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Playlist #255

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Happy Monday, folks! We’ve got a three-hour early release due to a Death Storm headed our way this afternoon. How about some tunes to get us through the tornados?

  1. Bedouine, Hurray for the Riff Raff, and Waxahatchee, “Thirteen”: I swear, I think I have more covers of this song than just about any other. There’s something about it that just attracts musicians to it like honey. It is a fabulous song, mind, and every version I’ve ever heard of it is just different enough from each other and the original to be worth listening to. I guess Big Star is the Velvet Underground of power pop.
  2. Bruce Springsteen, “A Rainy Night In Soho”: A Pogues cover that makes Bruce Springsteen sound like Tom Waits. I can dig that.
  3. The Gray Charlies, “Nothing Matters”: Alright, lemme brag on my brother for a minute: Clyde has put together an EP of songs that are phenomenally crafted and expertly recorded. They sound remarkable. I wrote the lyrics for all of them, but don’t hold that against the band. This is the first single, available now, and I recommend you go give it a listen. It’s gorgeous!
  4. Gordon Lightfoot, “Sundown”: Canadian crooner compels compatriots to cease convening conveniently close to his casa.
  5. Lord Huron, “The Night We Met”: Apparently the song the band is most famous for, thanks to its inclusion in some teen drama on CW or something. I dunno, it’s a great song off a great album.
  6. Neko Case, “This Tornado Loves You”: Someone was asking me about the difference between a Tornado Watch and a Tornado Warning this morning, as we’ll be under at least one of those this afternoon. A Watch is when conditions are suited to the formation of a tornado, and a Warning is when tornados are imminent or possibly already making touchdown nearby. In either case, listen for the sirens and get someplace safe if you hear ’em.
  7. Jimi Hendrix, “The Wind Cries Mary”: There’s a chance of high winds even without tornados this afternoon, though I hear they’ve been downgraded from “hurricane-strength” to merely “Oklahoma breeze.”
  8. Tom Waits, “A Little Rain”: This was the sort of Tom Waits song I was talking about above when I was talking about that Bruce Springsteen song. It’s great.
  9. Calexico, “Not Even Stevie Nicks”: Man, not even Stevie Nicks? Not even her? Not even with all the scarves and diaphanous pieces of fabric draped across everything? Fuck.
  10. Stabbing Westward, “Violent Mood Swings”: If this doesn’t get your blood pumping, please check that you still have a pulse.

Playlist #254

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Happy Monday, folks. The weather outside is warming up, so it seems winter is now behind us. I know lots of folks are happy about that, but personally I could’ve done with another few weeks of colder weather. Here’s a playlist.

  1. Iron & Wine and Ben Bridwell, “This Must Be The Place”: I discovered only this weekend that this is a Talking Heads cover. It feels so thoroughly Iron & Wine coded that it took me a second to believe it.
  2. Hurray for the Riff Raff, “Black Jack Davey”: Hearing this band as a folky delta blues thing is kind of a trip. They do a good take on this traditional tune.
  3. Matt Berninger & Roseanne Cash, “Who Loves The Sun”: Who doesn’t love a Velvet Underground cover? It’s exactly what you think a Matt Berninger covering Lou Reed song would sound like, and that’s not a bad thing.
  4. The Head and the Heart, “Time With My Sins (Ghost No. 1)”: I kinda like the short album this song is from. It’s primarily acoustic guitar and singing, with lots of the harmonies the band is known for, but it doesn’t feel spare or sparse or “folky.” It just feels right.
  5. Jesse Malin, “You Can Make Them Like You”: I guess this week is just a little heavy on covers, ’cause this is a great Hold Steady cover that he usually closes shows with.
  6. Cyndi Lauper, “Time After Time”: I’m not really sure how or when or why it happened, but I’ve really kinda come to love Cyndi Lauper. The woman wrote some amazing songs, including and especially this one. I heard her perform a solo version of this once on the dulcimer, which I wasn’t aware (1) she could play or (2) was still an instrument that anyone could play. It was incredible.
  7. Lake Street Dive, “Bad Self Portraits”: I know this song is pretty far removed from the sound the band has nowadays, but I still love it and I think opening their debut album with it was a smart move.
  8. Neko Case, “Hold On, Hold On”: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood turned twenty a few days ago? Well, I’ll just go ahead and crumble into dust now, if y’all don’t mind. This song still sounds as fresh and vital as it did the day it came out.
  9. Brian Fallon, “Forget Me Not”: It just seems right to me that Brian Fallon screams out the name “Stacy” every time in this song. It fits. I love it.
  10. Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, “Battle of New Orleans”: It’s a three-chord celebration of Andrew Jackson’s glorious victory over the British in (technically after) the War of 1812. Another cover, if you can believe it.

