the mountain goats

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 #226

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Happy Monday, folks! I spent the weekend bouncing between anxiety, a deep well of sadness, and blinding, incandescent rage. Why? No idea. But let’s listen to some music to soothe the soul.

  1. The Mountain Goats, “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton”: Early Mountain Goats, while lacking the polish and full band of later releases, is the best Mountain Goats. And this is the best of early Mountain Goats, for the inclusion of the “Hail Satan” near the end if nothing else.
  2. Gov’t Mule, “John the Revelator”: Who knew I’d like Gov’t Mule? Probably a number of people knew this, and they just refused to tell me. I’m disappointed in all of you.
  3. Cassandra Jenkins, “Only Relaxation”: Relaxing, piano-based Americana to soothe the weary soul.
  4. Joy Division, “She’s Lost Control”: And then some new wave, because I like to create those whiplash effects.
  5. Woody Guthrie, “Deportee (Woody’s Home Tape)”: Not for nothin’, but Abrego Kilmar Garcia was immediately detained by ICE again just this morning in Baltimore. They couldn’t even let this dude spend a whole 48 hours out of custody before they just had to grab him again.
  6. Margaret Glaspy, “Jesus, Etc. (Feat. Norah Jones)”: I do love me a Wilco cover.
  7. Josh Ritter, “The Curse”: The saddest song about a mummy coming back to life and then sapping the life energy out of the Egyptologist who found his tomb.
  8. William Elliott Whitmore, “Diggin’ My Grave”: You’ll hear the banjo differently after this song, and that ain’t a bad thing.
  9. The Strumbrellas, “Spirits”: Strummy guitars, shout-along chorus, nifty little piano interlude? Yeah, it’s got all those. Good stuff.
  10. Fleetwood Mac, “Rhiannon”: Do I really need to talk about this song? I can’t imagine that none of you out there in the world haven’t heard this song already.

Playlist #194 and #195

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Happy Monday! It’s Martin Luther King, Jr, Day, and Inauguration Day. One of those is a cause for celebration, while the other is a cause for heavy drinking. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which one is which.

  1. The Refreshments, “Banditos”: I am embarrassed just how long I got the Refreshments and the Replacements confused. It was…far longer than I care to admit.
  2. Chris Smither, “Origin of Species”: A fantastic, farcical song mixing stories from the Bible with a winking nod to Charles Darwin and the double helix.
  3. Jason Isbell, “Super 8”: No one wants to die in a Super 8 Motel, Mr. Isbell. My wife won’t even set foot in one.
  4. Stevie Nicks, “Lighthouse”: Still love this song. It’s still a banger. I will not be accepting questions at this time.
  5. Tom Waits, “Goin’ Out West”: “I know karate and voodoo too” is a hell of a line.
  6. The Mountain Goats, “No Children”: We’ve talked about this one before, about how it’s my wife’s favorite Mountain Goats song and maybe I need to be concerned about that? Who knows.
  7. Michael Penn, “No Myth”: I dunno, maybe comparing yourself to Romeo and Heathcliff is not the flex you think it is.
  8. Big Red Machine, “Latter Days”: I like the album this song is from so much I picked it up on vinyl a couple of weeks ago. Great decision.
  9. Kate Bush, “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)”: About the only slice of ’80s music I can really stand, it’s a damn good song with a killer chorus.
  10. Franz Ferdinand, “Take Me Out”: It will never cease to amuse me that the band named after the dude whose assassination kicked off World War I released a single called “Take Me Out.” Just top-tier trolling.
  11. Jimmy Eat World, “The Middle”: Such an uplifting, shout-along song. And easy to play on the guitar to boot!
  12. Tracy Bonham, “Mother Mother”: A nice slice of ’90s nostalgia. Apparently the Wife hates her music? I was just as surprised as you are.
  13. Whiskeytown, “Jacksonville Skyline”: I know everyone was all about the authenticity of the cowpunk/alt-country movement in the early 2000s, but Whiskeytown’s country always felt like a coat Ryan Adams was wearing and took off as quickly as he could when he went solo.
  14. Wilco, “At Least That’s What You Said”: The snarling, Neil Young-esque guitar explosion that erupts about halfway through this song is giving me life.
  15. Diana Ross & the Supremes, “Reflections”: Sometimes, you just need a girl group singing close harmonies to get you through the day. This might be such a day.
  16. Edwyn Collins, “A Girl Like You”: Britpop, you say? Britpop? I’ll give you Britpop!
  17. Bob Dylan, “Mississippi”: For nothing else than I got the line “You can always come back but you can’t come back all the way” stuck in my head the other day.
  18. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “A Thing About You”: This has somehow become one of my favorite Tom Petty songs in recent years. Dunno how or why. I think I just like the breakneck pace of it and how I always imagine things almost tumble apart in the instrumental break but barely hold on.
  19. Calexico, “Beneath the City of Dreams”: I am a sucker for a good Calexico song, which really means any Calexico song. They’re all pretty damn good.
  20. Bill Small, “This Old House”: A dark tour through the empty halls of one’s life, or an empty house that used to be occupied by a loved one.

