Tag: Sunday Songs

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 6/11/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

Just a note—I’ll probably be radio silent for the next week (save for liking all your wonderful posts 🫡) because I’ll be on vacation! I’m heading up to Olympic National Park, so I’m pretty excited. But for now, have a nice, blue-gray color scheme and some silly goofy music while I’m gone. And of course, we’ve got Phoebe Bridgers, The Magnetic Fields, and Ernie and Bert for pride month.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 6/11/23

“Excuse Me” – Peter Gabriel

So…here I am. Finally got around to listening to Peter Gabriel 1: Car the other day. Fantastic album, but if I had to describe it in one word, that one word would be whiplash. I already knew I was in for a ride knowing that the album started out with the absolute proto-Danny Elfman insanity of “Moribund the Burgermeister” and the album’s classic radio hit “Solsbury Hill” one after the other (as much as I love the latter, it’s a crime that it’s all this album is typically remembered for…doesn’t surprise me, though), but even that couldn’t have prepared me for the full experience.

But if there’s any song off of this album that characterizes said whiplash, it’s this one. I went in expecting it to be weird, but the pure shock of this one just sent me into the nth dimension of musical weirdness. I’m not even exaggerating. This one starts out with a barbershop quartet. It’s just nuts. And I love it. It’s like Peter Gabriel was just unleashing every ounce of the pent-up goofiness within. It’s kooky. It’s whimsical. It’s silly. I’d unironically call this one of the best tracks on the album, just because he just goes all in on the silliness. However, I go back and forth on whether or not the incoherence of this album is a pro or a con—I’ve tentatively decided that it’s more pro than con, but some of it didn’t work for me. Coherence is not a quality that an album needs to have to be enjoyable, but you can do an album where every song has a different feel, genre, etc. from the next and still have it feel cohesive and joyfully carefree at the same time (see Super Furry Animals’ Rings Around the World). But on the other hand, the antici……pation of having no clue of what comes next was such fun to experience. There were some songs on Car that were genuine misses for me (sorry, “Down the Dolce Vita”), but albums that are pure chaos, like this one, are a special experience. Go crazy, Peter.

“Waiting Room” – Phoebe Bridgers

This one’s now on Bandcamp—all proceeds go to Music Will!

(are we all still okay, bisexuals? nope? I thought so)

Now, here we are with something of a legend amongst Phoebe Bridgers’ catalogue. Famously written when she was only 16, it’s hidden in the shadows despite being a fan favorite, existing only in older video performances and a brief stint on Spotify as part of the Lost Ark Studio collection, before being mysteriously taken down. And now that it’s on Bandcamp, more of us can lose ourselves in it!

The fact that Bridgers wrote this at 16 is still incredibly impressive, but with all due respect, it…makes sense. It’s 6 and a half minutes of pure angst—she hadn’t quite nailed the lyrical flow and subtleties that came with experience yet. There’s nothing subtle about “If you were a waiting room/I would never see a doctor/I’d just sit there with my first aid kit and bleed.” But the point of this song was never to be subtle—it’s a time capsule, capturing young, unrequited love at the epicenter of its emotion. If Bridgers hadn’t nailed her lyrical style just yet, she had already nailed her innate ability to conjure engrossing emotion. There’s something about the lines “Wanna make you fall in love as hard as my poor parents’ teenage daughter/She’ll be the best you’ve ever had, if you let her” that always get me. Aww, little Phoebe…

And it all comes to a head in the iconic refrain of “Know it’s for the better,” repeated for the last half of the song. The instrumentals rise in intensity along with Bridgers’ voice until it all crashes down in a tidal wave of guitars. It really is a song to lose yourself in—the last part of the song really does make it feel like everything else has ceased to exist around you. And even though this song has gone through several iterations over the years, it’s still a feat to achieve so young. If anything, I’m just glad to exist in a world with Phoebe Bridgers in it. I know it’s for the better.

“La La La La Lemon” (Sesame Street cover) – The Barenaked Ladies

Alright, here’s a childhood nostalgia pick-me-up after Phoebe Bridgers’ sea of teen angst. I wouldn’t blame you if you needed a palate cleanser.

This one was a last minute addition, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t include it in this. I haven’t thought about this song in a solid 15 years, but the other night, I had a dream—I can’t even remember what the dream was even about, but whatever the case, it dredged this song up from the dark recesses of my mind. And I’m not complaining! There’s nothing like the joy of uncovering a forgotten childhood song, like digging through dusty old boxes of mementoes in the attic. Or, at least, that’s how I imagine it. I don’t have an attic. I digress. It’s moments like this where I really appreciate the incomprehensible eccentricities of the human brain—which neuron fired and made me remember this all of the sudden?

Even though they have the worst possible band name to have included on a kid’s album (which they did—not just this, but the classic Snacktime!), The Barenaked Ladies really do have a talent for making nostalgic, clever kid’s songs. This one is technically a cover, but for once, I’ll defer to them instead of Sesame Street; in any other circumstance, I’d immediately call blasphemy, but in this case, their take on “La La La La Lemon” surpasses the original for me. No disrespect to Ernie and Bert, the original gay TV couple. This is the only exception. They reign supreme in all else. Nothing tops the Rubber Ducky song.

The slower, more subdued Sesame Street version fits when you consider that our crotchety friend Bert is singing half of it. But The Barenaked Ladies gave this song an infectious energy—just by picking up the speed, the song gains a far more carefree, loose, and altogether more joyous feel. Maybe my preference is the nostalgia talking, but I swear that this version manages to turn the kookiness up to the perfect level—the level that made me giggle as a kid and still makes me smile now, when I’m somehow an adult with a job. Man, how’d that happen…

Either way, the main takeaway is that comedy peaked at at “La la la la, linoleum!”

“I Don’t Want to Get Over You” – The Magnetic Fields

I’m entirely serious when I say that the only thing keeping me from listening to 69 Love Songs right this second is because of…said 69 songs. I will, eventually, but it’s gonna require a nice, long, uninterrupted stretch of…[checks notes] almost three hours, Jesus. But you’re not gonna catch me complaining about nearly three hours of Stephin Merritt and company.

In the meantime, it seems like almost every song I hear on its own from this album rearranges my brain chemistry for a solid three days before I can snap out of it. Case in point: this one. The minute the buzzy background synths and deeply distorted…well, everything kicks in, I lost myself. Again. With his signature, dry witticism, Merritt pens another two-and-a-half minute bite of love gone sour, cloaking the thought of “[taking] a sleeping pill and sleep at will/and not have to go through what I go through” in a web of tinny distortion. I always come back to the tongue-in-cheek lines of “Or I could career of being blue/I cold dress in black and read Camus,” because…I mean, he did kind of make a career out of that? Almost? Aside from a few songs, most of The Magnetic Fields that I can think of is about love left to get moldy after a few weeks in the fridge. But here’s the thing—it never feels like Merritt is spinning a broken record—each time, has has something new to bring to the table, whether it’s the drowning melancholy of “I Don’t Believe in the Sun” or the confessional nature of “Born on a Train.” He always finds something inspired to spin out of love lost or gone the way of spoiled milk, and every time, it’s a rush of inventiveness to the head.

“World of Ammonites” (from Prehistoric Planet 2) – Anže Rozman & Kara Talve

Here’s my PSA for today: if you haven’t watched both seasons of Prehistoric Planet on Apple TV+ …respectfully, what are you even doing? If David Attenborough’s part in it isn’t convincing enough by itself, will a masterfully-animated, nature-show style documentary about Cretaceous dinosaurs and other prehistoric life entice you? The animation puts almost everything else of its kind to shame—so much so that it looks too real to be animated, which adds to the nature show feel. Plus, it acts like a good nature show should, not focusing all on “DINOSAUR FIGHT!!!!!1!!! RAAAAAAH THEY ARE ANNIHILATING EACH OTHER RAAAAAH!!1” and giving a speculative insight into many aspects of these extinct creatures’ lifestyles. It’s a beautiful show, whether or now you’re interested in prehistoric life. You will be, after watching this.

Even though the animation obviously steals the show (as it should), I couldn’t help but notice parts of the artfully crafted soundtrack as well. The ammonite section of season 2’s ocean episode wasn’t just my favorite moment of the season because of the tiny prehistoric cephalopods—the paired track, “World of Ammonites,” made it all the more gorgeous. Nothing fits the image of thousands of funky little guys with weird shells bobbing about in a prehistoric sea than a mixture of low woodwind, violins, and synths tinny enough to fit into a sci-fi B-movie from the fifties. The synths especially capture the audio representation of the likeness of these bizarre animals; fitting these very spacey sounds with such alien-looking creatures feels like an obvious choice, but it’s a genius one. Prehistoric Planet has consistently been a joy to watch, but nothing quite gave me the rush of joy that the ammonites—and this track—did. Love me a good cephalopod.

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 6/4/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

And more importantly, happy pride to each and every one of you! I’ll say a bit more about that in my annual pride recommendations post (working on it as we speak), but for now, here’s what I have to say: the past year has been incredibly difficult for the queer community, but it’s important to remember that amidst all of the anti-lgbtq+ legislation, that they can never take away our happiness—queer joy is an act of resistance. We’re still here, so get used to it. And please, buy your pride merch from somewhere other than…y’know, Walmart. Queer small businesses make better stuff, anyways.