Playlist #243: Holiday Playlist

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Happy Monday, folks! It’s the week of Christmas, so here’s a playlist full of some of my favorite Christmas songs.

  1. Darlene Love, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”: Just the absolute best Christmas song ever. You can keep your Wham! and your Mariah Carey, just leave me Darlene Love.
  2. She & Him, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”: This song seems like it was tailor-made for this band. Zoey Deschanel just has a lovely voice made for this kind of song.
  3. The Eagles, “Please Come Home For Christmas”: The guitar work in this song always gets to me. It’s very well-done and Don Henley sounds particularly impassioned.
  4. The Royal Guardsmen, “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron”: Is it technically a Christmas song? Not really. Is Christmas the only time I listen to it because it was on a tape of Christmas songs we listened to constantly when I was a kid? Yes.
  5. Elvis Presley, “Blue Christmas”: I’m not much of an Elvis fan, but I really dig this song. It’s just fun.
  6. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Christmas All Over Again”: Speaking of fun Christmas songs, of course Tom Petty turns in one for the books. It’s just a good time from start to finish.
  7. Neko Case, “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis”: “Charlie, I’m pregnant,” the song begins, and just gets worse and sadder from there. Neko doesn’t even try to sing it like Tom Waits, instead making it all her own and turning this into one of the absolute saddest Christmas songs I’ve ever heard.
  8. My Morning Jacket, “X-Mas Curtain”: Just what, exactly, is a Christmas Curtain? I imagine something involving snowmen and giant snowflakes and maybe a Santa Claus, but I honestly don’t know, and I’m not sure this song makes it any clearer.
  9. Andrew Bird, “So Much Wine, Merry Christmas”: I love playing this one on guitar, and have even halfway managed to play the solo for it. It’s lovely.
  10. The Pogues, “Fairytale of New York”: It’s a dreary picture of a dreary town in a dreary decade, but it feels hopeful despite all that. Kinda reminds me in a small way of the Mountain Goats’ “This Year,” with its defiant tone and resistance to the turning of the world.

Playlist #242: Top 10 Albums of 2025

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Happy Monday, folks! We’ve reached that point in the year when bands stop releasing new music and the music critic turns his weary, bleary eyes toward compiling top lists. Top 10 albums! Top 25 albums! Top 100 albums of the year! In all the genres and styles one can imagine. I’m just gonna do a top ten. It’s not that I couldn’t find enough for a longer list, but I already do ten-song playlists, so why not stick with that? In no particular order, my top ten for the year are:

