August

This month was defined by introspective writing, bittersweetness, and my move to New York City.

New York (Saint in the City) - EP Version, The Academy Is…

This song is another from the playlist Braiden (one of my best friends) made for me as a graduation gift. I moved to New York City this month, and this song didn’t quite click for me until I landed. But as I began walking through my new home, it hit me: it’s one of those songs that seems almost as if it was written for me personally. I remember on one of my first days here, I put it on as I was leaving my dorm, and the line about “You laugh at the thought/On the elevator down” came on just as I stepped into the elevator descending from my 12th-floor home. The chorus puts better into words than I could what Braiden and I have been trying to understand for months now: “With you at your best/And promises kept/She’d rather stay here with you/On the laziest afternoons with you.” No matter how many times I call or send letters or keep my promises, nothing will be the same as the magical last few years we’ve had together. They exist now only in a haze of teenage dreams that I’ve left behind. “Lost in Pacific time with the sound of a dial tone/Let the memories count the miles and never be forgotten” are probably the best two lines I could’ve heard right now. They’ve been a comfort to me as I reckon with the friends I left behind, and “All that [I] fear has happened.” What does it mean that this thing I’ve been looking forward to and yet so afraid of for the last decade is finally here? How am I different now? I know they’ve been a comfort to him, too, because he scribbled them in blue paint on a pair of shoes to wear for his last year of high school. We may be lost in Pacific time, but the sound of a dial tone and The Academy Is… will still tie us together. 

Jealous, Beyoncé

On the plane ride over, I slept so much that I only got through one album: Beyoncé’s self-titled, one that’s been on my list for years. I understand why it’s a legendary record, and I knew I would like it on the critical front, but I didn’t expect to enjoy it personally as much as I did. She uses far more of a certain bass-heavy synth + drum machine combination than I expected, and it captures my ears in the most perfect way. Of those songs, my favorites were “Haunted” and “Jealous,” and while “Haunted” is perhaps the most complex of the two, “Jealous” emerged as my personal winner. On first listen, it’s a classic song about the trials and tribulations of romantic relationships, but on the second, it’s heart-wrenchingly vulnerable. The very first line is barely sung, spoken softly as if she can barely get it out: “I’m in my penthouse half naked/I cook this meal for you naked.” Her delivery invokes the vulnerability that is often passed over within sexuality–to be naked is the most vulnerable state one can be in. It begins set on an evening when her lover isn’t coming home, and she grows more and more jealous and angry in her restlessness. But then it transitions to her action in response, one of fighting fire with fire: she pulls out old dresses and starts going out to make him feel what she does. It begins with the line “Sometimes I wanna walk in your shoes,” but instead she puts him in hers, closing the verse with a coy “Don’t be jealous.” The refrain that exists throughout every chorus (“If you’re keeping your promise, I’m keeping mine”) shifts from a declaration of union to a threat of equal demise: but if you break it, so will I. As we reach the bridge, we return to her soft-spoken singing as she hates him until she hates herself too, trying to pass it off as “just being human” in a tone with no conviction at all. Beyoncé’s ability to convey the nuance of these double meanings solely through her vocal delivery is the kind of thing that makes her one of the greatest living artists. “Jealous” is an excellent song, and I’ve had many great moments listening to it with the wind of the subway in my hair, the synths blasting along with the rails. 

Helena, My Chemical Romance

I’ve known this song passively for many years now, but something in me called for it these past few weeks. My reinterest was perhaps spurred by seeing the band live with my friend Anina at the end of July, which introduced me to a few other songs from this album that I really like. But even then, it seemed out of nowhere that “Helena” began haunting me. Some part of me wanted to hear it over and over as I walked for the first time through streets I will know as well as my hometown by the end of this year. Something in that moment that the band breaks into the chorus felt fitting for the heft of the emotions that come with starting a new life. It’s euphoric and tragic at the same time, like when the death at the end of the story you always knew was coming finally arrives and hurts anyway. The song itself discusses the passing of the two Way brothers’ grandmother, and her ascension from this life into the next as told through their reaction to it. So perhaps that’s why I found it so fitting: saying so long & goodnight to the person I was before I came here. 