On a lighter note, I really wish I’d found this clip earlier…I would’ve used it to come out to so many people, you have no idea…

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 6/4/23

“Oom Sha La La” – Haley Heynderickx

There’s no whiplash quite like searching for this song on YouTube, and then seeing that one of the top results is “oom sha la la leafpool.” I kid you not. Glad to see that the Warrior Cats fandom is alive and kickin’ and making AMVs like it’s 2014. I did hear that the main series is still going (I stopped at the 5th series 🥴), and now there’s canonically…[checks notes] cats getting possessed? I’m not even gonna touch that. Call me an uptight old boomer, but everything was just fine back in the good old days, when it was just cats committing heinous war crimes against each other. Moving on…

I Need to Start a Garden has earned its place on my Sisyphean album bucket list ever since my brother turned me onto “The Bug Collector” by way of his girlfriend. I loved the latter, melancholy and full of creepy crawlies as it is, but this one immediately snagged me like a fish getting unceremoniously reeled up from the depths of a lake. There’s a comforting steadiness to this song; anchored by Heynderickx’s warm voice, it gently cups you into its hands like you’re a moth stuck in the house. Neat, glossy guitars buoy along a plethora of razor-sharp, wonderfully oddball lyrics—I doubt the words “arbitrary” and “sonogram” will ever be paired together again, unless Bon Iver or Ezra Koenig come along and steal it. (Obvious Bicycle 2?) But beyond that, “Oom Sha La La” is one of those songs that feels universally relatable. Judging from both my brother’s reaction and the YouTube comments, there’s a nugget of truth for everybody in this one—everybody’s had a moment in their life when they’ve come to the impetus that they need to get off of their butts, shake off the dust of the past, and get their lives together. For me, it reminds me of when I first started college—being so afraid to do anything and everything, but that saving voice telling me that “If you don’t go outside/well, nothing’s gonna happen.” And that impetus comes in the speeding catharsis train of Heynderickx’s cry of “I NEED TO START A GARDEN!”, which was apparently accompanied at one of her concerts with potting soil raining from the ceiling like confetti. There’s no use in waiting for the dirt to rain on you, in the end—you have the scream inside you, telling you that nobody but you can steer your life for the better. You have the power.

“Paprika” – Japanese Breakfast

I’m new-ish to Japanese Breakfast, but now that I’ve seen a video from a friend of mine who saw her a few weeks back, the best part of this song, by far, is that Michelle Zauner drags a whole gong onstage for this song. I really don’t think I need to justify that.

Every time I listen to “Paprika,” I get this voice in my head that slaps me upside the head, chiding me for not getting into more Japanese Breakfast right this second. Trust me, the only thing keeping me from it is my self-imposed need to get through a) some albums that are too hard to draw on a whiteboard (Here Come the Warm Jets) and b) get through all of the Blur and Peter Gabriel I have left to listen to before both of their new albums. This song, though, is absolutely enchanting—there’s no better word for it. Like so many of her other songs, it coats you in an intoxicating cloud of glitter, backed by faint steel drums and a bright horn ensemble. It really does feel like you’re “at the center of magic,” as Zauner chimes in at the chorus. It’s a shame that the famous gong is understated, but the sound mixing blends it perfectly with the rest of the instrumentals, paring it down to a clean crispness that seems to disappear into glittering sparks. I would’ve thought it was a cymbal, if it weren’t for said friend’s video footage. But that all works to uplift Zauner’s voice, bright and perfectly suited to the swirl of light surrounding her. Maybe she is the swirl of light.

“Breakadawn” – De La Soul

There’s something undeniably summery about this song. You can say that with certainty for the entirety of Three Feet High and Rising, with its carefree spirit and day-glo-colored album cover, but there’s a different kind of carefree slickness of “Breakadawn.” Smoothly collaged with samples from everybody from Michael Jackson (the backing track) to Smokey Robinson (the famous “breakadawn”), this song is proof of how seamlessly you can weave samples into a song—they all sound so natural together that they might as well have been borne together from the start. And what better soundtrack for watching Plug 1, Plug 2, Plug 3, and their many clones (?) walking along the beach and making camera moves that feel like proto-selfies? There’s no denying the shift in tone post-Three Feet High and Rising, but every song I’ve heard from Buhloone Mindstate is convincing me that this ethos never really left—in the end, this song is still filled with vibrant, summer colors that are impossible to deny. What better song to stick your head out a car window on a warm day to?

“Allison” – Soccer Mommy

We’ve got an Allison trifecta on this post, I guess? A song called “Allison,” made by my wife Sophie Allison, and an Al(l)ison Goldfrapp down below? Are we summoning Allisons here? (And can I summon the second one?)

Collection is Soccer Mommy’s first mini-album before her major label releases, and this was one of the few new songs amidst the other redone songs from when she self-released music on Bandcamp. Knowing this, it’s clear to see the sonic bridge between these periods of her career—the maturity of later albums like color theory comes through—this one reminds me of “night swimming”—but the young angst, painted with her tender, gentle touch, feels timeless. Allison’s guitar work has her signature, bedroom-pop touch of reverb and soul, and every bit of the song rings out like birdsong heard through the wind. It’s interesting that she likely named the song after herself—with that in mind, the song transforms from somebody else’s story to a mantra to her past self, a reminder of missed chances: “Allison, put down your sword/Give up what you’re fighting for.” There’s another layer of intimacy that manifests knowing that Allison crafted a lot of these earlier songs from pieces of her own diary entries—does it get more heart-laid-bare than that? It’s proof that from the beginning, Allison had no interest in being disingenuous—every song she writes is her, and nothing but—no airs put on, no glamorizing her life. I guess that almost comes with her bedroom pop, homemade roots, but I doubt that every single one of those musicians stay as true to themselves as she does.

“Monster Love” (Goldfrapp vs. Spiritualized) – Goldfrapp & Spiritualized

This is the only song that I’ve heard Spiritualized remix/reimagine, but it feels like he is to “Monster Love” what Denis Villeneuve was to Arrival: taking something that’s already beautiful, and artfully exceeding all of the qualities that made it so.

Goldfrapp and Spiritualized is a pairing that I never would’ve imagined, and yet, J. Spaceman has deconstructed her Seventh Tree album closer, already a beautifully introspective song, into…well, just pure J. Spaceman. All of the lyrics from the original have been stripped, save for this line: “Everything comes around/Bringing us back again/Here is where we start/And where we end.” Just from that, it already sounds like the words to a Spiritualized song, but it’s so fascinating to see the J. Spaceman Cosmic Touch™️ applied elsewhere. Alison Goldfrapp’s voice is cloaked in reverb, and the synths rise and fall like waves. Accompanying them is a series of chimes, harmonica, tambourine, which, if any other person was reimagining this song, would sound exceedingly out of place, but again—the J. Spaceman Cosmic Touch™️. His voice feels perfectly natural for the landscape he and Goldfrapp have created, his staticky harmonies melding smoothly into the music and drifting away just as quickly. It’s not surprising that Spiritualized would have such a Midas’ Touch on anything he lays a finger on, really.

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 5/28/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well. 🫶🏻

This is gonna be a fun one. By coincidence, the fault lines of Palehound Panic™️ and my recently reawakened Blur Breakdown™️ have collided in the span of a week. Let’s hope the results won’t be cataclysmic.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 5/28/23

“Black Friday” – Palehound

I’ve finally finished my quest to catch up on Palehound (the albums, at least) before Eye on the Bat. Over the past week or so, Black Friday has been in heavy rotation—it feels like El Kempner’s most cohesive and lyrically strong album, and it might just be my favorite of theirs so far. It was a feat to pick just one song from this album—“Worthy,” “Aaron,” and “Killer” were all strong contenders (GO LISTEN THEY’RE ALL SO GOOD)—but the title track, “Black Friday,” stuck out to me in so many ways.

Palehound often leaves the introspection for a handful of songs at the end of each album, but the personal threads run deep throughout the entirety of Black Friday. This song in particular hits a particularly emotional note—it’s a continued story of catching up with old friends, all the while having a nagging feeling that they don’t care about you now, and that they never cared much about you before, either. Yet somehow, you still feel tied to them by some kind of desperate obligation, a lingering thought that maybe things can change, but knowing they won’t; Kempner sings that “I’ll take being the last one that you call/You’re Black Friday and I’m going to the mall.” The chorus of “Before you said we’d keep in touch/I don’t hear from you too much/If you need to call me, I’m too weak to hold a grudge,” with Kempner’s layered harmonies, glitter like the edges of stars and ring out like a faint sound of a jet flying overhead. It was a song that felt like a punch in the stomach, all while I was just trying to give myself a nice manicure. Afterwards, I had to sit back for a minute…there will always be those songs that hit a little too close to home for comfort, and they always come when you least expect them to. But songs like “Black Friday” give a voice to the feelings that we think, in our darkest moments, are isolated only to only us. So thank you for that, El Kempner. Here’s to making friends with people who really do care, and not chasing after people who don’t.

“The Narcissist” – Blur

All is right in the universe. Nature is healing. We’ve got a new Blur album out in July…everything’s okay again…

…and this song is testing my ability to spell the word “narcissist.” I could’ve sworn that there was another ‘c’ in there somewhere…

I’ve got to hand it to Damon Albarn at this point—he’s having not one, but two of his projects (this and Gorillaz) releasing albums this year, and even if Cracker Island was a bit of a disappointment, the sheer creativity and talent is all there regardless. Knowing that the forthcoming The Ballad of Darren was a spur-of-the-moment kind of reunion makes it all the more impressive—they didn’t plan on making another album in the first place, and then they come out with this?