  1. Matt Berninger, Get Sunk: Solo album from the National’s singer. As I commented back when I first featured a song off this album on a playlist, it seems to feature all the momentum and forward motion that’s been missing from the past couple of National albums. Virtually a no-skip album.
  2. Mavis Staples, Sad and Beautiful World: She’s been trending more toward minimalism in her work the past couple of albums, and I kinda like it. Puts her amazing voice front and center. Her song selection skills remain top-notch, too.
  3. Snocaps, Snocaps: Feels very off the cuff and done for fun, which I’m always a big fan of. I like it when it sounds like the musicians had fun recording the music. And the two sisters at the heart of this group know how to write some killer songs.
  4. Jeff Tweedy, Twilight Override: We get it Jeff, you’ve got lots of songs in you. A triple album, though? That just screams “I’m gonna one-up Ryan Adams at something not gross.” But the songs are pretty uniformly good, even if a few of them feel more like song sketches and ideas rather than full-fledged complete songs.
  5. Jason Isbell, Foxes in the Snow: I’m not gonna call it his divorce album or his Blood on the Tracks, but there is something stark and sharp and beautiful in this voice and acoustic only set that really sucker punches you in the best way.
  6. Neko Case, Neon Gray Midnight Green: Any new Neko Case music is a cause for celebration, and this particular album sticks with you long after it’s finished playing. Nothing as immediate or obviously gripped as “Hold On, Hold On” here, but it’s still a strong album filled with the sort of gorgeous vocals and left field approaches Case has come to be known for.
  7. The Mountain Goats, Through the Fire Across From Peter Balkan: Trippy, dreamy titles aside, John Darnielle has described this one as the closest he’s ever come to writing a musical, and it still isn’t a concept album telling a coherent story as far as I can tell, but the songs are beautiful and obtuse and demand that you sit with the record and really listen.
  8. Lord Huron, The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1: Atmospheric and folky, like Tom Petty mixing spaghetti westerns with ’50s pulp sci-fi.
  9. Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska ’82: As archival releases go, this one is pretty great. Getting a look at what could have been with Nebraska, one of my favorite Bruce albums, is a fascinating exercise. Hearing the so-called Electric Versions was pretty cool and does ultimately support the myth that the original solo demos were the superior versions and ought to just be released as-is. The more recent live recordings of all the songs seemed a little superfluous to me, but more Bruce is never really a bad thing.
  10. Bob Dylan, Through the Open Window (The Bootleg Series, Volume 18): Speaking of archival releases, the latest in the long-running Bootleg Series digs into the absolute earliest Dylan recordings we’ve ever heard, and while you can definitely hear who he would become in the voice and the guitar playing, it’s very protean. Primordial, you might say. But the man found his footing in Greenwich Village quite quickly, and hearing some alternate takes on some of his earliest compositions and covers was a fun diversion. Someday, I’ll have to dive into the complete version of this collection, as the only version available on Apple Music was the two-disc Highlights selections.

Playlist #232

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Happy Monday, folks. It’s SAT week here in Fairfax County, so I get to help administer that test this Wednesday. Joy. I love testing. These songs will hopefully carry me through the week.

  1. Taylor Swift, “Wood”: Yes, there’s a new Taylor Swift album out, and it’s all anyone is talking about. While I enjoy this song, it’s also rather amusing to me. Hearing Taylor sing double entendres is like hearing your middle schooler try out the word “fuck”: it’s mildly adorable to hear them trying, even though it sounds kinda cringey.
  2. Rhett Miller, “The El”: This could’ve come off an Old 97s album, honestly, but I can’t blame Rhett for keeping it for this solo record. It’s a bop.
  3. Neko Case, “Dirty Knife”: What is this song about? I have no idea, but there’s mention of the titular knife and a chorus (?) sung in, I think, Latin. It’s great.
  4. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “California”: I’m just a sucker for the She’s the One soundtrack, as we are all well aware by now.
  5. The Raconteurs, “Intimate Secretary”: This just always seemed like an extremely fun band to be a part of, like these guys really synched up well and were all on the same page. This song is a perfect example of that chemistry.
  6. Robert Plant, “Chevrolet”: Robert Plant still makes pretty compelling music. His latest feels even more in line with the stuff he’s been making with Allison Krauss, even though she’s not even involved with the project.
  7. Spoon, “Chateau Blues”: A Spoon song that does and does not sound like a Spoon song is quite an accomplishment, but it’s one they pull off here.
  8. Lord Huron, “Meet Me in the Woods”: Still rather obsessed with Strange Trails. Will not apologize for that.
  9. Pearl Jam, “Hail, Hail”: When you need a little pick me up first thing in the morning, put it on this song and crank the volume. You’re welcome.
  10. John Prine, “Souvenirs”: And when you need someone to make you wistful and nostalgic and maybe just a little bit angry at the past, you could do much worse than Prine.

Playlist #231

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Happy Monday, folks. A lot of new music came out last week that I really dug, and I’m still going through it and listening. But hey, the playlist waits for no man, except sometimes me when I forget that it’s Monday and I have to post one of these.

