Summer 2022 Playlist Update: YouTube Playlist Now Available!

I have a short update on last week’s Summer Playlist post. For those who don’t use Spotify, I now have a YouTube playlist version available!





Just like with the Spotify playlist, there were a few songs that I could find official versions of (and I’d like to stick to those when possible, both to help those artists when possible and to minimize the chance of videos being taken down and affecting the overall list). 147 out of 153 songs on my list had something available. For the other six:

-Polite Fiction: “Arrow” and “Suzerainty” have SoundCloud uploads by the artist. The newer song, “Drive”, has an official upload though.

-Witch Cafe: The same situation as the last time. “Pumpkin Prince” and “Purikura” are on SoundCloud, although “Cauldron Bay” is still only on the artist’s Bandcamp page, as far as I can tell.

-gloss: “Secondhand Beauty Queen” has been uploaded to the band’s YouTube page, however nothing else from that EP (including “Daydreamin’”, which made my playlist) has been. I believe their Bandcamp page is still the only place that has any of those songs?

I’m not going to re-post the full text of last time, since it got a little long; if you want to read any of my thoughts while you listen, go check out the original article!

Music Monday: Summer 2022 Playlist

It is once again that time of year, the point late in the summer where I decide “yeah, that’s a good enough cut-off” and build a loosely-defined playlist of what I’ve been listening to lately. There’s a lot to cover in this year’s version; I feel like I spent a lot of time browsing new music the past few months, and I had a lot of thoughts to write out about some of it, so let’s dive right into things.

(As a note: not every song I included here is on Spotify. The iZme songs can be found here, here, and here. Meanwhile, two of the Witch Café songs can be found here and here; however, I think “Cauldron Bay” may only be publicly posted on the artist’s Bandcamp page?).

9/21 Update: There's now also a YouTube Playlist version, for those who would prefer that:

It's still missing the Witch Café songs, as well as one of the gloss songs and two Polite Fiction songs (although those can be found here and here).

Let’s start with the big guns: my pick for Album of the Summer is The Kick, by Foxes. I listened to her debut album Glorious back in 2014, and it was fine. I didn’t revisit it a ton, so there’s a lot of it that kind of faded from my memory, but there were definitely stand-out parts, like the dramatic timpani rolls and stuttered vocals of “Youth” and the layered, Florence + the Machine-like vocals on the chorus of “Holding onto Heaven”. But I ended up missing out on her 2016 follow-up, and probably would have missed out on The Kick had my brother not sent it to me.

I kind of really regret not checking out All I Need, though, because I really did not see her swing into Carly Rae Jepsen-style dance-y synthpop on The Kick coming, let alone her skill at the style. This really is exactly what I want out of a summer album, just non-stop sing-along choruses and sparkling synth hooks for days.

Every one of these could be a standout single on a normal album, and it makes the 40-minute album breeze along. I could run on a loop without getting tired of it (and I suppose I have, to some extent), and I could pick any combination of three songs for it (my unofficial limit on a single album’s representation for these lists) and not feel bad (although it was difficult to ignore the pulsing excitement of opener “Sister Ray” or the absolutely cathartic drop in the bridge of “Potential”). With Carly pushing her next album into October, I am so glad this was here to pick up the slack as my soundtrack of the summer. And in the meantime, I definitely need to go back in her discography and see what I missed.

 

Music Monday: Summer 2021 Playlist

Labor Day weekend traditionally marks the end of summer, and since I’m on top of things this year, it means that I actually planned ahead and got my annual Summer Playlist of the Year ready for it. Like in years past, I tried to keep it to more recent releases, although since I don’t hear everything the minute that it comes out, there are a few songs from 2020 or earlier as well, but it is generally stuff that I listened to this summer specifically. In addition to the playlist, I’ve also included a few stray thoughts about some of the songs and albums I included. The full listing in text is also at the end of the list.

[Spotify Link]

Music Monday: Summer 2020 Playlist

It's been a while since my last playlist, but as I mentioned recently, there's been a lot of good music released lately, so I feel like this would be a good time for a comeback. Not everything on it technically came out this year since I can't listen to everything the exact moment it comes out (although I did keep it entirely to at least "modern" acts), but it is at least all stuff that I've been listening to over the spring and summer, and this is as much a time capsule for me to look back on as anything else, so it makes the cut. I've also included a few thoughts about some of the songs included below.

[Spotify Link]

Quarantine Music Recs: SUPERBLOOM by MisterWives

I've mostly stuck to recommending video games for these quarantined times, but there's been a plethora of good music coming out these last few months as well. Maybe I'll release a short summer playlist at some point, but in the meantime, I want to give a short shout-out to one of the albums I've really liked.

MisterWives has always released music that reminds me of summer (I even included "Chasing This" from their last album on my 2017 Summer Playlist). Three years later, and they've finally released their third album, SUPERBLOOM, and it's looking like a strong contender for my Album of the Summer (which is saying a lot, given how much I've liked new entries from some of my other favorite acts, like The Naked and Famous, Neon Trees, The Midnight, Carly Rae Jepsen...).

Some of it is that MisterWives is always great at producing bright and exciting pop jams, and SUPERBLOOM definitely has its share of those, between songs like "love me true" and the title track. But there's also a deep tinge of sadness to the whole thing, which makes the whole thing feel especially well-suited to this summer, in particular.

The entire thing is pretty clearly framed around a recent break up, but entirely in retrospect. The first song on the album is literally "the end", and it moves on from there, nineteen full tracks of moving on from massive heartbreak. And consequently, the emotional arc of it is a little less straightforward. This isn't working through the five stages of grief; this is starting from the perspective of someone who is already at the acceptance stage of things, and moving on from there.

That’s not to say it’s not also still sad, or that the sadness of the breakup isn’t there, it’s just that the focus is more about moving on, processing your feelings, and trying to stay positive. The knowledge of the breakup adds a tinge of sadness to things, but it’s also framed positively, and it does feel like there’s growth over the course of the album.

It probably also helps that SUPERBLOOM covers a lot of ground; the whole thing is 19 tracks. It never feels too long, though, coming in at just over an hour despite the sheer volume of songs. And most of those are MisterWives’ usual brand of energetic, uplifting pop, which keeps the pace up.

Also notably, it feels like the musical equivalent of “pitching backwards”; rather than save most of the more downtempo songs for the back-half of the album like pop records usually do, they’re more to the front-middle here, which gives things a shot in the arm at the halfway through. And the last quarter in particular has four of my favorite songs on the album (“decide to be happy”, “muse”, plus the aforementioned “love me true” and “SUPERBLOOM”), which makes for a big bang to close out on.

Like I said, there’s been a lot of good music I’ve been listening to this summer, and maybe I’ll do a fuller playlist post later on going more in depth. And maybe my opinion will change with more listens, but for now, nothing this summer has hit me as hard as SUPERBLOOM.

Music Monday: Summer 2018 Playlist

I’ve been listening to a lot of great music this past summer, and I wanted to do something to highlight it. The end of summer seemed like a good time to commemorate it, and I struggled with ways to cut it down and focus on some select songs or artists, but eventually, I just decided to go with a long, uncut list to get a wider scope. That meant cutting the writing part of this so this didn’t balloon into a novella, but I think the music is strong enough to speak for itself (and maybe there will be more writing on some of it to come).

If you find something you really like, I definitely encourage looking into these artists more. I didn’t want the list to spiral even more out of control, so I had to put some limits in pace, but a lot of these are snippets of really strong albums, or artists who are newer and could do with some new listeners. Take a listen!