That being said…I’m not sure if it’s Blur’s best, but it’s still a great song. I didn’t listen to it on repeat while cleaning out my closet last week for no reason. It’s such a catchy tune—the instrumentals are a little understated, but it’s clean, it’s smooth, and it’s proof that Blur have mastered the art of a polished Britpop tune. My only problem, as much as I’ll sing praises for Damon Albarn, is that there’s too much Damon Albarn. It’s not something that I’d ever picture myself saying, but we live in strange times. “The Narcissist,” delightful earworm that it is, feels more like a solo Damon Albarn effort than a Blur song. Even though we do get Graham Coxon’s backing vocals, I find myself missing his captivating, intricate riffs. You can hardly hear the presence of Alex James’ iconic basslines. And Dave Rowntree’s precise drumming is still there, but again: understated. I just want more Blur, less Damon Albarn.

All that is to say that, for once, the fact that we’re getting a whole new Blur album overshadows most of the nitpicks I have about “The Narcissist.” I have a feeling that I’m gonna enjoy Hot Blur Summer.

“I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to Be Nicer” – The Cardigans

If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought this was a Giant Drag song—it’s got a very similar kind of bite. I’ve only listened to First Band on the Moon, but this song has me wondering what happened between that and their final record, Super Extra Gravity. I wouldn’t call it a sea change—it’s still got the pop sensibility that Nina Persson perfected to a science, but there’s an undeniable roughness to the song that pushes it more towards the edges. Persson’s voice, although it retains her signature, dainty tone, curls into a rasp as the song begins with half-spoken dog commands—”Sit/good dog/stay/bad dog/down/roll over.” The rest of that song is as bitter as the intro suggests, singing of a relationship gone sour, dulled by alcohol and fleeting visions of lost love. The Cardigans have toyed with these kinds of songs, but this one really makes the feel come through—it’s still a pop song through and through, but the sharpening of the guitars on this one make the image really come to life. “I Need Some Fine Wine” is, in short, Nina Persson’s hairdo in most of the video—it coexists as the neatly braided crown and the spiky hairs coming out all at once.

“Sinnerman” – Nina Simone

Full disclosure: I hoard reaction images. Too many. But even a refined reaction image connoisseur such as myself knows that some images are only suited for very specific, sacred times. You can’t go about wasting them willy-nilly, even if they are just…well, sitting on your phone. It’s not every day that something can evoke the feeling contained in this image, for instance:

But that’s how “Sinnerman” feels. All the way through.

Every TV show and film that this song has been featured in has cut it tragically short; and no, I don’t mean to call Gerard Way and Taika Waititi cowards, because they clearly aren’t, but also…if you’re going to include this song in anything, you have to go the whole mile—the 10:19 mile, to be exact. And if there’s any song that commands the listener to sprint through its entire length, it’s this one.

I can take longer songs, but there’s a specific art to crafting them: for me, if a song goes past the 6 or 7 minute mark, there has to be something that keeps me listening—that applies to any song, technically, but if you have that long of a song that mostly consists of repetition, you’ve started to lose me (lookin’ at you, LCD Soundsystem…you can pull it off sometimes…). Oingo Boingo’s sprawling, nearly 16 minute long swan song “Change,” for instance, has plenty of recurring musical motifs, but it keeps you on your toes, whether that be with artfully-placed oddball instrumentation or bizarre samples. But there’s a way that long song repetition can be done—my favorite song of all time, in fact, does just that; Blur’s “Tender” has a somewhat tidier format, but they bypass the LCD Soundsystem syndrome not just with breaks for Graham Coxon’s bluesy riffs and choir, but by fueling it with nothing but Emotion with a capital E—”love’s the greatest thing,” after all.

“Sinnerman,” however, does both of those things—it’s essentially the mother of every epic, extensively long song that you can think of. Even knowing the years that Nina Simone was active, it still amazes me that this was released in 1965. I could almost understand it if it had been the late sixties, when everybody started to realized how freeing musical experimentation was. Simone’s musical career was defined by pushing against so many barriers, from her protest music to her incredible piano skills, but this song pushed the envelope in such a wildly different way. Through all 10+ minutes, there’s an energy that seems to live and breathe and never stop—even when the music begins to die down in favor of Simone’s piano and a chorus of clapping. It’s a song on a desperate mission, one that takes no prisoners and never stops to catch its breath. Even though the song is an amalgamation of scattered 50’s songs, gospel, African spirituals, and remnants from her own religious upbringing, it can be easily reduced to a single word, one that Simone famously belts out near the song’s climactic ending—”power.” I can’t think of many other songs that grab you by the shirt collar and keep you hanging there quite like this—nothing comes close to how propulsive Simone is, with how purely propulsive both her voice and her piano playing are. Again—take my word with a grain of salt, but this really is a masterpiece. And knowing that she used to end her live shows with this song…WHEW. What a song.

“Sea of Blood” – Palehound

Whether or not it was intentional, it’s fitting that this song shares space with a song called “YMCA Pool.” Two dubious bodies of liquid on one single.

With some songs that end up as singles after the released of an album, you’re left wanting—what could’ve changed if that track was on the album, as originally intended? (see: “Bicycle”) But some songs were made to be tiny, standalone packages, never leftovers for works past or teasers for what’s to come. “Sea of Blood” works exactly this way—it’s got the sprightly beats and guitar work of something circa Dry Food or even Bent Nail – EP, but there’s something about the short, snappy atmosphere of it that doesn’t confine it to any of Kempner’s previous works. It might fight the catchier, brighter side of Dry Food, but it doesn’t quite match the introspection. It’s got the experience that Bent Nail hadn’t fully achieved yet. And yet it still sounds like a home demo, but so fully realized—a neat drum machine accompanies Kempner’s signature rasp, sharp lyrics, and climbing guitar fingerings all come together in what has the sound quality just above an iPhone voice memo, but the polish that comes from nurturing a tune like this for a long time. And leave it to Palehound to name a song something like “Sea of Blood,” a title you’d expect to come with throat-burning, heavy metal screaming, but start off the song with a line as innocuous as “I’m every bit as fragile as a baby bird.” You sly dog, you…hound?

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 5/21/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This post was brought to you by the never-ending Dark brainrot (it consumes), my disappointment in Kindred’s TV show adaptation, and the continued Palehound Panic™️. But this is all merely the calm before the storm, because now we’ve got the news that Blur is coming out with a new album in July…BRACE YOURSELVES

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 5/21/23

“What a Wonderful World” (Louis Armstrong cover) – Soap&Skin

Somehow, it was this song, and not the original, that made me realize that the line was actually “the dark, sacred night” and not “the dark, say goodnight.” Whilst I was crying my eyes out at the Dark finale. Whatever it takes.

It’s been about two weeks now since I finished Dark and got through that gut-wrencher of a finale, and I can say with absolute certainty that I doubt I’ll ever emotionally recover from…well, anything about that show. I’ll spare you any spoilers, other than the fact that this song is present. But hopefully that part shouldn’t be a surprise, at least, with how the show-runners have now triple–dipped with the Soap&Skin needle drops, including the theme song itself. I may be an atheist, but the atmospheric covers of Soap&Skin and the eerie, dew-covered-forest, small-town-murder-mystery-that-turns-into-something-way-worse aesthetic of Dark together is a match made in heaven. There’s something that she brings to this near-untouchable song (except for a third grade singing program that I did? I think), that no one else could have—it’s got all of the makings for the same haunting instrumentals of her cover of Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil,” but it’s impossible to take any of the love or hope out of this song. The synths make it sound like something that would’ve been in the running for a Golden Record candidate (or at least the backing track to a shot of a satellite in space), and Anja Plaschg’s rich, cavernous voice create a shadowy atmosphere, but one illuminated by an undeniable light at the end of the tunnel. It’s impossible to make this song sound anything but hopeful, but there’s different ways that hope can sing—and this was a perfect fit for the tearful, bittersweet ending to a series that’s taken up a welcome amount of space in this brain.

But while I’m here, I will offer the following…this was a great song to send off Dark with, but consider: “Blood of Eden?” Again, no spoilers, but…it’s all right there.

“Tomorrow Never Knows” (Beatles cover) – Junior Parker

Except this time, one show is a time-travel masterpiece, and the other is FX’s adaptation of Kindred. Octavia Butler deserves better than THAT. (@ the showrunners: Kevin being a somewhat static character in the book was NOT a sign to make him into a total dudebro. The X-Ray Spex shirt isn’t fooling anyone.)

However, as generally peeved as I was with that show, if there was one great thing I got out of it, I’d point to this deliciously eerie Beatles cover. I’ve since given up the whole “don’t cover the Beatles” mindset, even if we are living in an uncharted sea of awful “Here Comes the Sun” covers, because with how influential they were on…well, almost every aspect of rock music that you can think of, there’s infinitely many things that can be done with these songs, classics as they are. Take picking this song to cover—the original song is nothing short of experimental, psychedelic insanity, deliriously noisy and filled with rubber duck noises at random intervals, as one does. It’s glorious. It’s a childhood staple of mine. But Junior Parker’s taken all of the trimmings off of it, slimming it down like a tree stripped of its bark. When the dust settles, all we’re left with is bass, soft drums, scattered keyboard chords, and Parker’s sonorous, bluesy voice. The bare-bones construction of this cover makes “Turn off your mind/Relax, and float downstream” feel like a chilling whisper of coercion, not a famous allusion to psychedelics. I never thought that this song could get quite this ominous—and, despite my general beef with the Kindred show, it was a perfect fit for the show’s atmosphere—definitely the best needle drop of the show, right at the end of episode 2. It wasn’t all bad, I guess.

