April

This month was defined by my dad's influence, covers + remakes, and mostly a springtime trip to New York City.

Amsterdam (with the Colorado Symphony), Gregory Alan Isakov

As I get older, I slowly gain more of an appreciation for the orchestra. It helps having friends who understand it on a level that I don’t, and with enough of their explanation, I’ve begun to see the same beauty they do in symphonic movements and harmonies. I was introduced to this song by a good friend of mine (a self-declared “music nerd” whom I once fought on that title but have since learned to embrace as an educational force when it comes to classical or vocal compositions) who put up with me refusing to listen to this version of it, studying only the original for weeks. I wanted to give myself the full impact when I finally heard the orchestra. As crazy as it drove Mical, I stand by that decision: the first time I heard it, I got full-body chills. The accents, the movement, the textures… the orchestra brings this song to life in a way not many songs get the chance to be. It feels more than just musical, it feels magical and grand, almost divine, like a painting or a storm. Isakov’s voice carries like a steady stream through something that is more than just an orchestra or a folk song, but somehow both and neither. It’s beautiful. It romanticizes each moment it plays in; as I waltzed through the shelves at The Strand, it played in my headphones and the stories felt alive. 

Witchita Lineman, Maniacal 4 

My dad has spent the last few months giving me periodic updates on the book he’s been reading, which he finished this month. It’s called The Wichita Lineman: Searching in the Sun for the World’s Greatest Unfinished Song. In a passion you can perhaps tell by now is genetic, he’s been making a playlist of every version of Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” he can find as he reads. He recently played a few of his favorites for me, and while I was taking my usual annoyed-teenager approach and reluctantly sat down to get through it and leave, I was stopped in my tracks by this one. The Maniacal 4, a trombone quartet with only 2,000 monthly listeners, managed to create one of the most stunning musical experiences of my year. A trombone quartet is not something you come across often, but goddamn if it shouldn’t be. I am a lifelong sucker for horn sections, and this feels like a horn section crafted as lace, delicate and intentional and complex and beautiful. Easily one of my favorite dad finds. A must-listen for anyone, though I’d recommend hearing the original first so you can appreciate just how phenomenal of an instrumental cover it is. 

Lovesick, Alice Phoebe Lou

Someone very dear to me recently made me a playlist, which is perhaps the highest form of love. Each song on it was special in its own way, but as I listened over and over again, this one emerged as my favorite. Alice Phoebe Lou has this magical quality to her music–something just too out of focus to name, but that’s what makes it so beautiful. It’s full of color and warmth, like a hug from someone you love. “Lovesick”’s full instrumentation amplifies that feeling even more than some of her other work; soft rhythms like a blanket, guitar purring like a cat. The lyrics are a love letter that borders on bittersweet, but Lou rather declares that even if she has to “hold this love alone until it passes through,” it doesn’t “paint her blue.” It’s love so strong that just the feeling is enough, that even if the object of her affections were to never feel the same, the joy she gets from their presence would make knowing them worth it anyway. It’s a beautiful concept, and one I’m familiar with in my own life as someone prone to unrequited love for incredible people. When talking about the song, a friend of mine put it once as someone’s presence–their mere existence–brightening everything, and I feel that way about a lot of people I love. The song captures that feeling magnificently both musically and lyrically. 

Dancing in the Club - MJ Lenderman Version, This is Lorelai & MJ Lenderman

I recently went back to find the original version of this song, and it was a strange experience. The original sounds like a cover. But I don’t think that’s just because of my order of discovery–this was always meant to be an indie rock song. It has the lyrical stylings of old country or folk, the kind of storytelling direct to the human heart that tells it as it is. Lenderman delivers it equally timelessly, like this could be sung by a fire or in the corner of a party or on a festival stage all the same. It’s one of those songs that simply makes sense, the kind that makes you question how it took this long for someone to write it. With that, there’s still this funny juxtaposition of such an old-sounding song revolving around a hook about the club–but in a strange way, it works. Maybe that’s part of the timelessness. Human experiences that hurt just as bad in the lights of the club as in the dust of the fields. I haven’t checked out Lenderman’s solo record yet despite the acclaim, but I might have to add it to my summer list if this is any representation. 

