A well known trope is that all funeral scenes in film and television require rainy days with non-diagetic music setting up a sombre mood. A gust of wind here and there, not strong enough to tussle the protagonist’s hairline but signifying that said character will have to move on. Life has changed through the ending of someone else’s.

Maybe it’s knowing that it’s the end of summer what makes Autumnal music intrinsecally linked to funeral scenes. Summer is life. Summer is fun. Summer is neverending. But Autumn, or ‘Fall’ if you will, is the prelude to finality. Winter is inexorably arriving and usually with less of a splash than whatever the fuck Miguel Sapochnik tried to portray.

I have a strange relationship with music. For the longest of times, I shunned all music. Now? It’s my lifeblood. Not a single day without listening at least to an album’s worth of music. Which genre? Whatever comes first. Ambient, metal, grunge, pop, rap, trip hop. Something will catch my ear and fuel the rest of the day and night.

Music is what motivated me to start reviewing, way back in 2007. It made me embark into a path of owning a review website, the one you’re reading right now. It also made me abandon said site for the longest of times.

And now, maybe it’s time to write again. Not in the frantinc manner as I did from 2010 to 2012, where I would do daily reviews, sometimes more. That burnt me out so bad I still have soot marks all over.

Do people care about reviewing at all? I’m not sure. Will I regain the readership I once had? Who gives a fuck? No one reads reviews any more, maybe a few lost soul here or there, maybe an artist looking for a quick ego stroke. I don’t feel too motivated to pick up reviewing again, but hey, here we are, me typing whatever comes to mind, abandoning my original ode to seasons, and here you are, reading, waiting for the poing of these paragraphs.

There is no point. And maybe that’s where the conversation about “do reviews matter?” should start.

So, strong winds, hurricane season in Mexico city, a global pandemic ravaging our very souls. Let’s close our eyes and listen to music.

—Sam J. Valdés López