“Night Time is the Right Time” – Ray Charles

Listen. I only know the basics of studio recording technology, but somehow, it’s “Night Time is the Right Time” that makes me appreciate what they were trying to do in the 50’s—not necessarily what it could do, but what it caught. The version I have on my iTunes library is plenty scratchy, cloaking almost everything in that signature fuzz you get from most recorded music up to the 60’s or the 70’s. It’s charming—it’s the sound of the era. But here’s the thing—the key word is almost. In almost every recording that I’ve listened to, no matter when it was mixed, Ray Charles’ voice sounds as clear as day. You could probably chalk that up to the main goal of said recording technologies being to record his voice first and foremost, but I can’t help but romanticize that in my head, Charles’ resonant voice soaring through any technology and defying any attempts at being aged. But no matter how fuzzy or remastered any recordings get, it’s always a beacon, the foggy gleam of a lighthouse across the sea.

And on the other side of the coin, there’s Margie Hendrix’s iconic voice—not spared the fuzz, but with what I’d argue is an almost equal amount of power. She put everything into that first call of “BABY!” and never slowed down. Her voice did fall victim to the scratchy fuzz, but her declarative growl of a voice almost fits with it; there’s a rough edge to Hendrix’s voice, the kind that makes my throat raw just thinking about belting out those notes. Knowing she was in her early twenties when she sang that makes it all the more impressive. It’s a voice that instantly conjures an image—screwed-up eyes, mouth open wide, putting every ounce of lung power into the verse that you have. The song is a testament to both of their talents, what little that I know about either of them—but either way, there’s a reason that they called Charles “The Genius,” and just as much of a reason for the influx of YouTube comments declaring their love for that iconic shout of “BABY!”

“See a Light” – Palehound

Another find on my quest to absorb as much of Palehound as I can before Eye on the Bat comes out, here’s a single that El Kempner released about a month before it all went wrong. February 27, 2020, to be exact. Yeesh. Simpler times.

I noticed a pattern after listening to both Dry Food and A Place I’ll Always Go—indie-rock lightness and guitar fun are the main priorities, but Kempner always has a few melancholy, slower tracks to balance everything out, nudged just past the middle (“Dixie”) or nestled at the end (“Feeling Fruit”) of any given album. “See a Light” allows this breed of Palehound to stand on its own. It’s the perfect vessel for Kempner’s whispery voice to flourish, drifting along like fog amidst the homegrown, shoegaze-y, bedroom production. It gently crawls along to a slow drum machine and glossy guitar notes, settling in your lap like a kitten. Distortion creeps in at perfectly calculated moments, fuzzing up the edges of the instrumentals and Kempner’s voice. Beyond all of that, it’s one of the best instances of album covers (or single covers, in this case) perfectly matching the feel of the song(s) itself—the combination of the handwritten typeface and the basketball hoop taken over by bright green vibes, set against a cloudy, gray sky, matches all of the bits that make me go back and listen to this song.

“Cubist Castle – Part 1” – Alan Peter Roberts (a.k.a Jim Noir) and Steve Wareing

📢YOUR REMINDER TO SUPPORT JIM NOIR ON PATREON (link above) IF YOU CAN HE’S AMAZING📢

Ever since Jim Noir has started said Patreon, we’ve gotten a handful of his older catalogue in between the new EPs. One such offering is this—a collaboration from 2000, between himself and a longtime friend, now remastered from the original ten tracks and expanded to 30 (!). (For reference, the tracks are grouped into four chunks on the Patreon link.) It’s not the first time that Jim Noir, under whichever name, has offered up his experience with making ambient music (see Omission Sound, also available on Patreon). I’m not as well versed in ambient music in general, but I’ve gotten tastes of it from him over the years; usually, I’m ambivalent about it—for me, his ambient music functions mostly as background music, plus the odd sample with a nice layer of distortion thrown in. But “Cubist Castle – Part 1” feels different than Omission Sound’s Solutions—there’s something cheerier about it that sets it apart. Including an early version of “Everytime” (a bright soundtrack to many a painful hour studying during the pandemic), “Cubist Castle – Part 1” has calm woven into it. Although some of the later parts get plenty ominous, there’s something so gentle about this first chunk—the tinny, bubbly synths, samples of birdsong and beach sounds…it’s just nice, simply. Nice. Nice is often such an inadequate word, but given the background-music nature of this album, it fits. It’s like the auditory version of a baby sensory video. I’m just glad that all of the essay writing that I did to the tune of “Cubist Castle” didn’t ruin it.

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 5/14/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles, and happy Mother’s Day!! Eternally grateful for my wonderful mom—who knows what I’d do without her. Love you 🫶🏻

Alas, even though “Cool About It” is still my most listened to song of the year so far, the Boygenius Breakdown™️ has made way for some Palehound Panic™️ (or, alternatively, a Palehound Party™️?) so I can catch up on everything before Eye on the Bat comes out this July (!!!!). Feast your eyes on the spring color scheme.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 5/14/23

“The Clutch” – Palehound

And just when I thought that I’d already gone through almost all of my most anticipated albums of the year…

Even though I haven’t filled in the sonic gaps between this new sound, Black Friday, and A Place I’ll Always Go, I’m all on board with this new Palehound! There’s power in every note of “The Clutch,” from first notes of Kempner’s voice to the unrelenting chords that follow the rest of the song. El Kempner has such a unique voice—it’s hard to think of any other artist whose voice is simultaneously whispery and rowdy, and she embraces the rough edges on every part of this song. Underneath all of the pounding drums and incredible guitar work is some of Kempner’s sharpest lyricism to date: “I didn’t mean to hurt you/You didn’t mean to show me how,” followed closely by “I’m glad that you know better now/And I’m glad that you found yourself/But you didn’t need my help…” WHEW those are some LINES right there…and what better way to close the song with a shouting outro of “you didn’t need my help”? If this song is any indication, Eye on the Bat is gonna be the perfect summer album—and a fantastic album in general. SO glad I got on this Palehound kick all the way back in September. Haven’t regretted a single minute of it.

“Humdrum” – Peter Gabriel

The only acceptable way to dance to this song is to dance like you’re one of those wooden snakes from the craft store. The ones that make those crack-crack-crack noises when you wiggle them around?? Please tell me somebody knows what I’m talking about, please…

right, THESE ones. Just gotta feel it. Flail. Castanets do that to a gal.

Usually I try to put my album listening in the hands of fate (read: the list randomizer), but after the Palehound Panic/Party subsides, I think it’s shaping up to become Peter Gabriel Summer 2: Electric Boogaloo. Why? It’s only taken 3 songs to convince me to listen to Peter Gabriel 1: Car (because he’s That One Guy who puts out 4 self-titled albums for kicks and giggles and refused to make any title more than one word long after that). I’d already heard this album’s iconic hit “Solsbury Hill,” but after hearing this back to back with the equally wondrously weird “Moribund the Burgermeister,” I just know that Car is gonna be a wild ride.

Fresh off of his split from Genesis, Peter Gabriel’s prog rock action has never quite ceased, but from just this song, it seems to have taken on a life of its own, morphing into something that’s purely him. It’s a song of many faces—starting with quiet synths and weary vocals for the first minute, and then breaking down into some absolutely INSANE castanet/accordion-aided craziness that lasts for all too short of a time. The instrumentals just feel so delightfully kooky (you know it’s gonna go nuts when the accordion comes out) before bursting out into some classically prog sprawl as Gabriel’s voice and lyrics deepen in scale: “from the white star/come the bright car/our amoeba…” And the amoeba, as it happens, was his first daughter, Anna-Marie Gabriel, who had just recently been born. I don’t know about you, but I’d be honored to have a song this weird to commemorate my birth. Just saying.

“Room” – Palehound

I was going to say that this was a left turn from the other Palehound song on this post, but…no, “The Clutch” is probably the one that’s a left turn, really, though I can’t say how much of one it is without having listened to Black Friday…nevermind, this is pointless without context…ignore me

After “The Clutch” came out, I made it my mission to start dipping my toes into more Palehound before Eye on the Bat comes out in July. A Place I’ll Always Go was next chronologically, so I went right in—I’m still torn on whether I like it better or as much as Dry Food, El Kempner’s debut, but it’s packed with songs that have kept me listening long after the first run-through. This one quickly became my favorite track off the album; it’s got a sound that’s so close to being fully-realized—all at once, it sounds purely like Palehound, but still reeks of Wilco influence. Kempner’s wry, meticulously constructed lyricism bursts forth in every measure (“Sun above her/never had a lover in my room”), but the instrumentation, even though it’s all her, just screams Wilco—the neat percussion and soft, restrained guitars have Jeff Tweedy written all over it. I can almost see the guy in a buttoned-up denim jacket and a beanie holding his acoustic guitar in a completely horizontal line somewhere in the background. But Kempner’s whispery rasp of a voice, slowing coming out of its burrow, makes sure that this track is all her own—and it’s an excellent one. I can’t help but nod at the endlessly hooky chorus—”she keeps me up/she keeps me up/she keeps me up/at night,” the last word drawn out intoxicatingly.

“Dawncolored Horse” – Fenne Lily

I haven’t made a habit of consulting any of Apple Music’s auto-generated playlists like I used to when I first started using the platform. But sometimes, when I’m in a musical drought, or if I’m just bored, I’ll have a look. Usually, I only ever find one or two interesting songs, but sometimes there are ones worth keeping.