How Bad Do U Want Me, Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga has reached a bit of a strange point in her career where it seems like she’s not sure where to go but back. Granted, Lady Gaga’s “back” is still far better than most people’s forward after so many years of artistic development, but it still puts her in an odd position that makes her decades-spanning career feel long instead of worthy. Her most recent album, Mayhem, is a bit all over the place in this regard–there are songs that feel like her early work on The Fame, songs that feel like she was reaching beyond her own past to shoot for Bowie or Prince, and interestingly, songs that don’t feel like her at all. “How Bad Do U Want Me” lands solidly in the last category. It’s been compared most often to the sound of Taylor Swift’s 1989, but I think that, while fitting, this is bordering on unfair to 1989. The music centers around this little 80s-style synth hook, but it’s too heavily relied upon and not interesting enough to hold such weight. When the song is eventually built out in the chorus, it feels empty. Lyrically, it feels more like a collection of clichés than it does an authentic song. Gaga employs a number of stereotypical details (“You like my hair/My ripped up jeans/You like the bad girl I got in me”) rather than personal ones to craft an aesthetic story. It’s a lot less effective because it comes off as far less authentic (especially with her employing this strange style of singing that feels like it’s meant to imitate Taylor herself without understanding what makes her work–that is, her authenticity). She tells instead of shows, which fails to make a compelling story.  But with all that said, I still play it all the time. I believe this song is a bastardization of the Taylor-Swift-Jack-Antonoff-modern-pop-sound that I care a lot about–but at the same time, it’s such a strong formula that even when followed too closely, it works. It’s still a fun song, and I included it on this list both to critique it and because it’s one of my top-played songs this month. It’s not complex, but it’s certainly a good time. 

Paint It White, Kayla Pincus

It’s always an honor to get to write about personal friends of mine, especially when their music is hitting on the same level as their much older peers that appear on this list. Kayla Pincus is both a close friend and perhaps my favorite emerging artist, whose discography I’ve been lucky enough to hear live so many times that I know all the words. In addition, she’s my co-president at the record label, a project that’s finally about to come to an end as we move on with our lives and pass it on to the next generation. That’s why it feels fitting for her to make her first real appearance as an artist on this list now, just as she’s preparing to go full-time in the music world (or as full-time as one can be while also studying at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts). “Paint It White” is her first single in a while, and though initially one of my lesser favorites among her work (though, to be fair, a bad Kayla Pincus song is still miles above most other music), I’ve grown to love it on record. Her vocals haunted me through the depths of the New York subway, echoing around my head like the tunnels I was in until I couldn’t escape them, and I had to put it on again. It’s a beautiful song in which she pulls a tempo change on each chorus, building up and down again much like the push-and-pull cycle she describes in the lyrics. She even builds up to a key change at one point, and it’s euphoric–I can’t recommend this song live enough. It’s 5 minutes, but the constant movement ensures it never feels overly long, just rich enough to revel in its own musicality. Pincus is one of the most exciting artists of the next generation, and I can’t wait to see where she goes. 

Je M’appelle, Shygirl/Club Shy

There is a particular word that’s gained popularity in the mainstream out of the depths of black + queer ballroom culture in the past year, and it feels fitting to use here: cunt. Originally a rather vulgar slang for the vagina–described as “The most heavily tabooed word of all English words” by author Huey Rawson–it’s since been reclaimed by certain marginzalied communities to mean something of a compliment. It’s taken as a declaration of feminine power, a resolute pride in the female rather than a sharp insult. It’s all this that made it the first word that came to mind the first time I heard Shygirl’s “Je M’appelle.” From the first line (“Call me by my name/Put respect on my check, bitch”), it’s an assertion of her own power in her body. It’s not a particularly fast song, preferring instead to use the mid-tempo beat to take up space and make you wait for her to continue instead. My favorite part is in the chorus, when she begins to quote Khia’s famous “My Neck, My Back (Lick It)” but doesn’t actually finish the line, instead leaving it at “My neck, my back, all of that.” It’s a pronouncement of dominance that leaves the task of figuring out how to satisfy her to the listener instead of making her take the time to spell it out herself. It’s sexy as hell. Musically, it’s a solid bitch track if a little simple, but I think the idea is to let the character of Shygirl be the focus rather than the track itself. It’s part of her second EP under her project known as Club Shy, an ode to 90s + 00s club sounds but with a modern electronic twist. The whole EP is pretty good, and I’m going to have to go back and listen to the first one sometime soon. You can also find her doing great work with Charli xcx on my favorite track off the brat remix album last October.  