Playlist #186

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Happy Monday, folks. Like many other individuals, I have decided to migrate from Twitter (still not gonna call it X, as that is stupid), that Nazi-amplifying hellsite, and over to Blue Sky! I have been posting regularly so far; we’ll see if that keeps up.

  1. Jessye DeSilva, “Let It Burn”: I think we can all agree that white supremacy is a huge issue in the United States today and that maybe, just maybe, burning it all down wouldn’t be a bad idea. And if that’s not a sentiment you can agree with, what the fuck are you doing here? Go away.
  2. David Gray, “After the Harvest”: It’s David Gray doing David Gray things, with delicate acoustic guitars picked over vaguely electronic beats. It ticks a few boxes in my head that give me that good dopamine hit, so this isn’t a complaint.
  3. Phil Collins, “I Don’t Care Anymore”: An effort to repeat the success of “In the Air Tonight”? I dunno, maybe. It has that same sort of minimalist drum/keyboard approach, the same dark theme, but more forceful singing (despite being about having no fucks left to give).
  4. Bon Iver, “S P E Y S I D E”: It’s weird hearing Bon Iver being almost…straightforward with a song after years of getting more and more cryptic and byzantine with his approach to lyrics specifically and music in general. I kinda dig it.
  5. George Harrison, “Not Guilty”: That little repeated guitar riff just eats its way into my head and won’t leave. I love it.
  6. The Velvet Underground, “Who Loves the Sun”: Hearing such bright, bouncy pop from the Velvet Underground always hits me weird. Like, these lyrics and those “Bop-ba-ba-ba”s shouldn’t be coming out of Lou Reed’s mouth.
  7. Patsy Cline, “I Fall to Pieces”: This woman had such a voice. And that shouldn’t be telling any of you anything you don’t already know.
  8. Lucero, “On My Way Downtown”: A song of drinking and regret and the promise of a better day.
  9. Mike Doughty, “Fort Hood”: Best use of “Let the Sunshine In” ever. Even better than the original “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In.” Fight me.
  10. The Mountain Goats, “No Children”: My wife’s favorite Mountain Goats song. Should I be worried?

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?

Playlists #164, #165, and #166

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As you read this, I’m somewhere between Virginia and Oklahoma, headed back to the land of my birth for my grandfather’s funeral. He passed away this weekend, and it’s kinda left me gutted. I’m glad I got to see him over Father’s Day weekend, and that he was in good spirits at the time. It’ll be nice to remember him that way.

Anyway, I’m combining three playlists into one today, because I’m behind a bit and I put together a big playlist to get me to Oklahoma. Here’s thirty songs.