All I knew about Fenne Lily beforehand was that she’d toured with Lucy Dacus somewhere along the line. But this song is so calming; sometimes, songs linger on the precipice of exploding into sound without ever getting there, but this song never feels the need to stretch itself to places it can’t go. It’s subdued, but subdued in the exact way that it should be. Lily’s voice is smooth like mercury, whispery at the edges but moving along like frigid water in a creek—the perfect indie-folk kind of voice. The song’s title was what originally grabbed me, but from what I’ve heard of her newest album, Big Picture, I love its thesis—trying to write songs about the small things and forgettable days that we let fly by. There’s a comforting coziness to everything about “Dawncolored Horse”—the soft, sparkly guitar riffs scattered throughout, Lily’s voice, and the gentle percussion. It almost feels like I’m in the tiny, model house on the album cover, looking through the glass. And just like the album cover, it really does feel like a tiny memory under a glass case.

“Times to Die” – Car Seat Headrest

And now, let’s end with a relic from my “not-like-other-girls” period in 8th grade trawled up by the enigmatic deep-sea fishermen of my iTunes library on shuffle, shall we?

I got swept up by Car Seat Headrest right in the middle of middle school (and not because of my early teenage crush on Will Toledo…yeah), and if I had to put a soundtrack to 8th grade, they would dominate the glut of it. Every bus ride, vacation, and absentminded hum were probably along to them—probably kind of concerning, given their lyrics, but we all do weird stuff in middle school. I’m almost positive that I bought this one off of an iTunes gift card that I’d gotten for…graduation? Maybe? It’s a distinctly April-May 2018 song for me—I can’t place a specific memory to it, but the feeling is so distinct that it’s become its own little time capsule.

And now, having not listened to it in years, some of these lyrics remind me of what endeared me to Car Seat Headrest all that time ago. Even though I didn’t quite understand it at the time, I still smile at a particular line near the end of the song—”most of the time, I’m just getting older/but I’ll get to heaven standing on your shoulders.” Despite most of this song’s complex grappling with religion (with the many references to both Judeo-Christian religion and Hinduism scattered throughout—he really just loaded this one up, no wonder it’s almost 7 minutes long) and life itself, there’s a darkly humorous element to it; “God” isn’t always God, but Chris Lombardi, the founder of Matador Records (“got to believe that Lombardi loves me”), and the strained chanting of “hey man, we listened to your demos” throughout. This one’s definitely a little contrarian as far as lyricism goes—early on, Toledo claimed that he was attempting to let the lyrics flow naturally and let the words speak for themselves without putting symbolism in beforehand. And yet…after that first verse, he just stuffed it with enough references and idiosyncrasies to fill a Thanksgiving turkey. It’s a rich song, from the callbacks to so much of his earlier catalogue to the thick web of lo-fi instrumentation surrounding his muffled, honeylike voice.

Or maybe that’s all for naught. Maybe it’s just as he claims:

“Bees?”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Uncategorized

Sunday Songs: 5/7/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

Here we are in May, and I’m very nearly done with finals (and my first year of college? how 😀), and now I’ve got a fresh batch of songs, brought to you by a wikipedia rabbit hole, a beautifully cursed mashup, and what happens when you absorb too many Twilight memes by osmosis without actually watching or reading it. The internet is a lawless wasteland.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 5/7/23

“Ain’t Got No – I Got Life” – Nina Simone

does anybody know if this extended version is anywhere on streaming? I’ve only been able to find the shortened version…honestly a crime if you ask me

Like a lot of songs that end up on these posts, I stumbled upon this one fairly randomly—a Stereogum post on Instagram from a few weeks back commemorating 20 years since Nina Simone passed away. I just heard a snippet, and immediately went hunting for it on Apple Music—there was something so deeply captivating about it. And judging from the wikipedia rabbit hole I went on yesterday evening instead of writing this part of the post, it won’t be the last time. (“Sinnerman?” OKAY I DIDN’T EXPECT TO JUST…ASCEND THERE FOR A MINUTE HOOOOWHEE I’m gonna talk about that one in a few weeks at least, mark my words) But this one’s been on my mind a lot recently. From what I can tell, much of Nina Simone’s legacy is built from her more famous protest songs (see “Mississippi Goddam”), which damaged her career in the sixties but solidified her as one of the most important musical figures of the civil rights movement. This one slightly fits into that category—it’s a cover of sorts, mashing up two songs from the musical Hair (“I’m Black/Ain’t Go No” and “I Got Life” respectively). But even beyond the way Simone made these songs mesh together so effortlessly, there’s something more that she breathed into this song. Given the context of her life and her continued fight to help civil rights efforts in the U.S. and how much that affected her musical career, there’s something that she put into this song that nobody else could’ve. Even as her songs were banned from airplay and her career took a hit, she kept on producing this music, a commanding declaration of “I’m here, and there’s nothing you can do about it—You may have beaten my spirit, but here I stand.” Can’t get much more beautiful than that.

“Can I Go On” – Sleater-Kinney

There’s really no feeling quite like when shuffle digs up an old favorite from the depths of your music library. Unparalleled euphoria of remembering what it was like listening to a song for the first time…

That being said, I feel like I’ve lost Pretentious Gay Hipster™️ points since…this is only one of about three (tops) Sleater-Kinney songs that I actually like. Carrie Brownstein is great, don’t get me wrong—I love her work on what I’ve seen of Portlandia and in The Nowhere Inn, but Sleater-Kinney just rarely does it for me. I saw them live with Wilco a few years back, and…okay, I spent most of their set waiting for Wilco and hoping I’d like something, and I did like a few things. (There was also the secondhand embarrassment of them telling everybody to sing along during “Modern Girl” and very few people singing…oopsie) But I’ve never been a fan of either Brownstein’s or Corin Tucker’s voices—they work together, to a certain point, but they verge on grating for me. And other than this and “Modern Girl,” there’s nothing that’s really pulled me about most of their songs.

And admittedly, the minute that I found out that The Center Won’t Hold, which includes “Can I Go On,” was produced by none other than the woman, the myth, the legend, St. Vincent, it all made sense. I like this song because I like St. Vincent, not necessarily because I like Sleater-Kinney. There’s St. Vincent all over this song, from the plethora of effects on the guitars, which scream and shimmer in equal measure, to the chrome-like polish that doesn’t discredit the indie-ness of the band, but still makes it sound as smooth as ever. And even though I’m not a fan of their voices, the commanding harmonies of the chorus scream in perfect tandem, making for a rallying cry of a song that makes exhausted lyrics sound triumphant. A sprinkle of Annie Clark magic makes everything better.

“Supermassive Black Hole” – Muse

We know it. We love it. What is there to say about this song that hasn’t already been said? So I won’t bore you. I’ll narrow it down to it’s two biggest contributions to pop culture (I think):

  1. The Twilight baseball scene (I have never seen Twilight) (I intend to keep my exposure to scattered memes)
  2. This:

bask in the eternal glory of the supermassive bottom jeans. BASK.

“Wherever You Go” – Beach House

Beach House has been one of those bands that I really should be super into, given my somewhat shoegaze-leaning tendencies. The only reason is that I haven’t gotten around to listening to everything—I’ve loved the handful of isolated songs that I do know (“Space Song,” “Levitation,” “Woo,” etc.), and Bloom is on my insurmountable album list thanks to a recommendation from, of all people, my 9th grade honors English teacher. (I really shouldn’t be surprised about that. I bumped into him at a Spiritualized concert not long before I graduated last year. Shoegaze recognizes shoegaze.) The Beach House awakening, or something along those lines, is bound to happen soon, but for now, I’ll stick to random songs found in random places.

Like this one. Of course the song that I happened to randomly find in the background of a video was on their B-Sides and Rarities album. Again: I don’t have the Beach House experience to necessarily back this up, but with their other songs, I’ve noticed a slight degree of intentional production polish to make their songs sound as spacey as possible—which they absolutely do. But this song has all the lo-fi feel of a demo without losing any of that enchantingly drifting quality, with every instrument cranked up to sound as starry as possible. Victoria Legrand’s vocals always make me want to close my eyes and levitate (no pun intended), as the best shoegaze does—taking its sweet time to sweep you off your feet and into the clouds.

“Rubberband Girl” – Kate Bush

Unlike something like The Kick Inside, I’m not sure, even though scattered Kate Bush songs like these have grown on me a ton, that I’ll go all in on The Red Shoes. The only other song I’ve heard is “Big Stripey Lie,” and…okay, to the disappointment of Kate Bush’s #1 fan (my brother), I really haven’t been able to get into it, now matter how hard I try (sorry 😭). I appreciate the weirdness, but…it doesn’t do anything for me personally. And I’ve heard that the rest of The Red Shoes isn’t the best of her work, but I’m not about to diss everything about her. This queen just got inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, after all, I’ll put some respect on her name. Why wouldn’t I be, since this song stands before you? IT’S SO WEIRDLY CATCHY. I LOVE IT.

This seems like it leans more on the radio-friendly side of Kate Bush, but even she can make radio-friendly as oddball as she can. Her voice transforms from her ordinary singing tone to a velvety hiss to something as springy as the rubber bands she sings of. It’s a delightful trickster of a song—it still sounds firmly 80’s, even though it was released in 1993, but then it devolves into Bush saying “here I go :)” all innocently, and then dropping into the most wondrously weird and distorted “uhh-UHH-uhh-UHH” chorus I’ve ever heard at around the 3:40 mark. There’s a full horns section. You’ve got some Van Halen-y guitar solos sprinkled in. Under the reverb-y, 80’s polish, her weirdness has never ceased. Regardless of how you view the merits of the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, you can see how much of a shoo-in she was.

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 4/30/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

Here we are at the end of April, and my cough finally seems to be letting up. The weather’s consistently warm again, the trees are starting to bloom, and I’m doing my best to ignore the fact that the latter will definitely trigger some allergies in a few weeks, because hey, the trees are starting to look beautiful. All is green and new!