AWARDS SEASON + Short Story, Bon Iver

Bon Iver is someone I’ve been vaguely aware of for a long time, but never actually dove into. I decided my flight to New York this month was as good a time as any to give an album of his a proper listen, so as soon as SABLE, fABLE came out, it went on the priority list. It’s a beautiful record full of lush sounds and soft production, driven by contrast and complement to Bon Iver’s deep, rich voice. It picks up quite a bit after the first four songs, but it’s that point of transition that interested me most–the final ballad of Act 1, and the incredible interlude that opens Act 2 and bridges the gap between them. “AWARDS SEASON” is a ballad that opens simply with Iver over a quiet tone, just brushing the edge of a cappella. Over the course of 5 minutes, it builds in and out of abstract instrumentation, feeling much like either the beginning of something or the end, perhaps as the band is still warming up or as they’re settling down and packing up after a show. The lyrics are more a poem than a song, telling of a love complex and lost but never completely forgotten. It’s rife with AP-level literary devices that color his tale into something far from a fable–a story with no clear lesson but instead an infinite amount of details to eternally pore over, much like a failed relationship. The song that continues it, tying it from the end of Iver’s original SABLE EP into the full record, is called “Short Story.” It’s a two-minute prologue of sorts, which is an odd thing to come after a conclusion, but it takes what seemed to be the endings that “AWARDS SEASON” introduced and opens them back up again, almost as a response (“January ain’t the whole world” or “You’re never really really on your own” or even “You will never be complete…You have not yet gone too deep”). Musically, the instruments are united in a way they aren’t in “AWARDS,” which stabilizes it a bit, even as it’s still an abstract piece of art more than a song. It incorporates more digital elements, too, giving it a somewhat dimension-transcending feel that creates a new sonic space for the rest of the album to live in. There are many more songs I considered putting on this list, and it’s a great record for audio nerds and poets to enjoy. 

Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl, Maggie Rogers & Sylvan Esso

This is the second time a cover of Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl” has come across this list, which is an odd coincidence. But I think it almost makes it more interesting–they are two entirely different takes on the song, and I have extensive thoughts on both. I think that the first, yeule’s version for the soundtrack of I Saw The TV Glow, is a lot more true to the spirit of the original song. I’d even go so far as to say that the reasons I like this version have nothing to do with the legacy of the song itself; if anything, I only like it when I’m able to separate the two. I think that the nostalgic heartbreak and hope of the original lyrics are lost entirely in Rogers’ take, as she opts instead for a more upbeat song that feels contradictory to the source. That said, it’s a wonderful upbeat song. The production is bubbly in a way I’ve never heard before, and it’s mixed with the perfect balance of textures to make it a treasure for the ears. Listening to this song feels a bit like the auditory equivalent of sticking one’s hand in a bucket of Orbeez, which is an excellent thing. I don’t know much about Sylvan Esso, but I’ve been a ran of Rogers for the entirety of my teenage years, and as a current seventeen year-old (or I was when I put this on the list, shhhh), she continues to be emblematic of the big feelings that come with emerging young adulthood. While I think this cover does a bad job at capturing nostalgia, it does an excellent job at capturing a different adolescent feeling–the taste of the future’s freedom. I played this while walking up and down the blocks of New York City by the school I’ll be attending this fall, and the euphoric dream state Rogers captures here was fitting for the kind of seventeen that spends her nights impatiently imagining the adventure of her future instead of dwelling on the innocene of her past. 

Land of Make Believe, Chuck Mangione & Esther Satterfield

Like most seventeen-year-olds, I don’t often listen to my father. But as we’ve already learned once on this list, I really should do that more often. This was another track he insisted on playing me, one he said was from his childhood that I just had to hear. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but from Esther Satterfield’s opening note, I was hooked. Her voice commands the audience in a very musical theater way, and I was entranced into wanting to hear where her character would go. But then, 1 minute and 27 seconds in, a bass line suddenly comes into the forefront–and the whole vibe changes. Then there’s drums, and then horns, and then a string orchestra, and the song builds and builds until it creates a whole land of musical make-believe that’s just gorgeous. Speaking of gorgeous, the tone on the trumpet solo about 3 minutes in is just phenomenal. There’s a level to which jazz can feel inaccessible at times, but I think this song captures the kind of feeling it can bring to everyone–sometimes it’s just about rhythm, and the way the rhythm makes you feel. This rhythm makes me feel like the main character of my own fairytale, and listening to it in full while wandering around a springtime Central Park bursting with colorful blooms and the scent of lilac on the breeze has to be one of the best musical experiences I’ve ever had. Sometimes good music is timeless–I don’t think this song has lost a thing since my dad did the same back at his own seventeen years of age. 