  1. David Gray, “A Clean Pair of Eyes”: Early David Gray just hits different. It’s folkier, more acoustic, and very introspective. I dig it.
  2. Louis Armstrong, “Mack the Knife”: There is no better moment in music than when Louis throws it to himself for the trumpet solo at the end.
  3. Bing Crosby, “Swinging on a Star”: One of the best songs about the importance of education ever committed to tape.
  4. Ryan Adams, “Desire”: Yeah, the guy has diarrhea of the recording studio, and some of the crap he’s pulled over the years is rather reprehensible, but he does occasionally write and record good tunes.
  5. Mavis Staples, “Eyes on the Prize”: Leave it to Mavis to turn a Civil Rights Standard into a bluesy banger.
  6. Greg Feldon, “Incoming”: On one of my (many) recent trips back from Oklahoma, I spent the better part of a day driving up I-81 listening to this song on repeat until I had it memorized. It’s a good song.
  7. The Rolling Stones, “Honky Tonk Women”: Poor Mick just can’t even have an easy one night stand, can he?
  8. James McMurtry, “Choctaw Bingo”: It’s something of a standard “driving to Oklahoma” song for me at this point. It pops up on lots of playlists, because it’s a good song and it’s kinda long.
  9. Mark Knopfler, “Cannibals”: There are no cannibals anymore, are there, Mark? I think some folsk would beg to differ with a knife and fork, sir.
  10. Rilo Kiley, “More Adventurous”: Such a beautiful, forlorn sort of song. I’ve always loved it.
  11. Big Red Machine, “Renegade (feat. Taylor Swift)”: I’d be okay with Justin Vernon and Taylor Swift doing more duets for the next decade or so if they’re up for it.
  12. Ben Caplan, “Down to the River”: Did you know you needed more klezmer-inflected folk music in your life before you heard this song? Because I didn’t, but I obvious do need more of that in my life.
  13. Hank Williams, “Honky Tonk Blues”: This man knew from hard living, not that you’d know it from his songs necessarily. If he were alive today, he’d put the rest of the country music scene to shame, I’m pretty sure.
  14. The Mountain Goats, “Training Montage”: An amazing song if for nothing else than the line, “I’m doing this for revenge.”
  15. Neil Young, “Downtown”: I do enjoy it when Neil, the godfather of grunge, rocks out with Pearl Jam in tow. It’s a good time.
  16. Van Morrison, “Give Me a Kiss”: Old school Van was always top notch, as this song proves.
  17. The Wallflowers, “Misfits and Lovers (feat. Mick Jones)”: If you’re gonna do an album that sounds heavily indebted to the Clash, it’s probably a damn good idea to get a member of the Clash to guest on it.
  18. Tom Waits, “Chocolate Jesus”: Sacrilicious.
  19. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Angel Dream”: Can we talk for a minute about the run Tom Petty had between 1987 and 1999? He released Full Moon Fever, Into the Great Wide Open, Wildflowers, the She’s the One Soundtrack, and Echo, all bangers. All classics. Name me band in the past thirty-five years that’s had a string of records that good.
  20. Toad the Wet Sprocket, “Are We Afraid”: A quieter, more reflective moment from their odds & sods collection In Light Syrup.
  21. Pearl Jam, “Better Man”: I think I mentioned a few weeks ago how the Seven Mary Three song “Water’s Edge” is just a 90s rewrite of Richard Marx’s “Hazard,” and this song is just a rewrite of the final verse of Bob Seger’s “The Fire Inside.”
  22. Peter Gabriel, “Washing of the Water”: How does this man create such consistently interesting and provocative music? It’s wild.
  23. Paul McCartney & Elvis Costello, “My Brave Face (Original Demo)”: Two great tastes that taste great together, as it turns out. Elvis brought out the sharper side of McCartney (for a given value of sharper, since McCartney long ago filed off everything to smooth edges).
  24. Drive-By Truckers, “Everybody Needs Love”: An anthem for our time. Everybody does need love.
  25. Descendents, “‘Merican”: Another anthem for our time, this time about the true history of our country and how some folks just don’t want to see everything.
  26. The Dead Weather, “Hustle and Cuss”: It’s nice to see a Jack White project where he kind of takes a backseat to the proceedings, mostly just playing the drums and occasionally singing (like on this track).
  27. David Bowie, “Modern Love”: Dance-pop-era Bowie usually isn’t my favorite, but this song rocks.
  28. Calexico, “Guero Canelo”: Do I understand a word in this song? No. Does it still slap? Yes.
  29. Bob Dylan, “Song For Woody”: Another appropriate “traveling to Oklahoma” song. Woody is a state treasure, or damn well ought to be.
  30. Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Someday Never Comes”: One of the saddest songs that John Fogerty ever wrote, if you want my opinion. It’s dark and bittersweet and sad and longing, and it hits in just that right spot every time.

Playlist #156 – School Daze

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Happy Monday, folks! As we near the end of April, students’ minds start turning to thoughts of summer and freedom from the tyranny of…um…*checks notes*…learning. Here’s an appropriate playlist, all because I listened to the new Taylor Swift album this weekend and it features a song called “So High School.”

