What I’ve been listening to: Guys whining over their acoustic guitars
Spotify is that one relative who knows you ride a bike, and so every present they ever get you has bikes on it. Yes, Spotify, I listened to Iron & Wine in college. I also used to climb on the roofs of buildings and light off bottlerockets. You love a thing, you grow up a little, and you still love the thing, just in a less immediate way, in the way that recognizes that even though you’re not in that place anymore, it was a step on the path that brought you here.
Until the algorithm figures out that shade of human emotional nuance, it’s going to keep suggesting songs like these:
“Honey Hold Me,” Morningsiders
Ukulele, glockenspiel, acoustic guitar, croaky vocals — in the words of my sister, “This sounds like an Apple commercial.” Also the album art is a coffee ring with a lopsided doodle of a sunrise in the middle, which really tells you all you need to know. “Gonna hold my breath until you're here / ‘Cause I can't breathe without you.” I’ve broken up with guys for saying dumb shit like that to me.
Author’s note: After I finished writing this, I deleted this song from my playlist.
“White Daisy Passing,” Rocky Votolato
This guy is the Richard Bachman to Gregory Allen Isakov’s Stephen King. But that line about “evenings on the back deck of our first apartment” is kind of a heart-wrencher.
Also, dumb story, I used to work at a pizza restaurant with a bunch of hipsters, and this cool hipster girl who also worked there said she loved Rocky Votolato, and I was like, “Omg me tooooo” but I didn’t really, so now when I listen to this song, there’s this little part of me that’s like, “Hey cool girl from Pizzaria Vesuvius whose name I can’t remember: I’VE FINALLY ARRIVED.”
“Fine Foods Market,” Tim Barry
This song is funny. If I were walking down the Lower Broadway in Nashville and heard this guy playing, I’d walk in and have a fine time.
“Avoiding Catatonic Surrender,” Tim Barry
Ahh, but he only knows how to write the one song. I dug this one a little when I was still in Jersey, because it’s about being stuck in Jersey, but… I just lose patience for songs that whine about situations with easily attainable solutions. “I left for work directly after / for a 15 hour day / made just over a hundred bucks / none of which I ever saved.” Tim Barry, minimum wage in New Jersey is $13; you could literally get a job at McDonald’s and make twice what you’re making now.
“Old Ties and Companions,” Watchhouse
Good pickin’.
“Kick Out the Windows,” Parsonsfield
When I was 25, there is a 100 percent chance I would put this song on a mix CD for a guy I liked. Now I’m slightly embarrassed that I like a song with such bald, banal lyrics about rebellion — kicking out the windows, “lead[ing] the charge, at least, if not the way,” and going kicking and screaming into that good night. Ugh, and the building drums + violin that lead to him singing about truth: “If it’s a whisper / or a battle cryyyyyyyyy”?
I wonder at the intention behind the lyrics. I doubt he’s actually writing about something specific. Maybe he’s being intentionally vague to try capture that uniquely youthful feeling of rebellion — against expectations, capital-S Society, the bogeyman of getting older, the specter of vitality wasted and dreams unrealized.
Oh, let’s be real, he just had a triumphant-sounding riff and wrote some vague song about kickin’ out the WINDOWS for 20-somethings to make out to because market research shows that’s trending. I think I hate this song now.
THIS JACK JOHNSON SONG MAKES ME CRY.
Slowed-down, twangy folk. I can’t come up with anything sassy to say about Watchhouse songs; maybe they’re actually good!
I think I like this song because it reminds me of Ben Howard’s second album, which reminds me of hiking the Appalachian Trail (and is also just a good listen besides, if you’re willing to forgive some dad-rock vibes). The chorus is creepy though, and makes me not want to listen to the lyrics too closely lest I have a moment like the time I was really into this super-breathy female singer-songwriter version of “I’m on Fire” that I heard in yoga class and texted my boyfriend at the time to tell him “This song was really doin’ it to me right in yoga class today!” and then I listened to the lyrics and had to dump that boyfriend out of sheer embarrassment. (jk i broke up with him because, true story, he talked about obscure bridges too much.)