bryan andrews

Playlist #271

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday, folks! It’s beach week – we’re heading down to Crystal Beach, TX, to meet up with my family and hang out in a beach house for a few days. But that’s not until Thursday. Monday through Wednesday is still teaching small children how to create and edit videos, and right now it’s time for a playlist!

  1. Bryan Andrews, “Backwoods Backwards”: I kept seeing this song in particular pop up in reels on Facebook for the better part of a week, and damn if it’s not a banger. Dude’s trying to reclaim outlaw country from…well, whatever the hell country music as turned in to. Bootlicking, mostly.
  2. Phoebe Bridgers, “Motion Sickness”: “Emotional motion sickness” is such a good turn of phrase that it almost makes me sick that I wasn’t the one who wrote it.
  3. Matchbox 20, “Mad Season”: There’s just something about these ’90s alt-rockers that I keep coming back to time and again.
  4. Josh Ritter, “Getting Ready To Get Down”: When you discover that you’re probably a lesbian and your parents decide to send you to a Bible college
  5. The Mountain Goats, “Training Montage”: I honestly wish this was the song that played during the training montage in Rocky IV rather than whatever Survivor song they played instead.
  6. The National, “Wake Up Your Saints”: I always love the horn section in this song. I should use more horn sections in my own music.
  7. Dan Auerbach, “Trouble Weighs A Ton”: A part of me will alwayw love songs that are just a vocal and an acoustic guitar.
  8. Sting, “Fragile”: The emotion in this song always gets to me. It’s so sad and forlorn and somber and I really just want to sit and cry when I listen to it.
  9. Golden Smog, “V”: This song, on the other hand, is so uptempo that it’s hard not to sing along when it comes on. God bless Golden Smog.
  10. Van Morrison, “Wonderful Remark”: I learned this one on the guitar a few years ago. Easy song to play, and really great to sing.

Playlist #270

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday, folks! It’s the Fourth of July this weekend! I started the summer job late last week, and man is it strange. I’ve never even seen Roblox, let alone played it, but I still had to walk a bunch of small kids through how to create various games using the platform. It was…interesting. Not something I’m going to take up in my spare time, mind, but interesting. Here’s a playlist.

  1. Whitney Houston, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)”: I’m not usually one for ’80s R&B, but this song hits something deep and primal in my brain and doesn’t let go. It’s great.
  2. Bryan Andrews, “Yeehaw”: Remember when country music was anti-establishment and outlaw? Bryan Andrews remembers. He’s carrying on the tradition of guys like Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson, and Willie Nelson. He’s Johnny Cash flipping off the camera.
  3. Nanseera, “Seattle”: She’s from Uganda, but she spent a long time traveling across the United States and wrote a whole album about it. It’s pretty great.
  4. The National, “Sorrow”: Remember when they performed this song for a full six hours straight? Man, that was awesome. I could listen to it for six hours straight no problem.
  5. Paul McCartney, “Hope of Deliverance”: I feel like there’s at least one great song on every McCartney album, and this song is absolutely fantastic.
  6. Feist & Ben Gibbard, “Train Song”: A downbeat, somber song ostensibly about trains? Y’know, sometimes I don’t pay close attention to the lyrics or what a song’s theme actually is, but I still really dig the song. This is one of those instances.
  7. Rufus Wainwright, “Going To A Town”: I love this song. The rhythm of it, the piano, the way Rufus sings it…it’s just a perfect song, are there are too few of those in the world.
  8. Procol Harum, “A Whiter Shade Of Pale”: Speaking of perfect songs, I think this might be one, too. That organ just gets me every time.
  9. The Dave Clark Five, “Bits And Pieces”: How many other bands are named after the drummer? I mean, other than whatever Ringo does these days.
  10. Calexico, “Sunken Waltz”: I love the guitar riff at the beginning of this song. The whole song is great, really.