  1. Taylor Swift, “So High School”: I mean, I told you right up there why I put together this particular playlist, didn’t I? This song was mentioned right there. It’s not about high school per se, but it is about people being petty and small-minded and acting very high school, so we count it.
  2. The Angels, “My Boyfriend’s Back”: There’s nothing in this song to particularly attach it to high school students, but it feels very high schoolish to me. “My boyfriend’s back, and you’re gonna be in trouble,” they sing, and it’s very taunting and playground-esque.
  3. Bruce Springsteen, “Glory Days”: Ah, who doesn’t look back on high school as the time when your life was at its absolute peak? I mean, I don’t, but I also didn’t plateau at that point in my life and went on to do other, better things.
  4. Chuck Berry, “Schooldays”: Hail, hail, rock and roll.
  5. Old 97s, “Friends Forever”: You know how some folks go from nerds to kickass musicians in a rock band? The Old 97s know.
  6. The Mountain Goats, “Fall of the Star High School Running Back”: We’ve talked about this song. Don’t go from being the star running back on the high school football team to a drug dealer. You will get caught and you will receive an adult sentence for it, especially in Texas.
  7. Loudon Wainwright III, “School Days”: Loudon Wainwright III has this wonderful way to approach nostalgia and the yearning for the past that I’ve always loved.
  8. Pearl Jam, “Education”: In case you need a little Pearl Jam in your day. I know I do. Their new album is also actually pretty solid.
  9. Pink Floyd, “The Happiest Days of Our Lives/Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2”: Like I wasn’t going to put this song on this list. And yeah, it’s technically two songs, but they are always played as a single song, so I’m only counting it as one.
  10. The Ramones, “Teenage Lobotomy”: C’mon, we all think they’ve had ’em. It’s the only explanation for the slack-jawed looks I get every day.

Playlists #147 and #148

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Good morning and happy Monday, folks. I’m back from Oklahoma. We had to have a funeral for my grandmother who passed away on the 17th. Here are two playlists to make up for missing last week. The first is a selection of my songs, while the second is just a list of songs I’ve been listening to lately.

Playlist #147: A Whitman’s Sampler of Charlie Cottrell Songs

  1. “Unanswered Prayers”: I still love the slide guitar on this one.
  2. “Saint Joan”: Clif really likes how slightly off-kilter the piano on this one is, and I have a hard time disagreeing with him.
  3. “Complete Control”: One of my better rockers.
  4. “I Wish You Would”: I feel like this song could’ve been recorded anytime between 1967 and yesterday. Dig that Bakersfield guitar solo.
  5. “Oh, My Love”: The vocals on this one were overdriven a bit on purpose, and I’m probably most-proud of those guitar solos.
  6. “Dark On My Street”: Still one of the best-recorded songs I’ve ever done; Clif played all the instruments on this one.
  7. “Burnt Offering 2”: If there’s one song that illustrates how important it is to have a good collaborator working on your songs with you, it’s this one. Clif took what I’d recorded and turned it into a powerful, dare I say beautiful song.
  8. “My Head’s Not Equipped To Deal With This Bliss”: An older song that I recorded for the latest album. The new album, Middle Aged Heartthrob, is half old songs, half brand-new songs.
  9. “Losing Sleep”: Just me grappling with death, the passage of time, the collapse of American society, and my reading list.
  10. “The Ocean Just Gets In The Way”: This was originally going to be the closer for the new album, but then Clif went and recorded that little banjo bit at the end of “As Shadows Lengthen” and it just felt like the perfect way to end the album, so this became the penultimate song.

Playlist #148

  1. The Low Anthem, “Champion Angels”: I’ve spent most of this morning listening to Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, and this is one of my favorite songs on there.
  2. Martin Sexton, “Diner”: I blame the TV show Scrubs for this one.
  3. The Mountain Goats, “Fall of the Star High School Running Back”: Who doesn’t love a story of a high school football star who gets injured, starts taking pain medication, then starts selling pain meds for profit?
  4. Norah Jones, “The Long Way Home”: Not the Supertramp song, but the Tom Waits song of similar name.
  5. Ondara, “Torch Song”: I like the simplicity of the instrumentation on this one. Mostly just acoustic guitar and standup bass.
  6. Wings, “Helen Wheels”: McCartney rarely rocked out that hard, but this one rips.
  7. Brian Fallon, “Forget Me Not”: I still like the way he shouts the girl’s name, “Stacy!” at the beginning of the verse.
  8. Jars of Clay, “Reckless Forgiver”: I like the idea of reckless forgiveness. It takes a concept that is usually so carefully considered – forgiveness – and says just give that to everyone, everywhere, regardless of anything. It’s a nice idea.
  9. David Gray, “Easy Way to Cry”: I was on a David Gray kick on the drive home this weekend, listening to several of his albums back to back. This one always sits with me afterwards.
  10. Josh Ritter, “Monster Ballads”: I often wish I was a better lower-register singer. Songs like this make me rue that lack even more.