  1. Neko Case, “Winchester Mansion of Sound”: Case’s music continues to grow and shift; she’s never content to just coast by on what she’s done before. This is probably one of my favorites off the new album.
  2. Jeff Tweedy, “Cry Baby Cry”: Dude dropped a triple album on Friday. That’s wild. This is not, unfortunately, a cover of the Beatles song of the same name, but it is, fortunately, quite a good song anyway. The whole album is pretty good, honestly, though I feel like some of the lyrics could’ve used a second pass.
  3. Amanda Shires, “The Details”: I have never been divorced, as I’m sure most folks know. That being said, this song sounds like what I imagine divorce feels like, and it makes me uncomfortable and more than a little voyeuristic, like I’m listening in on a couple in the final throes of the inevitable end.
  4. David Gray, “Kathleen”: Sometime in the past few years, Draw the Line somehow became my favorite David Gray album, and this one of my favorite songs off that album. I can’t adequately explain the why of either of those, so instead I just accept them and continue grooving to the album and this song in particular.
  5. Bruce Springsteen, “Reason to Believe”: I always enjoy the work of Bruce the Storyteller. Here, it’s a series of vignettes with a common theme: at the end of a hard day, when the world wears you down and tells you to just give up, folks still find a reason to go on.
  6. Andrew Bird, “So Much Wine, Merry Christmas”: I learned the lead break from this song a few months ago, and it’s a great joy to play.
  7. Buckingham Nicks, “Frozen Love”: This album has finally appeared on streaming, so it’s okay that I left my copy in Oklahoma with my dad back in April.
  8. Doechii, “Anxiety”: It uses that one Gotye song (you know the one, he only did the one) as a basis for a very different tune.
  9. The Presidents of the United States of America, “Kick Out the Jams”: Who doesn’t love an MC5 cover? It’s suitably quick and jagged, and I kinda love it.
  10. Iron & Wine and Ben Bridwell, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”: Speaking of covers, here’s Iron & Wine and the dude from Band of Horses doing an U2 cover. It sounds exactly how you think that will sound.

Playlist #189

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Happy Monday! I survived being sick all last week (yesterday, I still didn’t have much of a voice, and every about fourth word was just a wheezy silence), missed going to what turned out to be a fun wedding up in New York, and actually caught up a bit on sleep? That last one can’t be right.

  1. Waxahatchee, “Crimes of the Heart”: Spent a good chunk of the weekend just listening to Waxahatchee’s Tigers Blood, and I really dig the almost primitive simplicity of the three chord structure she tends to use on her songs. Also, makes it really easy to play along!
  2. Hurray for the Riff Raff, “Buffalo”: I’m down for any song that seeks to examine, however tangentially, the Plains’ Indians’ hunting of the buffalo.
  3. Cassandra Jenkins, “Petco”: Can you find transcendence in the eyes of a lizard behind glass at a pet store? It’s more likely than you think thanks to drugsTM!
  4. Joel Adam Russell, “Knock the Boy Out of You”: A simple country song about toxic masculinity and calling out the asinine behavior of so-called “alpha males.”
  5. Tom Petty, “You Saw Me Comin'”: An unreleased Wildflowers outtake that is easily good enough to be on the album proper.
  6. Yo La Tengo, “Pass the Hatchett, I Think I’m Goodkind”: A mostly-instrumental tune with a great groove and a sinister vibe.
  7. Neko Case, “Dirty Knife”: Speaking of vibes, Neko Case remains brilliant at crafting them, and this song is a great example.
  8. Hank Williams III, “Atlantic City”: Trying real hard to outdo grandpa’s wild ways, Hank III takes a rip-roaring turn through Springsteen’s song about need and hunger.
  9. Linda Ronstadt, “Silver Threads and Golden Needles”: This woman takes a great song and turns it into a stone-cold classic.
  10. Lizzo, “About Damn Time”: I need this kind of jumped-up energy to get me through today.

Playlist #185

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It’s a Tuesday, folks. Those’re like Mondays.

  1. Johnny Rivers, “Seventh Son”: I happen to like late ’50s/early ’60s swagger songs like this. “I can heal the sick/Raise the dead/Make the little girls talk out of their heads” is a pretty great claim.
  2. Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, “Love Don’t”: This dude can holler, and this song is pretty damn great.
  3. Neko Case, “Hold On, Hold On”: I listened to this album (and especially this song) just about on repeat last week and almost bought a tenor guitar because of it.
  4. The National, “Sorrow”: The band once played this song for over six hours. It’s pretty amazing how the song evolved and shifted over that time.
  5. Billy Bragg & Wilco, “When The Roses Bloom Again”: It’s a fairly standard war story sort of thing, where a dying soldier tells the last person he sees to let his darling know he remained faithful to her, but it still tugs at the heartstrings.
  6. The Mountain Goats, “Going Invisible 2”: With its refrain of “I’m going to burn it all down today/Down today, okay?”, this song might just be my anthem for the month.
  7. Big Red Machine, “Phoenix (feat. Fleet Foxes and Anias Mitchell)”: A bouncy, folky burst of pop that offers a moment of respite in an otherwise gloomy world.
  8. Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, “Home”: It takes chutzpah to sample Phil Collins, and even more to feature him prominently in the accompanying video, but it really works.
  9. Tom Waits, “Chocolate Jesus”: Not just for Easter anymore.
  10. James McMurtry, “Just Us Kids”: The older I get, the less I feel like I have everything in my life together. I get the feeling this was uncommon even a generation ago, but feels very common today. Why is that?

