Friday Playlist

Yes, it has arrived: the end of summer. Good thing we’re about to hit the best three months of the year, or I’d be more sad that another summer is in the books.

“Summer’s Over” – Jordana & TV Girl
Obvious starting point.

“Chateau Blues” – Spoon
Spoon are in the early stages of recording their next album. They also started a new tour opening for the Pixies this week. With those shows delaying work on the album for a bit, they decided to go ahead and drop two new songs from the sessions. I wouldn’t call either one of Spoon’s best. I think both sound a little raw so wonder that if they make the final album, they will it be in more refined versions.

“Forever” – TTSSFU
A little more mainstream than their other songs I’ve shared, which I think I like a little more.

“Ring Ring Ring” – Tyler, The Creator
In yesterday’s RFTS post, I promised a new, much better Telephone Song. Here it is. The Bridge has been playing it a lot lately, and the bass line, stolen from Michael Jackson’s “Off The Wall” got into my head. Really good song beyond that bass line.

“My Crud Princess” – No Joy
Jasamine White-Luz describes this song like this:

“Like you are sifting through deep soil and coming out just covered in crud but still feeling cute. Going a little feral while still trying to maintain composure because you’re in public.”

Yeah, I can’t match that.

“Fundraiser” – bar italia
More whacked out pop from these fools.

“Elton John” – Miya Folick
Folick wrote this after her father died, and the flood of memories that came with helping her mother clean out his stuff from the home they shared. Specifically, Folick recalled the first time she played the Troubadour club in LA, and her dad telling her of seeing Elton John there in 1970.

“Stuck” – Soft Science
This song is from a couple years back, and I shared it then. When it popped up this week I was reminded of so many mid–90s shoegaze songs when I was just discovering that genre. And now, 30 years later, we’re in the midst of the biggest shoegaze revival of them all.

“The Bleeding Heart Show” – The New Pornographers
Two music anniversaries this week. Twenty years ago The New Pornographers’ Twin Cinema album dropped. A lot of good songs on it, but this has always been #1 for me.

“End Of Summer” – Tame Impala
One last weekend. Don’t run out of time.

“Born To Run” – Bruce Springsteen
This week was also the 50th anniversary of the release of the Born To Run album, an absolute keystone moment in rock music history whether you like Bruce or not. Years ago I came up with the theory that every American rock band is trying to be either Bruce or Van Halen. No matter the genre or sound, they were on one fork of that road.[1] I wonder who would have been the counter to Van Halen had this album failed, like Springsteen’s earlier albums, and he faded away.

All of Springsteen’s naked, overwhelming ambition to become a star is readily apparent in this song. Each element is pushed to its absolute limit. If he was going to go down, he was going to go down giving everything he had. Good thing he made an absolute classic or it would have fallen apart under all that weight.

It would have been very cool to see Springsteen live in the 1980s.