August

This month was defined by the return to school, music recommendations, and one very special playlist.

Frog Rock, Remi Wolf

This song was the last cut I made from July’s list, but I knew I wanted to save it for after my last year of high school began. Something about it is so August–it feels like the end of summer and the return to real life, but in a bittersweet way. For me, it hits right at the moment of transition between the end of my childhood and the beginning of the rest of my life. I find the themes of the past being just a little harder to move on from than expected fit well. Musically, I also think it’s one of her finest. It’s the ultimate Remi Wolf song, encompassing all the best parts of the unique sound she’s crafted for herself. Revisiting this song as I started writing this list, I found myself turning it all the way up and lipsyncing the hell out of it alone in my house. I can’t remember the last time I let go and had that much fun listening to a song. 

Love Can Be…, Vince Staples

In the two weeks leading up to August 6th, I listened to 13 albums. It was all in research for the first of the three big music projects I do yearly: my dad’s birthday playlist. There was only one album left I didn’t have time to get through, but I knew I wanted to include on the mix–Vince Staples’ Big Fish Theory. The night of making the playlist, I skimmed through every song trying to find something to use, and “Love Can Be…” caught my ear. Listening to it, I got the idea I ended up basing the whole project around (What can love be? How do we tell that through music?). It ended up becoming the title of the playlist! Since then, I’ve listened to this song a ton. It’s a dynamic track that moves smoothly through different textures and vibes. One part rap, one part dance, one part early Childish Gambino, one part KCRW. Definitely worth checking out if you want to hear something interesting, fresh, and fun. 

Love’s Refrain, Moses Sumney 

On the flip side, “Love’s Refrain” is the song that closes this year’s birthday playlist. I structured the project as if it were a novel, with a prologue, chapters, a plot twist, and an epilogue: this song. It does the hard job of having to follow “Concorde,” which we’ll talk about later. I couldn’t let the playlist end on that note, and when I found this song off Moses Sumney’s new EP, it fit perfectly. It reflects on all the ideas I tried to bring up in the playlist–the different forms of love–with the conclusion that ultimately, we can let these stories go and just love in the moment. On top of that, the instrumentation is almost entirely just looped sounds made by Sumney. The layers are rich and gorgeous, and Sumney’s voice is as transfixing as ever. It served as a beautiful closer to a project I’m proud of. If you can, check out this whole EP. It was almost this month’s album. Moses Sumney has some excellent experimental stuff on it. 

Aggy, Coco & Clair Clair

I take music recommendations from anywhere I can get them, and one of my favorite sources is interviews with or social media posts from artists I already love. I could swear this one came from an interview, but after extensive digging, I could not find it, so it was probably just an Instagram story. Regardless, at some point recently, Clairo got asked what she was listening to and she replied that “Aggy” by Coco & Clair Clair had been her go-to getting-ready song lately. I added it to my playlist to check out. It didn’t catch me much at first, but I found myself listening to it more and more as the weeks of August dragged on. It’s both simple and a little weird, but in the perfect way. When I didn’t want to listen to music, I found myself reaching for this song. It lit up a different part of my brain, the same part that enjoys long hours alone on the metro and overpriced drinks. It’s a song made to move through a place to, whatever that means to you. Especially if that place is just a little bit cool, and just a little bit pretentious about it. Check it out if you have a walk through Culver City or the West Village coming up. 

Whirlpool, Maude Latour

I actually wrote a full-length review of this album (woohoo!), but I wanted to make sure one of the songs ended up here too. This is a list of music I enjoy hearing in my daily life and therefore is separate from my critique. I chose “Whirlpool,” because out of the whole record, it felt the most unexpected. I had heard other singles, all of which were very typical Latour 2014-pop-inspired (which I love), but something told me to avoid this one until the full album was released. I don’t regret it. The first time I heard it, I texted my friend Ariadne (the most devoted Maude Latour fan in my life) simply, “whirlpool is GOOD.” It’s a trippy pop song, featuring liquified synths, dissonant diminished 4ths, and complete with a “Tears”-esque scream building up to the last chorus, before breaking like a wave on the sand. As you might be able to tell, I also think this is the moment where the album is most aligned with the water metaphors. It’s a very cool song that I quite enjoy, and I think it represents the best of the positive evolution Latour is gearing towards with Sugar Water. 