Playlist #174 – Life’s a Zoo

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Happy Monday, folks! Well, we survived the first week of school somehow. Most of the kids did, too, and without their cellphones, if you can imagine that! Anyway, here’s a bunch of songs about animals.

  1. Bob Dylan, “Man Gave Names to All the Animals”: We could think of the Garden of Eden as a sort of proto-zoo, I guess, and Adam and Eve as the first zookeepers. Well, until all that apple business went down.
  2. Survivor, “Eye of the Tiger”: Let’s start things off in the big cats area. And watch out for the tigers. If you can see their eyes, it’s probably already too late.
  3. Steve Miller Band, “Fly Like an Eagle”: Let’s hop over to the aviary, where we can soar with the eagles and look at the sea, apparently.
  4. Neko Case, “The Tigers Have Spoken”: Oh, back to the big cats. Did you know tigers talk? It’s true! Neko Case said so.
  5. Pink Floyd, “Sheep”: Pink Floyd did a whole album called Animals, so you know they knew what was up with zoos.
  6. Josh Ritter, “To the Dogs or Whoever”: Dogs might be in zoos, right? Or dog-like animals, perhaps?
  7. Peter Gabriel, “Shock the Monkey”: There’s definitely monkeys, and they’re only shocking when they fling their poo or masturbate in front of zoo visitors.
  8. Tom Waits, “Get Behind the Mule”: Not sure how mules feature into a zoo, but who knows, maybe in the petting zoo area?
  9. Andrew Bird, “Sic of Elephants”: Elephants are definitely something you’d see at a zoo! Maybe not sycophants, though.
  10. Tom Petty, “Zombie Zoo”: The worst zoo. Everyone tried to bite me. Zero stars.

Playlist #146

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Happy Monday, folks! I hear Taylor Swift won the Super Bowl yesterday, so good for her. And in her rookie season, too.

  1. Dr. Dre, “Still D.R.E. (featuring Snoop Dogg)”: That intro is iconic, but maybe if you’re embarrassed to seen listening to a song that drops the n-word as frequently as this one does, find the clean version?
  2. The Decemberists, “Burial Ground”: It’s new Decemberists! It sounds exactly like what you think a Decemberists song would sound like. Your mileage with such a thing may vary.
  3. Coldplay, “Clocks”: I dunno, it’s just such a wistful, sad song to me for some reason. Not even really sure it’s intended to be a sad song, but that’s the tone I’m picking up.
  4. The Greencards, “Marty’s Kitchen”: Ever wanted to hear some of the fastest damn guitar, fiddle, and mandolin playing you’ve ever heard? This is the song for you.
  5. Jenny Scheinman, “I Was Young When I Left Home”: A Bob Dylan cover? On one of my playlists? It’s more likely than you’d think!
  6. Neko Case, “That’s Who I Am”: From the darkly gothic Ghost Brothers of Darkland County musical (written by John Mellencamp, T-Bone Burnett, and Stephen King). It’s sly and clever and has a good bounce to it. I want T-Bone to produce one of my albums someday.
  7. A.C. Newman, “Like a Hitman, Like a Dancer”: I was on an A.C. Newman kick last week, listening through Get Guilty and Shut Down The Streets several times.
  8. Phil Collins, “I Wish It Would Rain Down”: When I was a little kid and this song came out, the main draw was the Eric Clapton guitar part. Now, that’s the part of the song that makes me cringe. God, Eric Clapton, how come you turned out to be such a sleezebag?
  9. Rhett Miller, “The El”: I’ve been thinking about Rhett and his main band, the Old 97s, a bit lately. Probably because they have a new album coming out soon (notification of which was accidentally dropped early by Stephen King).
  10. Sheryl Crow, “My Favorite Mistake”: I wonder if her least-favorite mistake is that one duet with Kid Rock.