Friday Playlist

I’ve been going through an especially persistent bout with my periodic insomnia this week. I have no idea how I couldn’t sleep last night but here we are, me bleary-eyed after hours of tossing and turning, getting up to read and reset my brain, then more tossing and turning. We’ll see how that affects the songs I put together for you today, and what I write about them. If this turns to gibberish by the end, you know the reason.

“Coast To Coast” – Elliott Smith
Funny how songs get lost to time and the glut of other music. Elliott Smith’s posthumous album From A Basement On the Hill was one of the first full albums I ever bought on the iTunes Music Store back in early 2005. I listened to it often for a month or so and really enjoyed it, but over the years only the album’s best song, “Pretty (Ugly Before)” stayed in my catalog. I was looking at something from that time period this week and was reminded of the album, and this, its excellent opening track. It is now back in my catalog and seemed like a perfect way to begin this week’s PL.

“Nobody’s Heroes” – The Menzingers
“Born To Kill” – Social Distortion
Two brand new and perfectly fine tracks from two bands that have been around a while, Social D the longest.

“Mantis” – Courtney Barnett
Two-for-two on high quality tracks from her upcoming album. This one is a little more in line with her traditional narrative style than the first single.

“Where’s My Phone?” – Mitski
I would make fun of the younger generation and say this song sums them up but let’s be honest: we’d all be lost if you took away our phones. I also told S this should be her theme song since she’s infamous for leaving her phone behind when she runs errands or, several times a year, when she goes to work.

“Never The Same” – The Cribs
This is a new song, but sounds like something that would have dropped in the early 2000s, when everyone was trying to sound like The Strokes.

“She Makes Me Real” – Cardinals
Continuing a couple trends for this week: a stellar opening track to an album, and another artist that we are hearing multiple times from a current release. There haven’t been many notable albums so far this year, but the Cardinals’ is one of the two best I’ve heard so far.

“Lonely Boy” – Lucia & The Best Boys featuring Lauren Mayberry
This autobiographical track by Lucia Fairfull about wanting to get out of her rural Scottish childhood was good enough on its own. Mayberry’s presence takes it up a notch.

“Second Sleep” – Magdalena Bay
One of my girls asked me recently if I ever listened to Magdalena Bay. I said that indeed I had listened to some of their music. A day later this popped up. Music Gods were listening. The intro has an Imperial Era Stevie Wonder vibe to it.

De La Soul Tiny Desk Concert
This felt like the perfect time to do something unusual for our video selection. The world is such a fucked up place right now, and it feels like, at best, we can just tread water and hope that things will get better in three years. Then this set dropped, and for 23 minutes I was utterly entranced and delighted. There is so much joy here that it made me forget all the bullshit for a spell.