I think of myself as pretty knowledgable about tech things, or at least tech things that I use regularly. For months, years maybe, I’ve been lamenting how I have to delete my Friday Playlists out of Spotify after a month so my local library doesn’t get too unwieldy to scroll through. “If only you could do nesting folders like in old iTunes,” I thought. But I never, you know, looked to see if that was possible. I finally did last week and – LO! – you can! So now I have a folder where I can dump my old FP’s, which means these will hang around rather than turn into dead links after a month. In case any of you ever look back at them.

On to this week’s tunes…

“Somewhere” – Gum Country
This LA band claims to be “harsh twee.” To me this sounds like straight, early 90s, college grunge. And I like it.

“Forever Nevermore” – Sea Wolf
“You Fear the Wrong Thing Baby” – The Radio Dept.
I don’t know why, but I lump these two bands – and a few others like Longwave, Rogue Wave, Matt Pond PA, etc – together even though they don’t sound much alike and I discovered them several years apart. Weird. Anyway, two solid new songs from two bands that I’ll always take a listen to when they drop fresh material on our ears.

“Catch the Sun” – Doves
Shit, man. We’re starting to hit 20-year anniversaries of things that happened this century. I’m not sure I can get my head around that. This past week was the 20th anniversary of Doves’ debut album Lost Souls. I’m a bigger fan of their later work, when they tightened things up a bit and shifted in a slightly more pop direction. I don’t think I got into this song until about a year later, as I recall it being a big part of my summer of 2001 playlists. Still, it was my entry point for one of my favorite bands of the early 2000s.

“Lovely Day” – Bill Withers
We lost a couple legends this week. I don’t know much about John Pine, but a lot of people and artists I like were moved by his passing. Bill Withers, though, was one that hit me. I never owned a Withers album, never played any of his songs on repeat. But once you heard his songs, they were in your head and heart forever. He has at least four timeless songs that pretty much everyone alive in the 1970s and 1980s will remember forever. I figure we need a lift these days, so I picked this one.

“Secret Separation” – The Fixx
Our current separation is not so secret, but this seemed appropriate for the times as well.