Best Albums of 2023

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Ignore all of those other best-of lists you’ve seen around. This ain’t those. It is, however, my ten favorite albums from this year.

It was a tricky list to put together, if for no other reason than the fact that my sense of time has gotten all out of whack over the past few years. “Wasn’t that new Wallflowers album from early this year? Wait, it was 2021? What?” Or, “Oh, that new Taylor Swift album – not one of the re-records – was…no, that was last year. Damn.” I kinda had to scrabble around to find 10 albums I really liked.

And it shouldn’t have been that hard! Both the National and Josh Ritter had new albums out this year. Those are usually shoo-ins. But this year…eh. Neither of them really wowed me.

Anyway, here are ten albums that did wow me, in no particular order.

  1. boygenius, the record: I kinda low-key love this album. Three brilliant musicians coming together and just showing everyone how it ought to be done.
  2. Peter Gabriel, i/o: If an album takes twenty years to complete and comes out in not one, not two, but three slightly different mixes, you’d be understandably trepidatious about the album. But no, it’s really damn good. It’s vital and deep and rewards relistens.
  3. Wilco, Cousins: While not as essential as their best work, it’s more cohesive and concise than last year’s Cruel Country. Good, but also kinda forgettable.
  4. The Gaslight Anthem, History Books: A damn sight better than their last album, Get Hurt. It’s energetic and loud and exciting.
  5. Slowdive, everything is alive: I’m not usually one for shoegaze, but these songs are great. It’s slow and pensive and gets under your skin.
  6. New Pornographers, Continue as a Guest: I love the band, I hate the name. That will always be the case. But with A.C. Newman and Neko Case on the roster, you know the songs are going to be good and the vocals are going to be stellar. And they are.
  7. M. Ward, supernatural thing: M. Ward just cranks out good stuff whenever he decides to drop into the recording studio. Nothing spectacular or mind-altering, just really good songs that you can listen to over and over again.
  8. Noah Kahan, Stick Season: Vermont Hozier, as he’s apparently known, puts out some somber, low-key songs that stick to your brain and just burrow in.
  9. The Mountain Goats, Jenny From Thebes: I love me some Mountain Goats. This one is heavier on the piano and keyboards than previous entries, and the usage of horn sections and strings (freakin’ strings! On a Mountain Goats record!) add some new flair and textures to the always-excellent songwriting.
  10. Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit, Weathervanes: I know I said this list isn’t in any particular order, but this is my absolute favorite album of the year. The more I listen to the work of Jason Isbell, the more I’m convinced he’s the best songwriter of the current generation. He creates characters and situations full of anger, fear, distrust, love, longing, a sense of loneliness, isolation, and rising above it all. All in a single record. Soaring choruses, thoughtful verses, and a band that is as simpatico as humanly possible just makes this one of the best records out there.

Playlist #128

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Happy Monday, or Indigenous People’s Day as we call it around here. If you wanna celebrate that Columbus guy, go get lost in the spice aisle at the Kroger.

  1. Wreckx-n-Effect, “Rump Shaker”: My wife was not familiar with this song, somehow. Even I know this song, and I spent the 90s in a virginal haze of video games and Pink Floyd music.
  2. The National, “Terrible Love (Alternate Version)”: I prefer this version because the drums are better than the original.
  3. The Mountain Goats, “This Year”: Never not good.
  4. David Gray, “Stella the Artist”: Somehow, over the years, Hold the Line became my favorite David Gray album. I know there aren’t too many people with a favorite David Gray album, but I have one. It’s Hold the Line.
  5. Richard Thompson, “Beeswing”: Just such a beautiful song.
  6. Glen Phillips, “Everything Matters”: A heartfelt love song that encourages me on dark days.
  7. Van Morrison, “Jackie Wilson Said (I’m In Heaven)”: The rave up we deserve. If more Van Morrison songs were like this, the world would be better.
  8. Murder By Death, “Creep”: You just have to listen to this one to full appreciate it. It’s not the Radiohead “Creep,” and it’s not the Stone Temple Pilots “Creep.” No, it’s the other one. The one you wouldn’t think a crusty-sounding white dude would sing.
  9. Moxy Fruvous, “Greatest Man in America”: Who doesn’t love a song that just gives the middle finger to Rush Limbaugh? Fuck that dude, even if he is dead already.
  10. The Who, “A Quick One, While He’s Away”: If I asked for an orchestra, and the suits told me no, I’d probably have just sung the word “cello” instead of hiring a cellist out of my own pocket, too.