What Was That, Lorde

After four years, Lorde is making her return. But perhaps eight is a more accurate number, since this doesn’t feel like the woman who made 2021’s hippie, oceanic Solar Power–this is a return of the girl who created the blood, sweat, and elated highs of Melodrama, one of my favorite albums of all time. Much like the original record, this era of Lorde is planted firmly in New York City–lucky for me, as I’ll be moving there this fall. Only a few days before my visit this month, Lorde made a surprise appearance in Washington Square Park to play her song for the people (she’s always been one to take her music out in public–this interview where she talks about playing Melodrama in headphones around NYC to see how it interacted with the city has stuck with me for years). But for all the publicity, “What Was That” feels strangely intimate–it’s a declarative song, but one that feels written in a journal entry at three in the morning. It’s full of vivid details that tear apart this relationship through a montage of MDMA and makeout sessions and midnights in the city, all memories turned sour by the eventual unexplained disappearance of the love that produced them in the first place. It’s a synth-driven track, much like its sister album, even daring to use a particular synth that bears great resemblance to a controversial one on “Hard Feelings/Loveless” (my favorite song from the original album). It’s a return to form for the once-queen of pop, timed perfectly as pop music is having a cultural moment like never before and grasping desperately for its new queen to take the throne over from Charli xcx’s “brat summer.” I can’t wait for the record that will follow. 

25!, Bomb The Music Industry!

When I began working on this month’s list, I was about 3 weeks away from my 18th birthday. Even though it doesn’t feel real, it’s a big moment–one of those things where, at least on paper, my life will ostensibly never be the same again. In this song off one of Bomb The Music Industry’s old Brooklyn records, Scrambles, Jeff Rosenstock struggles with a similar thing: turning 25. It’s a strange age, to my understanding; one where you are undeniably an adult, but realize very quickly that’s not something you know how to be… a fitting parallel to my own point in life. Rosenstock struggles with still needing his mom to take him to the doctor and the simple realization that he doens’t even have a wallet of his own (a thing I’ve been meaning to get around to myself lately), as he describes the arrogance of being 25 making him feel like a 10 year-old throwing a tantrum. It’s a feeling reflected in the music, harsh and euphoric and chaotic and full of energy, but seeming unsure where to throw it. Out of everything I listened to on my last trip to New York City before I move across the country for the first time in my life, this one felt the most fitting to the way it felt to be walking streets I knew I was going to grow to know like the back of my hand. A strange kind of reverse deja-vu, the feeling when you know something is coming even if you don’t know exactly how you’ll get there. Rosenstock knows real adulthood is chasing him down like a relentless monster of time, but he doesn’t know exactly where to go from here to confront it. It’s something I understand well. And as the soles of my shoes hit the pavement in time with the opening piano melody of “25!,” it felt like the start of something. 

Forever Is A Feeling, Lucy Dacus

The night before I flew to New York, I was scrolling Instagram far too late and I came across a post from jasmine.4.t about being in town the following night. In a delirious, sleep-deprived state, I came up with a plan: I worked out that I could make it to Radio City Music Hall from the Newark Airport just in time to catch her opening that evening for Lucy Dacus. I listened to Dacus’s new record on the plane to prepare, something I’d been meaning to do for a while but hadn’t gotten around to (in spite of her perhaps holding a spot on the long list of my favorite artists). But I’m glad I finally did it, because it turns out the record is beautiful. And yes, I did make it in time–she was incredible live. 

On my initial listen, the biggest thing I came away with is that this is a concept record about what it’s like to fall in love with Julien Baker. The boygenius co-stars recently revealed their relationship publicly, confirming years-long rumors and marking one of the more exciting celebrity lesbian headlines in the last few years. But the record takes it from a headline into a first-person narrative; Dacus gives us the opportunity to experience falling in love just as she did. To me, it’s an important detail that she doesn’t actually say the words “I love you” until the final song–that’s how strong of a writer she is, because we still know it from the very first line. My favorites include “Talk,” “Forever Is A Feeling,” “Mogliandi” (one I found out later is actually a platonic love song towards her other boygenius bandmate, Phoebe Bridgers), “Lost Time,” and my ultimate favorite, “Limerence.” The last one has melodies like I’ve never heard before that keep me coming back time and time again, it’s beautiful and it’s heartbreaking and it’s the most complex song on the record in spite of being mostly a simple piano ballad. Dacus’s writing skills shine bright on the whole record, as it could be a chapbook just as easily as it could be an album. Her ability to weave details into a broader narrative right under your nose is something remarkable that I’d like to spend time working on myself. Forever Is A Feeling is one of the most exquisite love albums I’ve ever heard, and I understand what she means by the title. Love takes you out of time, out of reality, and into only bliss. And for 43 minutes, Lucy Dacus offers you that same feeling told through journalistic anecdotes about the journey of two people, each high and low coming with the underlying security that it all works out in the end. It’s the best kind of love–the kind that you know will come back time and time again. 

you can listen to this month's playlist here: