• day 307: Night Shift

    Night Shift, by Lucy Dacus.

    Really making an effort to clear out the women-singing-indie-rock backlog here, because that makes up such a massive percentage of my casual listening, and all my favorite songs from the past few years fit firmly in that category.

    This song is still Lucy Dacus’s biggest “hit” by “gets mentioned a lot on All Songs Considered” standards, and rightfully so, despite being, apparently, like more than six minutes long? Probably a lot better than some of the six-minute Dylan tracks I’ve recorded, frankly. The first part of the song is harder to get right, but the repeated chorus at the end is lots of fun.

  • day 306: Are You With Me Now

    Are You With Me Now, by Cate Le Bon.

    This song was probably the first one I heard from Cate Le Bon, but I listened to her a bunch in the past couple years and know absolutely nothing about her. OK, read Wikipedia, and now I know she’s Welsh! Her stuff is kinda moody and airy and is the kind of music you hear and think it might be from 1967 except it sounds like much more modern production. I’m into it.

    (And I didn’t do a great job with it, but it was worth trying.)

  • day 305: Solitary Daughter

    Solitary Daughter, by Bedouine.

    This song is an instant departure from spoopy season to more sensitive climes, as the weather cools on the first of November, and we recover from candy crashes in darkened rooms.

    2021 Jam of the Year contender, for me, except that it’s actually not from their new album and dates from 2017, even if this was the year I got into it.

  • day 304: I Turned Into A Martian

    I Turned Into A Martian, by The Misfits.

    Happy Halloween.

  • day 303: I Put A Spell On You

    I Put A Spell On You, by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.

    This song… is spoopy? I mean, not really. Kinda? A little. I think I somewhat unintentionally simplified it by cutting out a whole verse — there are only two, frankly, or one verse and chorus, depending on how you slice it.

  • day 302: Dreadful Wind and Rain

    Dreadful Wind and Rain, by Jerry Garcia & David Grisman.

    This song of course was gifted to me on one Garcia/Grisman record or another by my Deadhead-adjacent college roommate, though I think this burnt CD crossed hands years later. What’s better than a creepy murder ballad on a cold and windy rainy day? Lots of things. Lots of things are better, but this mission this weekend is spoopy songs. So this is what you get.

    It is predictably a #cover-of-a-cover, though really, more of a traditional with foggy origins.

  • day 301: People Are Strange

    People Are Strange, by The Doors.

    This song is not in my top 20 Doors songs, but it’s creepy, and reminds me of The Lost Boys, possibly my favorite movie just before I really got into movies.

    Halloween weekend, let’s get spoopy?

  • day 300: (I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone

    (I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone, by The Monkees.

    I literally can’t even. This is popped into my head — well — I was in the mood to angrily mash out some punk anthem, looked at Sex Pistols options, saw this song, got confused because I remembered them doing it but also remembered Minor Threat did it, came to understand they both did it, and learned the original (well, actually, no, but the 1960s hit version, at least) was by The Monkees, who, no, are not punk rock.

    Further disambiguation: Hendrix plays a completely different song called Stepping Stone.

    300. Three. Hundred.

  • day 299: Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

    Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains), by Arcade Fire.

    We’ve established that my family are big Arcade Fire fans, yes? Yes. This song is one Regine sings, mostly, which makes it even more of a favorite, especially when we’ve seen them live.

    “Dead shopping malls” is such a specific and visceral image for anyone my age, but “mountains beyond mountains” always takes me back to the dawn of our neighborhood shopping mall, and the fake (?) Spanish-adjacent tile-adjacent roof of the Macy’s towering over our old grocery store and library, and their parking lots which were previously the center of the errand universe. That mall lives, of course, because Miami, but others from just a few years earlier died in its wake, long before Amazon and everything else that would come.

    //

    I think this qualifies as some sort of emo acoustic cover, so I put on the hat.

  • day 298: Hot Dreams

    Hot Dreams, by Timber Timbre.

    I have no idea where I first heard this song, or what else this group has ever done, but it is loungey and hot and I’m glad it was in a good key for me, I think?

    //

    Feeling a little emboldened by the electric + microphone and nothing else approach.