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 4/30/23

“Ride a White Swan” – T. Rex

there has never been a better visual descriptor for how this song makes me feel

PACK YOUR BAGS, FELLAS, WE’RE GONNA GO WEAR EXCESSIVELY LONG DRESSES AND DANCE IN THE WOODS

T. Rex, Marc Bolan’s self-titled debut, was the last hurrah of his hippie roots (you really can’t go back from album titles like My People were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair…But Now They’re Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows, huh) before going full-on glam rock, as well as the first album under his newly shortened name (no longer the full Tyrannosaurus Rex). But even as he’d gotten a crisper, cleaner name to call himself, he hadn’t fully abandoned the original, psychedelic fantasy that was Tyrannosaurus Rex, and this song—and, judging from most of the song titles on the rest of the album, everything else—is proof. It’s got everything—druids, spell casting, black cats, tall hats. What else does one really need in life? It’s whimsical. It’s lovely. It’s light. It’s a classic. Revel in the joyous whimsy!

And it seems like it was the perfect storm—for a short time, anyway. Arriving in 1970, right at the end of the sixties when the world was still clinging to the flower-child mentality, this was the perfect piece of escapist hippie music. It was Bolan’s first hit as T. Rex, and it was what launched him into stardom in the early seventies. From what I can tell, most of his career after his (excellent) third album, The Slider, was an attempt to rekindle some sort of hit, both in the U.K. and in the U.S., and despite his efforts and his complicated relationship with fame, never ended up being fruitful. Especially knowing that he died so prematurely and that most of his efforts were in vain, it always makes me sad to think about that stage of his life. Bolan was obviously such a creative soul at heart, a skilled frontman and a master of oddball wordplay, and thinking about he wasted so much of that talent by trying to please other audiences really seems to me like one of the great tragedies of rock music history. It doesn’t feel right to reduce Marc Bolan to a lesson to all of us creatives intending to make a living, but I think his story speaks more to the music (and any creative) industry as a whole; he’d gotten a taste of fame, and this fame pressured him to try and crank out hit after hit. It’s not so much an issue of Bolan as a person, as flawed as some of his fame-induced decisions were, but the way that the music industry has shaped people to behave in that way. Art should be art for art’s sake, not a pursuit of money or stardom. The music industry did Marc Bolan an unforgivable disservice, and I’ll die on that hill.

Anyways, listen to The Slider. God-tier album.

“A Love of Some Kind” – Adrianne Lenker

Alright, I’ll step off my Marc Bolan soapbox for a moment. Let’s cool down a little.

This lovely spring weather has made me feel the same way that this song does. Even if the album cover for Hours Were the Birds wasn’t set against a backdrop of dewy pine branches, I have no doubt that it would still sound the same. Adrianne Lenker seems to have captured the art of making an unrelated smell like petrichor and gently rock about like a wooden boat on a lake. There’s a slight melancholy to it (nothing quite compared to “Disappear,” another track I love from this album—I need to listen to the whole thing), but it’s undeniably hopeful; it’s a plea for reciprocation and love after a rocky period, a star-staring hope and yearning: “I know we’re strangers, so it’s okay/ You don’t have to say it/Strange is better anyway/And I think that we can make it.” There’s a certain talent that the best singer-songwriter artists, in my experience, have: the ability to hinge an entire song with a single instrument and their voice. Most of the time, it’s an acoustic guitar, and Lenker hits the nail right on the head. With just her gentle, misty voice, and the strums of her guitar, she evokes all of those sensations I mentioned earlier with such relatively little material. Even her birdlike whistles bring to mind the feeling of plants stretching their feelers after the snow melts away. I really need to listen to more Adrianne Lenker.

“House of Jealous Lovers” – The Rapture

The beginning of “House of Jealous Lovers” functions to me like the sound engineering of the screams in Jordan Peele’s Nope: are they screams of ecstasy? Are they screams of fear? Who knows. They’re all shrouded in a deliberately-placed layer of fuzz that makes it impossible to tell. And by the time you’ve started to contemplate if it’s one or the other, it’s too late: it’s Uptight White Boy Music Time.

And even without knowing much about said Uptight White Boys, it’s clear how “House of Jealous Lovers” took its place in the early 2000’s post-punk-revival movement in New York City, sliding right next to the likes of The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and others. There’s not much going on lyrically, but there’s a frantic urgency to the hoarse scream that Luke Jenner (no relation to…any other infamous Jenners, luckily) delivers every line in that makes every word feel like a command. Cloaked in endlessly delayed guitars, it feels like it’s hiding something the whole time, even if part of the bridge just consists of the band counting to eight in unpredictable, wavering tones. Throw in some cowbell (as one does), and you’ve got such a strangely suspended moment in time: shaky and uptight, but somehow still self-assured in a way that makes this song hold up after almost 20 years. It feels like the world’s most neurotic club jam. I love it.

“The Cradle” – Colour Revolt

I stole this one from the great Julien Baker, who named it on boygenius’ episode of Pitchfork’s Pass the Aux series, as her hype music when she was a senior in high school, right next to…Drake? I can’t forgive the Drake, but…we all did questionable things in high school, I guess.

Drake aside, I’m so glad that Julien Baker introduced me to this song. Just like that, I’ve got another album on the Sisyphean list of albums on my notes app. Just like “House of Jealous Lovers,” we’ve got another hoarse white guy (I’ve got cough drops for everybody, take your pick) who somehow makes it work. Wonderfully. There’s so much that “The Cradle” does in such a short amount of time. It seems to invert the formula of musical buildup. Apart from the first few guitar chords, the first seconds of the song explode into delightfully crunchy guitars, letting the music take center stage, making the quiet, abrasive vocals linger in the background like a sinister afterthought. There’s something sinister about this song that I can’t quite pin down—maybe it’s that inversion, the way that the song explodes in the beginning, and only goes quiet and plodding during the last 30 seconds, as if you’re in a horror movie, waiting for something to drop from the rafters. There’s something compellingly intricate about this song, even more impressive that The Cradle was an album made in the aftermath of Colour Revolt getting dropped by their former label and three of their five original band members jumping ship. Even if this is my only exposure to Colour Revolt right now, I can still say how impressive of a feat that is.

“Sunshine” – The Arcs

Inside of you there are two wolves. One of them wants to listen to “Sunshine” by The Arcs. The other wants to listen to “Sunshine” by Sparklehorse. You are incredibly pretentious, and you also probably need a nap.

When I first heard this song, I seriously thought that the light, tinny piano intro was going to be the start of a sample. To any artists reading this (I doubt there are, but still): THIS HERE. SAMPLE THIS. WHAT ARE YOU DOING.

I’m not up to date on any of my Arcs lore, but the jump from the songs that I heard on heavy rotation on Alt Nation back when I was in middle school to this is nothing short of gutsy. But somehow, it makes complete sense. Just like the animations in the music video, it’s vibrant and polished to a shine, bursting with neon color. From the backing vocals to the smooth piano intro, it’s clearly a song that’s been in the studio for extensive amounts of time, a piece of art being chiseled out of stone. And what came out when the dust settled was an irresistibly pop-sounding indie tune of a perfect length. Every move feels exceedingly deliberate, from when the backing vocals kick in with the “sha-la-la-la-la-la”s in the last third to the quiet explosion of different instruments in the background. The only other song I can think of called “Sunshine” is an exceedingly melancholy one (as with pretty much any Sparklehorse song…sorry, Mark), but if anything, this is a song that more than lives up to its title.

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Uncategorized

Sunday Songs: 4/23/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

I may be slightly sick, but I did not lose my lack of coherence, so today, I give you a very famous banana, Wall-E, and the only band that can make a Black Sabbath song sound dainty. Have fun trying to bring it all together. I certainly did.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 4/23/23

“Heavy Bend” – Big Thief

With full sincerity, I mean this in the absolute nicest way possible: the beginning of this song sounds like an Apple ringtone. An Apple ringtone, but the kind that has no business being as much of a banger as it is. Like the Piano one. Did any of that make any sense? I need a Taskmaster-style choreography to this one now. Would this give Noel Fielding shrew vibes?

My Big Thief/Adrianne Lenker conversion has begun, thanks to my brother and his girlfriend, and every day I’m inching closer to listening to Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You. But this song is unique—everything, from the echo of Adrianne Lenker’s sighing into the microphone to the hypnotic, harp-like strums that feel like the auditory answer to dew-covered spiderwebs in the early morning. That hypnotic quality reminds me a lot of “Bicycle,” another song that I raved about a few months ago, that shares the quality of feeling enchantingly impressionistic, like a painting imbued with motion. And as much of a cliche as this is, “Heavy Bend”‘s biggest crime is being too short. Some songs work as short and snappy (see “We’ve Got a File on You,” “Pam Berry,” “A Little Bit of Soap,” etc.), but this song feels like it’s begging for a key change, a bridge, just something to propel it beyond a minute and 36 seconds. On the other hand, that makes it tantalizingly easy to play on repeat. If you play it enough times on loop, you can just pretend that it’s longer. Denial is the first stage of grief.

“All Tomorrow’s Parties” – The Velvet Underground & Nico

nothing like cackling at niche jokes alone in your dorm, amirite?

I’ve finally got around to listening to another classic album—one that I’d heard about half of beforehand anyway, but still enjoyed, for all of its legend, discomfort, and strange beauty. A classic story of a disaster and a sales flop becoming a tried-and-true classic, every song feels like its own world—a very seedy, eerie, and hazy world, but a world all the same. I doubt anybody will ever describe Nico’s voice better than the journalist Richard Goldstein, who described it as “something like a cello getting up in the morning.” I wouldn’t automatically put it on my top 10, but it’s clear that its lasting legacy isn’t without reason.