River Deep - Mountain High, Ike & Tina Turner

One big project I’m going to be working on this year is my senior capstone. In case you’re not familiar, it’s a giant year-long research project that attempts to answer one major question (in this case, a musically inclined one). For mine, I’ll be writing about the same question I’ve spent so much of my life studying: what is pop music? The first step of this is examining pop’s evolution throughout history, starting in the 1800s and on. Recently, I hit the point in my research where I’m looking at 50s/60s rock and roll, which is what led me to Tina Turner. Although her career wouldn’t find its peak until the 80s, she began in 1960 with her husband at the time, Ike Turner. I knew of “River Deep Mountain High” of course, from its many iterations over the years, but I didn’t realize until I came across it that I had never actually heard the original recording before. It’s a completely different arrangement (produced by Phil Spector*) that sounds so much more gorgeous to my ears than any of the other versions I’ve heard. It’s a much softer sound than Turner’s most well-known, but I think it complements her early voice well for a reason similar to what I’ve seen said about Billie Eilish in the modern day: the softer you are the rest of the time, the more powerful those moments of vocal strength become. Give this version a listen if you want to hear the best kind of sounds that came out of the 60s. 

* It feels wrong to write this without the important context that both Ike Turner and Phil Spector are known for being terrible people (a violent husband and a serial killer, and both known to have abused women throughout their entire lives). This adds all the more weight, to not only Tina Turner’s story, but also this song. The fact that she shines so brightly on a track where she is surrounded by such horrible men is a testament to her exceptional power.  

All Matter - Live, Bilal, Questlove, Robert Glasper & Burniss Travis

Some of the best music in my life comes through men named Victor Cyrus-Franklin. In this case, I suppose, it can be attributed to both my friend and his father, since each had a hand in this album coming my way. It’s a live album recorded at a performance space in Brooklyn, presenting music legends (Questlove, Robert Glasper, Common) and upcoming talents (an incredible 23-year-old bassist named Burniss Travis) as peers in a phenomenal concert. I don’t listen to as much jazz as I should, because sometimes instrumental music is trickier for my brain to latch onto. But Bilal provides silky smooth vocals that provide just enough structure for me to remember and complement the other players just as well as an instrument. I loved this record, and so did my father, who chose “‘All Matter’ is really good” as the first thing to say to me after not seeing each other for a few days. When he said “All Matter,” in that case, he confused it with the name of the whole record. But that’s because it was the song I chose to send him after hearing the full thing myself. He found it so great, it inspired him to listen to the rest of the album without my influence. It actually fits with the theme of his birthday playlist: the lyrics are centered around the repeated question, “What is love?” and Bilal’s response, “Cool on the outside, hot in the middle.”

Concorde, Black Country, New Road

Black Country, New Road’s Ants From Up There is one of those projects that captures a magic most will never access more than once in their lives. In a grim sort of way, however. Lead singer (and guitarist) Isaac Wood announced his departure from the band shortly after the release of this album, citing mental health struggles. When you’ve heard the record, this isn’t surprising. There’s a kind of superhuman tragedy in his voice, a recording of the lowest point in a life. It’s heartbreaking. And it’s beautiful. As history has proved time and time again, pain makes the best art. “Concorde” is my favorite example of this. It’s a stunning, slowly building epic centered around the metaphor of the fastest plane in the world. If you want to understand how music can truly capture feeling, listen to this song. 

Imaginal Disk, Magdalena Bay

As I mentioned before, this was not supposed to be the album of the month. I had Moses Sumney’s Sophcore EP already picked out by the time this one was released But it was one of those rare, magical albums that make up most of those that end up on these lists: every song’s ending had me on the edge of my seat to hear what the next one could be. It’s a type of album I don’t come across often, but that makes them even more special. That’s why, when I heard this album, I knew it was going to be a pain in my ass, because it was going to have to be on this list.

In spite of the short time we’ve had together, I think I have a good handle on what makes it so great. It’s the second album I’ve heard from Magdalena Bay, and I’ve talked about before how I’m predisposed to love their work. But there’s a difference between loving a sound and loving a project, and as many great songs as there were on the last record, something about it always felt unfinished to me. That’s the opposite of the case on Imaginal Disk. Every detail is thought out and each song feels designed precisely to fit with the others. If you were to add or take out any song, it would become a less good album. Each transition is so smooth you might not even notice it, and the record is filled with interludes that supplement its flow. It pivots at the perfect times from soft to harsh, loud to quiet, wistful to sexy. The lyrics reference imagery heavily (see “Vampire in the Corner” or “Angel on a Satellite”), recalling the biggest ideas and greatest imaginal creatures of society. My favorite part is that the opening and closing songs utilize the same melody, forming a beautiful and conclusive circle to the story of Matthew Lewin and Mica Tenenbaum. If you’ve ever had any interest in synth pop (or just want to hear a great record), please check it out. It is, in all ways, the perfect example of what an album should be.

check out the playlist on spotify here: