Sorry for the delay and the short issue—finals season! Catch you next week.
You didn’t miss anything—check out 623 when this is over, 624 in the end, 625 mystery of life, 626 talking you away, 627 haven. 628 room for us, 629 inside my head, 630 i still know you, 631 faultline, and 632 now you’re everywhere.
I won’t lie, this playlist was inspired by a tweet:
Whoever this person is, whatever they’re going through, I relate. “Twenty Dried Chilies” makes me feel like I’m driving in the midwest, a long straight road bifurcating a field of tall grass that rises up on either side, picture book clouds up in the big blue sky. Specific, yes, but also consistent.
Songs that inspire such visceral, sensory reactions are special. “Casimir Pulaski Day” (green grass, swing sets, cotton shorts with drawstrings) comes to mind, as well as “This Tornado Loves You” (spinning until you’re dizzy, the smell of rain on pavement). The scenes described by the lyrics are important, but there is another layer of meaning baked into the feeling of the sound, the way that it sits on the brain. The vibe—I use this word here in the least reductive way possible; all hail the mighty vibe—is incredibly cohesive. Every detail, if it were a vector, points in the same direction.
It is a cruel sensation, remembering I am human
And I'm prone to accidents of heart
Maya Bon, who releases music under the moniker Babehoven, has said that she takes inspiration for Sunk (2022) from Elliott Smith’s Either/Or (1997). Its influence is palpable in the haunting tones of the acoustic guitars and the way that she sings, as if she is deeply tired but also has something important to say. I believe that this song—and the whole EP—is about grief, but I can’t be sure. It seems not to matter; the song exists for itself and asks nothing of the listener.
I recently saw Tomberlin play an intimate show in San Francisco. The crowd did the second vocal part in “Sin” and she was so happy she almost cried. If you think of emotion on a linear scale, it’s hard to imagine that expression of deep joy giving rise to something so sad as her latest album, i don’t know who needs to hear this… (2022):
Left you alone, or I did my best
Not to water a garden that didn't want to live
I think it’s more likely that the intensity of our feelings can go any which way; there are moments of something really pure and whole on the album, as well as lines of self-aware self-destructive thinking, a la “Moon Song,” my favorite example of a genre that might be aptly titled “Letting Someone Make You Miserable.”
When I saw Pinegrove recently, the lead singer said something to the crowd about “Angelina” being the song that everyone knows is their best even though no one is quite sure why, including the band. There are very few words in this song, but each one strikes a nerve:
How'd you get so tangled up in my life?
How'd you get so caught?
I think of myself as a very lyric-forward person; as a songwriter I find that they stand out to me starkly as very integral parts of a musical experience. That being said, I’m noticing more and more that I’m moved by sounds where I’m touched by words. “Angelina” is a song that is good for reasons that cannot quite be distilled to its poignant thesis, despite its efficacy. It’s not even two minutes long, and still it seems to hold a world inside it. That’s where I’m living today.