Generally my focus in these weekly playlists is on sharing new music, the stuff I have time to dig up that I know most of you are unable to. I’m going to tweak that recipe going forward.

There will still be plenty of new music. In addition, though, I’m going to start throwing in more classic tracks. I don’t know that I’ll ever get these up to the size of my old podcast playlists, but that does mean as my schedule allows, I’ll be sharing a little more music each week than I traditionally have. Good news for those of you who follow along on Spotify!

“Nothing Ever Changes” – Ibex Clone
If Bob Mould had led a British postpunk band, it would probably have sounded like this.

“F***” – Laveda
When I saw the title of this song, I was expecting something aggressive and angry. There is anger in this song, but it is served up with some absolutely gorgeous music and vocals that cushion its impact.

“Local Hero” – EggS
This song had my Aussie Indie Pop senses tingling big time. So I was super surprised when I found out this band is from Paris. As in France. I guess the spelling of their name should have been a clue that they were weird Frenchies.

“Radio” – Margo Price featuring Sharon Van Etten
This week’s entry in the “Country or Not” category. I normally find Price’s music far too twangy for my tastes. I recently read that her newest album leans hard towards pop. You certainly hear some country DNA in this track. But the guitars are more George Harrison than Nashville and the whole thing is more indie pop than country. Queen Van Etten’s presence certainly helps. I may have to give that album a spin.

“Aagal” – Nick Bampton, Maanyung
The Need Essentials surf films I watch periodically always have great music. My January movie, Slow Lane, featured this fantastic track, which just showed up on Spotify. Put it on your next mix tape and impress your friends.

“Tainted Love” – Gloria Jones
One of the fun things about being a music geek is either surprising your fellow geeks with pieces of music trivia, or being surprised by trivia they share with you. Years ago I blew the mind of a buddy of mine, who is several years older than me and should have been more in-tune with ’60s music, when I told him that Soft Cell’s 1982 classic “Tainted Love” was a cover. Tom Breihan mentioned that in Wednesday’s Number Ones entry about Rihanna’s “SOS,” so it seemed like a good week to blow some more minds. How many of you have heard this before? Please give me full credit if it’s your first time.

“Everything’s Gone Green” – New Order
At some point in the late ’90s a couple of my friends and I decided that New Order might be the perfect music to play when you are picking up a date. Their songs always sounded cool, had good grooves, had some depth to them so you could pretend to be smart, and had a healthy dose of hipster cred since New Order was known but never super famous here in the US. “True Faith” is my favorite NO song, and one of my favorite songs ever. But this track probably got the most play in my car in those Dating Years.

“Given to Fly” – Pearl Jam
Today is the 25th anniversary of the release of Pearl Jam’s fifth and poppiest studio album, Yield. While their first three albums were bigger in my life, this one ranks not too far below them. That’s mostly because of how I listened to it. In February 1998 I was unemployed. When my roommate, brother-in-music John N, would leave for his jobby-job each morning, I would crank up Yield and play over-and-over as I flipped through the want ads, typed up cover letters, and sent off resumes. I listened to it yesterday and I realized it is the last Pearl Jam album that I can recall almost every word to every song.

This song was very important in my musical life, too. It’s the first song I ever downloaded. The song was set to be released to radio on December 22, 1997, but someone got a copy and posted it to the Internet. I read about this on a Pearl Jam board and then spent a couple days figuring out how to download music and then how to play it. And then I had to find the file. I’m pretty sure the first one I found was encoded at the lowest bitrate that was audible to human ears. I might as well have been back in 1984, listening to it on my shortwave radio from halfway around the world. A day or two later I found a slightly better file. And after that I found a version someone had ripped from a radio station in Buffalo, complete with a little bit of DJ talk immediately after, much like pretty much every song I recorded from radio to tape in the ’80s. Of course it was like two days later I began hearing it regularly on the radio in Kansas City. But the process was fun. And it helped that this was a great song. Maybe Pearl Jam’s last GREAT song.

(I had an excellent live version of “GTF” in my original post, but YouTube does not allow it to be played on outside pages. If you want to check that performance out, go here.)

“Come to the City” – The War on Drugs
YouTube suggested this last week. I’ve literally listened to it at least 25 times since then.