block, for the uninitiated, is a name that carries a certain weight in the annals of New York’s downtown music scene. A key figure in the anti-folk movement of the late 1990s, he stood alongside artists like Beck and Regina Spektor, crafting a style that was equal parts punk-rock snarl and coffee-shop confession. His music has always been a bit of a beautiful mess, a jumble of clever wordplay, and a kind of defiant vulnerability. After a major-label detour with Capitol Records and a subsequent sojourn on Wall Street, Block has returned to music with a renewed sense of purpose, and “Over And Over” is the latest fruit of this creative resurgence. The song, the second single from his forthcoming album "Love Crash", is a direct confrontation with Block’s lifelong struggle with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. "I've suffered from OCD since childhood, they didn't call it that back then, horrible things in my head, over and over," he explains. This is a dispatch from the front lines of a personal war. The track was born out of a moment of crisis, recorded in a single, “off-kilter” day in a Brooklyn studio. You can hear it in the music, a looping, insistent drumbeat that feels like a trapped thought, a guitar that scrapes and jangles with a restless anxiety. The production, handled by Chris Kuffner (known for his work with Ingrid Michaelson and Regina Spektor), is a masterclass in controlled chaos. The story behind the drum track is a perfect example of the song’s serendipitous creation. Block asked Kuffner for a drum loop, and Kuffner, on the road at a soundcheck, recorded a drummer and sent it back. That found sound became the rhythmic heart of the song, a perfect reflection of the spontaneous, in-the-moment nature of its recording. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4HvtFsF0Co Blake Morgan’s mix and mastering give the track a clarity that allows the raw emotion to shine through without getting lost in the noise. Lyrically, “Over And Over” is a descent into a “darkish place” that Block says he’s never investigated before. The words are a torrent of intrusive thoughts, a litany of anxieties that will be familiar to anyone who has ever felt their own mind turn against them. It’s not an easy listen, but it’s an honest one. In an age of carefully curated online personas and manufactured authenticity, there is something bracing about hearing an artist lay himself bare in this way. It reminds me, in a strange way, of the confessional poetry of Robert Lowell, another artist who wrestled his demons onto the page, transforming personal pain into something universal. What keeps the song from being a purely harrowing experience is Block’s innate sense of melody. Even in the darkest corners of his psyche, he finds a tune. It’s a crooked, lopsided melody, to be sure, but it’s a melody nonetheless. [caption id="attachment_63834" align="alignnone" width="2431"] Block’s “Over And Over” Is A Raw Nerve[/caption] It’s the sound of a man trying to sing his way out of a panic attack, and there’s a strange kind of beauty in that. The song is a reminder that art doesn’t have to be pretty to be powerful. Sometimes, the most affecting art is the stuff that is willing to be ugly, to be messy, to be real. “Over And Over” is not a song for everyone. It’s a challenging, confrontational piece of work. But for those who are willing to go there with Block, it offers a rare and unflinching look at the realities of mental illness. It’s a song that says, “I’m not okay, and that’s okay.” In a culture that often demands a relentless performance of happiness, that's a message that feels important and necessary in equal measure. It leaves you with a sense of the profound courage it takes to face one’s own mind, and the strange, unexpected beauty that can be found in the struggle. https://open.spotify.com/album/1k7wRWRQTrmebfuIdSiPi3?go=1&sp_cid=48fee227a3193c48169d73ea32db15f5

Resilience in Sound: Block's 'Whitecaps On The Hudson [Deluxe Edition]'. Block’s ‘Whitecaps On The Hudson [Deluxe Edition]’ arrives not so much as a pristine reissue but more like a rediscovered journal, its pages softened by time and emotional humidity. Here’s Block, a name practically synonymous with anti-folk’s charmingly crooked spine, revisiting a period where the Hudson’s currents mirrored a life in turbulent flux – sobriety found, marriage lost. https://open.spotify.com/album/4qw8Zz28Ld5xptsA2O87CH The quest for 'home' beats like a tell-tale heart throughout these sixteen tracks. It’s not about four walls and a leaky faucet; it's the sanctuary found in the shared glance, the understood silence. There’s a beautiful, almost painful nakedness to this, like watching someone meticulously darn a beloved, threadbare sock, aware of every hole. The live, simple recordings amplify this. You can almost smell the damp air of that riverside dwelling, perhaps a lingering scent of Earl Grey and old paperbacks. It makes me think of those meticulously detailed ship models, built inside impossibly small bottles – how does so much intricate emotion fit into such unadorned structures? This isn’t background music for tidying your sock drawer. It demands a particular kind of listening. One minute, you’re contemplating the intimate, the next, some lyric about a local legend or a historical echo sidles up, reminding you that personal storms rage within much larger weather systems. The bonus track, “Expansion Draft,” really leans into this resilience, a feeling of making do, of cobbling together a new reality with the available, perhaps even dented, parts. [caption id="attachment_60779" align="alignnone" width="1150"] Credit: Photo by Dave Doobinin[/caption]There's a pervasive sense of navigating not just sadness, but a kind of everyday magic born from it – the glint of sun on a whitecap in an otherwise grey expanse. It’s the sound of someone holding onto the raw edges of experience, turning them over and over, finding unexpected patterns. Does this 'Deluxe Edition' offer answers? Perhaps not neatly. But it certainly leaves you pondering the stubborn, often peculiar, beauty of human connection when everything else seems determined to drift away. What quiet revolutions brew in our own private Hudsons? Facebook, Instagram