“All Tomorrow’s Parties” is one of the songs that was relatively new to me, and it quickly became my favorite of the album. There are so many layers to it, more than the peelable, bruised, Andy Warhol banana on the album cover. It chugs along like a great machine, elephantine in its size, slow in its looming progress. Nico’s distinct voice, thick, resonant and cavernous, plows it along, drawing a long shadow over the music. Each piano chord seems to plod along, even with how rapid each chord is. It almost feels like a dirge in the way it seems to crawl, certainly for the fate of said “poor girl” that the song describes. Unlike “Heavy Bend,” this song is the perfect length—the typical 3 minutes doesn’t give it enough time to loom over the listener, but just over six minutes gives it all the time in the world.

“I/0” – Peter Gabriel

“gay rights” – Peter Gabriel 2023

Oof, another beautiful one…I’m just glad this one is easier to swallow than “Playing for Time,” but it’s just as powerful.

Peter Gabriel’s had his fair share of movie involvement, from writing various film soundtracks to providing the tearjerking end-credits song “Down to Earth” for Pixar’s Wall-E. So it’s not surprising how easily he can slip into that cinematic smoothness with such ease. Certainly helps that the Soweto Gospel Choir, the same choir that performed with him on “Down to Earth,” provided backing vocals for “I/O” as well. Even though every song from the forthcoming i/o (stop trying to capitalize the i STOP TRYING TO CAPITALIZE THE i) has been paired with a visual so far, this one is practically begging for its own Pixar movie, or even just some animated music video. You can feel every bit of nature creeping through this song, from every creature mentioned in the lyrics to running water and green hills.

was this another gateway to sci-fi for baby Madeline? probably.

If we’re keeping with the Pixar theme, that would be two Pixar movies that he would hypothetically contribute to with a deeply environmentalist message. I’ve never been a die-hard Disney or Pixar fan, but Wall-E is special to me in so many ways—it was one of the first movies that I ever saw in theaters as a kid, and 15 years later (Jesus, I feel old), it reflects on humanity’s disconnect from nature, and the dangers of thinking that we’re the masters of everything that we can grab at. The scene where Wall-E reaches up to touch the stars still fills me with incredible awe. But, as with everything, we didn’t listen, and now we’re in the landscape where a handful of corporations are responsible for polluting a large part of our planet. And that is why we’ve become disconnected: as soon as we forget that we’re as much a part of the Earth as every other plant, animal, and other entity, we think that we can get away with all of this. And that’s what Wall-E tried to tell us in 2008, and it’s what “I/O” is telling us now: “So we think we live apart/because we’ve got two legs, a brain and a heart/we all belong to everything/to the octopus suckers and the buzzard’s wing.” Here and now, I’m glad that at least one other old white guy besides David Attenborough recognizes this. Happy belated Earth Day.

“Step On Me” – The Cardigans

I can’t pull the “I LiKEd tHiS sOnG bEFoRe IT wAS a tIKtOk sONG” card because I technically didn’t know this song in particular, but with David Bowie as my witness, I can swear that I did grow up listening to The Cardigans in the car quite a bit. I’ve had the luck of having very few songs I know become “tiktok songs,” but I’ve found that it’s no use griping over it and insisting that “[you] liked it before it was cool.” People are just going to assume that you got a song from some popular place, and that is the case sometimes, as much of a pretentious hipster I am. I vehemently despise tiktok’s obsession with speeding up every song that gets popular (WHY), but either way, it led me back to The Cardigans and to First Band on the Moon, and I’m happy with that—and happy that everybody else seems to be enjoying it.

(Does anybody know if this song was attached to a certain trend? I know that it’s vaguely trending, but I’m not sure how or why—I’ve just seen it with a few unrelated art videos…)

“Step On Me” is one of many lovely bites of pop on First Band on the Moon, and one of the best—certainly my favorite track on the album. Nina Persson casually just created the national anthem for people-pleasers with this one—a song about dodging your own needs, letting people walk (sorry, step) all over you: “go on and step on me,” even as the object of the song stands on her left foot and breaks it. With a crunching, muted intro that continues to punctuate the end of every chorus, everything about this song is proof that The Cardigans. got the recipe for a good pop song down to a science back in the 90’s—Nina Persson’s deceptively delicate, ringing voice, no shortage of hooks and catchy lyrics, and radio friendliness without over-simplicity. Every time the scratchy, muted intro comes on shuffle, I can’t help but drop everything and turn up the volume. Like I said—The Cardigans had pop music down to a science. No wonder they’re trending again. If you can make a Black Sabbath cover sound dainty (MULTIPLE TIMES), you can pretty much do anything.

“New York City Cops” – The Strokes

Like Jack White, Julian Casablancas is just one of those musicians who I really want to hate, but then I hear songs like this that are just so undeniably catchy that I just can’t hate him all the way. That being said, the thought of him still makes me want to roll my eyes all the way back in my head, mainly because of flashbacks of him taking over Sirius XMU and saying something along the lines of “now, this next song is from a 60’s punk band from Peru…oh, you don’t know them?” I really wish I was kidding.

Even though the beginning feels a little manufactured to me (the staged-feeling quality of Casablancas screaming, then going back on it: “ahahaha………didn’t mean that at all 🫦”…oh, please), the rest of the song is a masterfully tight piece of post-punk (oh, post-punk revival…okay, fine). It’s delightfully uptight—it all feels boxed in a cramped room, but it takes the confines of that room runs with it, never once loses momentum after the first drumbeat. The rough edges of Casablancas’ voice contrast perfectly with each scratchy guitar chord, a constant buffet of sound that never loses its sandpapery texture. I mean that as a compliment—it’s not a grating sandpaper, but more of the hard-edge, punk sandpaper that makes The Strokes sound the way they do. And although this song was subject to some abysmally bad timing in the U.S. (the song was initially removed from the U.S. release because the album was released so close to 9/11—the chorus of “New York City cops/but they ain’t too smart” was, understandably, a massive no-no so close to such a tragedy, even if it was completely unintentional), I’m glad “New York City Cops” ended up seeing the light of day a significant amount of time after the fact.

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 4/16/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

Casually just started coughing up a lung for a week, but at least the sun’s out for the first time in about 3 months, so a win is a win in my book. It would be nice to be able to sleep without waking myself up from said coughing, but maybe if I just listen to the record another time through…hmm…

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 4/16/23

“Hammer Horror” – Kate Bush

Oh, the beauty of unflattering YouTube thumbnails.

I always feel guilty for not liking Kate Bush as much. She’s clearly been such a groundbreaking artistic genius for most (if not all) of her career, and she’s an undeniably incredible storyteller as well. But music taste is music taste, and everybody’s got a different one.

I used to think that Kate Bush was generally just hit or miss for me, but as I’ve started to listen to more of her work, I think the root of it is that I’m just more into earlier Kate Bush. I haven’t pinned down a rhyme or reason, really—I haven’t listened to The Kick Inside or Lionheart yet—but they’re really just so fun. There’s an infectious, early-70’s-inspired undercurrent that runs through all of them, combined with high drama that only a 19-year-old Kate Bush could produce. Take “Hammer Horror,” which combines an operatic, orchestral element in the first 30 or so seconds, but slips into a Hunky Dory-like groove, punctuated by lightning strikes of bright guitar—man, I miss how guitars sounded in the 70’s. It’s pure theatre—and even though I’ve never claimed to be a theatre kid, there’s something about the way that she leans fully into all of the clawing-at-the-camera drama that makes it all the more fun to listen to…if you just forget the music videos of that whole period. (*coughcough “Them Heavy People” coughcoughcough*)

*cough*

can somebody pass the Dayquil? seems I’ve got some—*C O U G H*

“Satanist” – boygenius

Worry not: the Boygenius Breakdown is far from over. I’ll spare you from the rest of it after this week for the sake of adhering to my self-imposed color schemes, but behind the facade, I’m still curled up in the fetal position listening to “We’re In Love.”

Penned by Julien Baker and sectioned off for each of the powerhouse members of boygenius to shine, “Satanist” was an instant hit for me from the record after the singles had been released. Backed by steady guitars, this song stands as a fun, cheeky dare about pushing the limits friendship—”will you be a Satanist with me?/Mortgage off your soul to buy your dream/Vacation home in Florida.” It all feels like a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun, but with boygenius’ strong connection and shared friendship, there’s an intangible, genuine feel to it, as if the song could’ve stemmed from a genuine question. (Again: “Were In Love” feels like its lyrical twin, in that sense. Lots of callbacks and intertwining on this album.) But at its culmination, when Phoebe Bridgers’ sharp-edged scream fades into a hazy, sunset background, the music suddenly sinks underwater, all three of their voices seeming to fade under the waves in a haunting, enchanting conclusion. I can almost imagine that, with the image of the record, that the end of this song is their hands reaching up from the ocean—”you hang on/until it drags you under.”

“Amoeba” – Clairo

“[Clairo’s] a lebsian” was an easy sell from my brother’s girlfriend for this song before I could actually hear it playing, but it was a worthwhile sell beyond that. Most of what I know of Clairo comes from snippets of some of her viral songs and Lindsey Jordan (a.k.a. Snail Mail) making the crowd sing “happy birthday” to her over FaceTime during one of her shows, but I’m glad that I’ve been exposed to this song. It flows effortlessly, easily: never does it feel the need to elevate itself or explode entirely, and its gentle existence is what continues to endear me. The vocals scream 2010’s, but some of the instrumentals feel like they traveled in a time capsule from the 70’s—quiet as they are, the funky keyboard licks and bassline make me sway in my seat every time. Everything in this song is understated, but that’s its hidden power—if everything is quiet, no part can overpower another, making for a seemingly perfect melding of each element. I don’t know how much of that is Claire Cottrill and how much is Jack Antonoff (who my feeling are still divided on—he produced the betrayal that was MASSEDUCTION and then the masterpiece that was Daddy’s Home right after…?), but whatever the case, it’s a lovely, gentle pop song.

