haim

Playlist #219

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Happy Monday, folks! The ridiculously high temperatures outside persist, but so do I! I kinda have to, since I don’t think I’m allowed to die anytime in the next thirty or so years. Anyway, here’s a playlist.

  1. Rise Against, “Give It All”: How would I describe this one? Emo? Pop-punk? Alternative? I dunno. It’s just a good song, man. We don’t always have to fit everything into these tiny prescriptive boxes.
  2. 10,000 Maniacs, “Trouble Me”: I go through phases where I want my music to sound like someone else’s. Right now, I want my music to sound like 10,000 Maniacs. There are definitely worse sounds.
  3. Noah Kahan & Hozier, “Northern Attitude”: We get it, things in the northern part of the US are darker and colder and sadder and all that. Just move to Phoenix and get on with things, guys.
  4. Mark Knopfler, “Prairie Wedding”: I love the guitar line in this song, and it’s just such a simple, beautiful song about the power of Mark Knopfler’s letter-writing skills. How else did he convince a woman to move to the barren west and marry him?
  5. Gorillaz, “Some Kind of Nature (Featuring Lou Reed)”: Gotta love a song that uses Lou Reed’s raspy talking as a selling point.
  6. The Gaslight Anthem, “Biloxi Parish”: There’s something nostalgic and sad underlying this song, which is something you could say about a great number of the Gaslight Anthem’s songs.
  7. HAIM, “Now It’s Time”: It uses U2’s “Numb” as a basis, but goes in a totally different direction. Pretty neat.
  8. Murder By Death, “Believe”: Great band, weird name. Not a death metal band, as you may be thinking. Folky alternative.
  9. The Offspring, “Self Esteem”: The sneering “na-na”s in this song are just great.
  10. Enya, “Orinoco Flow”: Apparently she came up with this song after her A&R guy said, “I don’t hear a single.” Enya said, “Oh yeah? Bet,” and came back a couple weeks later with this song. She is now living the dream, only recording when she feels like it, rarely touring, and just hanging out in her freakin’ castle with her cats. We should all be so lucky.

Playlist #130

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Happy Monday, folk! This is moving week, the week where all of my sanity leaves my body in a sudden rush and I wake up on Friday, hopefully in a new place with all of my stuff there. If not, well, I know how to cry.

  1. Paul McCartney, “Brown Eyed Handsome Man”: I tell myself this one is about me. I’m not 100% convinced I’m wrong. My wife thinks I’m handsome, at any rate.
  2. HAIM, “The Wire”: I have heard exactly three (3) songs by this band in my whole life, and I’ve like all three of them. This one cops the drum rhythm from the Eagles’ “Heartache Tonight,” which is actually pretty dope.
  3. The Gaslight Anthem, “Our Father’s Sons”: It’s not a finished song. Bits and pieces of it end up in other songs off The ’59 Sound album. But the lyrics are fairly unique to this particular version, and I like those.
  4. Joe Cocker, “The Letter”: Oh, so a fast train ain’t good enough for ya, Joe? You gotta get on an aeroplane instead? I mean, I guess it makes sense, at least here in the States where high-speed rail just isn’t a thing. But if you were in Japan, you’d be rethinking that train.
  5. Amanda Shires, “Pale Fire”: I keep coming back to this song every few months. I love it. There’s a simplicity and honesty to it that I really appreciate and tend to look for in music.
  6. Patti Smith, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”: If you’d told me there’d be a version of this song that features stand-up bass and a banjo and that I’d love this particular version of the song, I’d…probably have believed you, that sounds right up my alley.
  7. The Beatles, “Two Of Us”: “On our way back home.” Yeah, this one is a stealth moving song!
  8. Muddy Waters, “Goin’ Home”: If it’s good enough for Muddy, it’s good enough for me.
  9. Moxy Fruvous, “Boo Time”: I will never, until the day I die, truly understand or maybe even be able to appreciate this band’s bizarre name, but I can get behind some of their stranger songs like this one. What the hell is “Boo Time,” anyway? Is this a Halloween song? Or is it the time when you cuddle up close to your boo? I honestly don’t know, and it keeps me up some nights.
  10. Electric Light Orchestra, “Roll Over Beethoven”: The pinnacle of early ELO. I will not be taking comments about it at this time, or ever.

Playlist #77

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Happy Monday! Today brings with it ten fresh, exciting songs in the form of today’s playlist!

  1. Queen, “Face It Alone”: A “new” Queen song with previously-unreleased Freddie Mercury vocals? Count me in.
  2. HAIM, “Now I’m Into It”: Heard it in She-Hulk this weekend. Dig it.
  3. The Rolling Stones, “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)”: How ballsy do you have to be to name a song “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo?” That’s not a song title (or a chorus), that’s the filler my father sings when he can’t remember the lyrics to the song.
  4. Langhorn Slim & the Law, “Put It Together”: I love the piano in this one. I wish I could play like that.
  5. M. Ward, “One Hundred Million Years”: “And this love, this love between you and I/Is older than that burning ball of fire up in the sky.”
  6. Pearl Jam, “Spin The Black Circle”: Sometimes, you just have to put on a loud, angry song, crank up the volume, and headbang. I do still have enough hair to headbang, right?
  7. The Wallflowers, “Some Flowers Bloom Dead”: And sometimes you need some rootsy rock and roll.
  8. Wilco, “Tried And True”: And sometimes you need to feel like you’re tripping out on shrooms while listening to the Beach Boys.
  9. Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”: “There is a crack, a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.”
  10. The National, “Fake Empire”: I’ve been reading a book about the making of the album this song is from, Boxer, and I really just want to sit and listen to the record on repeat.