tracy bonham

Playlist #257

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

Happy Monday, folks! I’m off on Spring Break, somewhere in Ohio as we speak, but the content mills wait for no one. Therefore, I’ve prepared this in the past for the future! Ain’t the internet great sometimes? Here’s your playlist.

  1. Florence + the Machine, “Queen of Peace”: Florence (and the Machine, natch) show they started out strong and anthematic, their signature sound already in place from the very beginning.
  2. The Wild Feathers, “Help Me Out”: The latest in the long list of “songs I heard in a store and though sounded good.” That particular track list hasn’t failed me yet.
  3. Brian Fallon, “Proof of Life”: When I die, I want this song played at my funeral. “As long as you know how I loved you/That will be the proof of life when I am gone” is just one of those lines that you wish you’d written yourself, but you’re also kinda glad someone else wrote it because now you get to sit back and just appreciate it.
  4. David Gray, “Mr. Bennett”: I dunno quite what I think of the new David Gray album yet. It feels…underdone, I guess. Unfinished. This is one of the songs I’ve liked the most so far, but even it doesn’t really reach me the way some of his older stuff does.
  5. Hurray for the Riff Raff, “Snake Plant (The Past Is Still Alive) (Live)”: I do enjoy hearing how songs transform in a live setting, even if they don’t change much. This one feels more powerful here, more energetic, and I can dig that.
  6. The Wallflowers, “Here He Comes (Confessions of a Drunken Marionette)”: Went through a Wallflowers run earlier in the month. Rebel, Sweetheart, remains a favorite, and this song is pretty great.
  7. Tracy Bonham, “Mother Mother”: The Wife hates this song. No idea why. It seems like the PJ Harvey-esque sort of thing that she’d love, but it just rubs her the wrong way for whatever reason. I think it slaps.
  8. The Black Crowes, “Hard To Handle”: You can’t go wrong covering Otis Redding.
  9. Lapdog, “I Don’t Mind”: I’m glad that Toad the Wet Sprocket started working together and recording again, but I do wish we’d gotten more Lapdog albums along the way. They were different enough from Toad and I loved their vibe.
  10. Leo Sayer, “More Than I Can Say”: It’s ’70s soft rock at its yachtiest. Sometimes you just need some ’70s Velveeta.

Playlist #194 and #195

/ xeyeti / Leave a comment

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.