“Worrywort” – Radiohead

This song might as well be an endangered species. A hopeful Radiohead song? I almost don’t believe it…

I still have plenty of Radiohead’s discography left to trudge through, even after 4 years of them being second only to David Bowie for me, but the joy of that is that, for now, there’s always something new to discover. I’m just hoping that it’ll stay that way for longer—every cell in me is hoping that A Moon-Shaped Pool was their last project, but…hurgh, that’s a story for another day. Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood’s Fear Stalks the Land!: A Commonplace Book, a collection of lyrics, poetry, and art from the Kid A/Amnesiac era turned me onto this one, snugly tucked away on Knives Out – EP. Amidst…well, everything else that came from that period—a mass airing-out of early 2000’s paranoia and fear—”Worrywort” feels like the only light of hope that was produced at that time in Yorke’s life. Aside from how much I love the spelling of “Worrywort,” like it’s some sort of medicinal plant, there are so many delicate parts to this song, much like the tiny fibers inside of a leaf. All of the synths layered on top of each other feel like a visual representation of if you hooked up guitar pedals to plants and heard what tiny, thin sounds they made while photosynthesizing or spreading their roots. With that making up all of the instrumentations, Thom Yorke’s plaintive murmur stays shadowy, only resorting to his signature keening in tiny parts of the background. And as I said before, it’s one of the only Radiohead songs that I can think of that seems, at least on the surface, to feel lyrically optimistic (no pun intended); “There’s no use dwelling on/What might have been/Just think of all the fun/You could be having.” What? Who are you, and what have you done with Thom Yorke? Not that I’m complaining. Glad he was at least fleetingly cheery for a brief moment sometime in 2001.

Against the backdrop of…well, everything else that Radiohead has put out there, lyrics like these almost feel like a ruse, like there’s some sly, cynical commentary hidden in there. But there really doesn’t seem to be—if anything, it feels like Yorke confronting his own demons, a battle between the voice of depression and the reassurance that he’s trying to bring to the surface. But either way, it’s strangely comforting—there’s something of a beautiful mantra in the song’s outro: a repetition of “it’s such a beautiful day.” Sure is.

“Bath County” – Wednesday

Nothing heals the soul quite like an excess of crunchy guitars.

Getting through my album list is proving to be a Herculean (but still enriching) task, so who knows if or when I’ll end up listening to Wednesday’s new album, Rat Saw God, but I’ve heard it’s been getting good reviews? Pitchfork, like Rotten Tomatoes, is always something I take with a grain of salt (JUSTICE FOR DADDY’S HOME), but an 8.8 from them is still pretty impressive. Laced with urban legends, Southern heat, and abandoned houses, the atmosphere of “Bath County” shines through, pioneered by Karly Hartzman’s mercurial voice—capable of being all at once smooth and soothing, but cracking and abrasive at other times. The guitars are an extension, screaming when the time is right (and even when it isn’t), making the whole song feel like watching a bonfire tower into the sky. I’ve seen Wednesday be compared to everything from grunge (makes sense) to shoegaze (…nah, I don’t see it), but either way, from my limited experience with the band, they’re very 90’s—but still very them.

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s songs.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Uncategorized

Sunday Songs: 4/9/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles, and happy Easter for those celebrating! 🐣

I’m still riding the boygenius high, and I will most certainly be riding it for much longer (that is a threat), but I promise I’m listening to a few more songs…maybe…

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 4/9/23

“Cool About It” – boygenius

Never in a million years would I have predicted having a song with banjo in it constantly on repeat, but life is full of surprises. All the better if said songs are delivered by the likes of boygenius.

I’ll surely be raving about boygenius’ recently released full-length debut the record for the next month, but this song, after their first four singles, is taking center stage in my head constantly. With a melody inspired by Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” and sparse, gentle instrumentation that lets each member of the supergroup bathe in the spotlight, it’s a quiet, introspective highlight. Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, and Phoebe Bridgers take turns reflecting on the mixed emotions of painful, strained reunions with exes and old friends, hidden lyrics shine through in not-so-hidden lyricism—”I can walk you home and practice method acting/I’ll pretend that being with you doesn’t feel like drowning,” in Bridger’s final words. boygenius have let their joint talents meld together in a handful of different structures, but somehow, this neat, boxed-in sections where one singer takes the lead per verse make for a song that truly feels like all of them. And as gently as bubbling water in a creek, their harmonies rise as one for each chorus—my heart can’t help but leap a little when each of them harmonize to the final line of each verse: “even though we know it isn’t true…”

[fanning face] The power they have, I swear…

“You & I” – Graham Coxon

I’ve been meaning to get more into Graham Coxon’s solo work ever since my 2021 Blur frenzy, and through the nuggets of song titles that I seem to remember completely at random, I’m getting more and more excited about it. The only song of his that I know that isn’t a cover or from the soundtrack of The End of the F***ing World (which I still need to watch…), it’s an unadulterated dose of tight, anxious Britpop straight to the veins; even without Blur and all of the detriments that came with its fame, it’s clear that this is the kind of music that Coxon was meant to play. And he plays it well. Each punchy chord feels laid out on a precise grid, and from what I can gather about him, it seems like something he would do. “You & I” is a distinctly polished song—not in the way that an over-produced, Top 40 hit is, but polished in the way that every edge has been meticulously sanded down to perfection, not a note out of line. These nervous, uptight white guys know their stuff sometimes…

“Everybody Wants To Love You” – Japanese Breakfast

I’ve gotten bits and pieces of Japanese Breakfast over the years—I remember being in the car all the way back in middle school and hearing a piece of NPR about her debut album, Psychopomp, and being interested, but I don’t think I ever got around to listening to it then. With all the buzz around Jubilee and her acclaimed novel Crying in H-Mart, I figured I might get around to giving Michelle Zauner and company a listen. Like “You & I,” I remembered the title of this song at random, and I’m so glad I did!

“Everybody Wants To Love You” feels like the 2010’s, indie rock answer to a poppy love song of the 50’s or the 60’s. Everything about it feels cheery—the bright, practically glittering guitar tones, the sharp pep of Zauner’s voice, and the starry synths that seem to leave sparkling trails over every second of the song. Add a wonderfully catchy guitar riff and package it into the pop-standard 2 and a half minutes, and you’ve got something that feels like it could come out of any era. Well…maybe not any era—some of those lyrics definitely would not have flown in the mainstream before the 60’s, but that’s not the point. It’s just 2 and a half minutes of joy, purely and simply.

“A Quiet Life” – Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld

Over break, I went through the first season of Netflix’s Dark with my family, and ever since, I’ve ripped a solid half of the songs from that show and slapped them haphazardly into my music taste. Seems like that’s largely the case for a lot of the commenters on this video too (all of the Dark references have passed the vibe check with absolutely flying colors), and, among other things, Dark reminds me how good it feels to be so invested in every part of a show—not just the story itself, but every little detail that goes into it. Like the music.

I won’t go into how perfectly this song melds with the overall themes and the last episode of season 1 of Dark for fear of spoiling something so wonderfully intricate, but it’s chilling on its own as well. Blixa Bargeld boasts such a rich voice—it reminds me a lot of Jarvis Cocker, with that same rasp at the edges of the resonance you can feel in your chest. Just like Dark’s absolutely disturbing score, Bargeld’s vocals seem to buzz in moments, turning from something human into the hum of putting your ear next to a beehive. There’s a deeply poetic feel to everything in this song’s atmosphere, with the orchestral composition forming in the background and the gloom that seems to settle over every note like fog. It creeps along like frost, painted in the same grays as the album cover. What I’m trying to say here is this: whoever was in charge of the music direction for Dark—I SALUTE YOU. BLESS YOU.

“Demi Moore” – Phoebe Bridgers

Phoebe Bridgers is a distinctly 2020 artist in my musical canon. I first listened to Stranger in the Alps in the early months, before everything went…y’know, and Punisher came out that summer. But unlike Punisher, an album that’s a no-skip for me to this day, some of the songs on Stranger in the Alps didn’t do it for me on the first few listens. It’s understandable—Stranger was her debut, and with Punisher, she had more time to hone her craft and sound. But I’ve recently come back to some of those songs that I didn’t warm up to the first time; some of them still don’t impress me, but “Demi Moore,” along with the harrowing “Killer,” took a while to grow on me.

With a title borne from a misheard lyric (“I don’t wanna be stoned anymore” became “stone Demi Moore,” this song, like many of her others, lingers in the hazy, middle-of-the night lairs of vulnerability. Especially on Stranger, the instrumentals often take a backseat to Bridgers’ singing, letting the emotional side speak for itself amidst quiet synths that flicker like satellites in the night sky. Phoebe Bridgers’ voice floats along like misty fog over a creek, all at once thin and full of emotion.

And again—normally I can’t stand banjos, but these somehow work because of how…quiet they are? Sorry for the banjo slander here, but…I can’t help it, I’m sorry. I was forced to learn in 7th grade for school, but I didn’t enjoy much of it, save for trying to pluck out a rendition of “It’s A Wonderful Life” from memory. I’ll begrudgingly admit that it did help me get a bit of head start on playing guitar, but I still have a vendetta with the instrument. I digress.

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!