langhorne slim

Playlist #244: End of Year Wrap-Up

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Happy last Monday of 2025, folks! It’s been a helluva year, I think we can all agree, and I’ll be glad to see the back of it. But there were a lot of songs I listened to pretty much on repeat this year, such as the following:

  1. The Wallflowers, “It’s a Dream”: I love the rhythm of this song and the interior rhymes Jakob Dylan throws into it. And that’s a great chorus, too.
  2. Lord Huron, “Meet Me In The Woods”: I apparently have listened to this song about 50 times this year, and I only first hear the album in…August? September? Geez.
  3. Langhorne Slim, “House Of My Soul (You Light The Rooms)”: This song lights to rooms in the house of my soul.
  4. Matt Berninger, “Little By Little”: I loved this album and I love this song. It just has such great momentum and a catchy melody that I can’t stop humming to myself.
  5. Bob Dylan, “Red River Shore”: Why does this song feel more like a relic of a past century than something Dylan penned in 1997? And yes, I realize 1997 was last century, but you know what I mean. This feels like a song that has always existed, not one Dylan conjured from the aether while working on Time Out of Mind.
  6. Mon Rovia, “Heavy Foot”: It’s a simple political song masquerading as a stomp-clap-hey song.
  7. Chris Smither, “Origin Of Species”: Satirical look at the ascent of man through a warm, folky groove.
  8. Glen Phillips, “Go”: Just one of the most affecting songs I’ve heard in recent years. It’s beautiful and haunting and moving.
  9. Bob Dylan, “Boots Of Spanish Leather”: One of the saddest early Dylan songs, if you ask me. There’s no bitterness in it; the bitterness came later, I think. There’s just a resigned sadness in it.
  10. Hurray For The Riff Raff, “Snake Plant (The Past Is Alive)”: It’s amazing what you can do with just two chords.

Playlist #225: Back to School Edition

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Happy Monday, folks! And welcome back to school, students. That’s right, the school year has officially begun in Northern Virginia, marking my 21st year as a teacher. Yup, my career will be old enough to drink this year. That’s terrifying. Let’s get to the playlist.

  1. The Calling, “Let The Day Begin”: As I’ve said in the past, this song is intimately linked in my mind with the start of the school day. It played on the classic rock station every morning right around the time I was headed to school, so it’s kinda irrevocably linked forever to me.
  2. Langhorne Slim, “The House of My Soul (You Light the Room)”: Love playing this song. It’s such a simple chord progression that he manages to squeeze a lot of energy and emotion out of.
  3. Radiohead, “Go To Sleep (Live)”: Live Radiohead is always a fun time, because I’m left wondering how they managed to get the song that appeared on the album (with all its blips and squiggles and beeps) to sound so good live.
  4. Golden Earring, “Twilight Zone”: Man, after spending several weeks not working, being back in the classroom feels more than a little like the Twilight Zone.
  5. The Beatles, “Yer Blues”: So John says, “If I ain’t dead already/Well, you know the reason why,” but do we? Do we really know the reason why, John? Because I don’t think we do.
  6. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Casa Dega”: Hearsay and secondhand information lead to heartbreak. Or Heartbreakers.
  7. Pink Floyd, “Pigs (Three Different Ones)”: The repeated “ha-ha, charade you are” line kills me every time. The very British pronunciation of charade (“sha-raad”) makes me giggle.
  8. Elliott Smith, “Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands”: Man, I haven’t listened to Elliott Smith in a while. I think fall is the best time to listen to him, and a revisiting of his discography is imminent.
  9. The Lemonheads, “Into Your Arms”: There are a few ’90s songs that are just there for that killer chorus (this one, the La’s “There She Goes,” REM’s “The One I Love,” Deep Blue Something’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”). Someday I’mma put together that playlist.
  10. Gin Blossoms, “Hey Jealousy”: Speaking of great ’90s songs…

Playlist #172

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday! We’re back in the school this morning, doing teacher in-service this week and we’ll have students next Monday. This will be my twentieth year of teaching. No, I’m not sure how I’ve been in it this long. Here’s some music.

  1. Jay-Z, “Public Service Announcement”: Didn’t expect me to put a Jay-Z song on here, did you? Hmm? Well, I did, so there! The fact that it features heavily in a commercial I’ve seen a few dozen times in the past two weeks has very little to do with it, honest.
  2. Langhorne Slim, “House of My Soul (You Light the Rooms)”: It’s just a damn fun sing-along song, y’know?
  3. Spoon, “New York Kiss”: They just released a deluxe version of this album with lots of demos, so you know I’m down for that.
  4. Paul McCartney/Wings, “Junior’s Farm”: From the One Hand Clapping collection that was recently released. Pretty good.
  5. Hank Williams, “Move It On Over”: I first heard this song back in the ’80s with the George Thorogood cover. This version is…much better.
  6. The Offspring, “Self Esteem”: La la, la la la, la la, la la.
  7. Old Crow Medicine Show, “Alabama High Test”: I could use a little of this this morning, whether it’s alcohol or meth. Either way, it’d make the faculty meetings more fun.
  8. Old 97s, “Streets of Where I’m From”: “I’ve been down, I’ve been down too far to care/I keep getting in my car, but I’m not going anywhere” is a great bit, and it does the thing where they say the name of the album in the song.
  9. Owen Danoff, “Never Been Kissed”: I just threw this one in here because I needed ten songs, not nine. It’s good, I just don’t have anything to say about it.
  10. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, “Shake Your Money Maker”: I need some Chicago blues today. We all do, I think. So here’s some.