Moody’s Mood, Aretha Franklin

I couldn’t be in New York City without jazz. My father raised me to understand that this is the city of it; if not the birthplace, the permanent address. I’ve already seen one jazz show (Dizzy Gillespie Big Band at Blue Note–it was incredible), but I’ve also picked up my day-to-day jazz listening. My favorite of that rotation has been a version of Moody’s Mood, originally a ballad by Eddie Jefferson based on a saxophone improvisational solo by James Moody. But this version, recorded by Aretha Franklin midway through her career, turns it into a whirlwind love declaration with speed and rhythm made for dancing. My father introduced it to me after he heard it on a jazz radio show he adores. Though I don’t know as much as I should about Franklin, I certainly haven’t ever heard her like this. She not only demonstrates incredible jazz vocal skills, but also a liveliness and personality that drives the song with the youthful kind of joy that is hard to truly capture. She’s speaking the lyrics directly to the audience, closing with “I’m through” as if she just sat down to tell you a long anecdote rather than delivering a showstopping and incredibly difficult performance. I’ve played it again and again as I’ve bounced up and down the streets of the East Village, jazz in my ears like the sound of the city constantly alive and bustling around me. 

Classifieds, The Academy Is…

I rarely cover two songs by the same band on the same list, but I had to make an exception for this one. Braiden has been very passionate for the last year about a rock band from the late 2000s fronted by a man with a passion for fedoras and overgrown haircuts. They’re called The Academy Is…, and their lead singer is named William Beckett, once described as a mix between Adam Lazzara and Prince. They’ve already appeared once on this list, but this second song came from an add to my playlist after he put it on the queue during our final Slay The Spire game. While I hold a strong hatred for the graphic design of this record, I kept coming back to this song. The chorus repeats “Back down, cash out, that’s the city for ya/Break down, back out, and get what’s coming to ya.” While it's more likely about the band’s hometown, Chicago, I couldn’t help but apply it to the city of cities I’m now living in. It would come on my earbuds while walking through the subways, watching the people go by in every walk of life–triumphs and victims of the city side by side. It became a fitting soundtrack for the place of dreams and nightmares that coexist on these sidewalks each day. Beckett asks, “And if I die in my sleep/Are you still willing to be/Everything you promised you would be?” As I consider the promises I’ve imagined New York to have made to me, it’s a question that feels apt for my contemplations of the ties between fantasy and reality when your dreams become no longer dreams but instead what you wake up to every morning, hoping you still want them as much as you imagined you would. 

Deep Satin, Zach Bryan

When I moved, I began digging back through a series of playlists I’ve made over the last few years containing songs that mention New York City. It’s a character study of sorts, an attempt to observe the various stories it’s inspired in song form. One of the songs on there that I had previously not given much time to was Zach Bryan’s “Deep Satin,” a track off an EP he released in 2023. It begins “Walking ‘round town in a place I’ve never been/In deep, deep Manhattan.” He reminisces on a love story long gone, a time and a place he never really knew but longs for anyway. He distills years of passive heartbreak into some of the most passionate vocals I’ve ever heard from him; his growl on “I’ve been coming down” is probably my best two seconds of music this month (á la Todd In The Shadows). It’s a song that pulls at the heartstrings in the best kind of bittersweet way, and like Beyoncé, it’s one in which the victim and the monster are the same person. Bryan struggles to reconcile these two parts of himself through a series of vignettes, looking back on each one to try to discern how he’s ended up where he is. I’ve found myself playing in on many late nights through Manhattan, reminiscing on my own life. The music accents his emotion, building slowly and peaking with a trumpet solo–a strange thing to find on a country-folk song. But the unusual mix of instruments creates the same roughness that his voice holds, and they all blend into a unique timbre that provides the perfect personal setting for the story. I have mixed feelings about Bryan as a figure, but the power of his songwriting and performance continues to draw me back in. He’s a powerhouse of storytelling matched by few. 

Weight, Tr3!

I’ve talked about Tr3! in this series a few times now as I’ve watched his artistry evolve over the last two years. When “Jade” was released, I said that it felt like the reward for all the work he had put in until that point. If that’s the reward, this is the next level. “Weight” exists in an entirely new space for him, both lyrically and sonically–he creates a dreamlike atmosphere out of obscure soviet jazz sample, an appropriate setting for his insomnia-driven reflections. He considers the weight that he carries and his attempts to drown himself in surface-level comforts and distractions to solve it, and the sound of this song feels like one of them: it’s a warm and cozy beat with a couple of background melodies that sound just enough like a warning that you can’t unhear them. This song was built by a village, crediting 7 people–including myself. It’s impossible to ethically talk about this song without mentioning that I helped to write it many months ago during long days of music class when it felt like high school was never going to end. The artist also happens to be one of my best friends, so I know intimately the weight he speaks about in the song. But hearing it now so many months later as we both start our adult lives, it’s less haunting than it used to be. The song doesn’t deny the weight’s existence, just his willingness to confront it. In the months between its writing and release, I’ve seen him come a long way on that front–and I hope if he ever releases his album, there will be songs on it lighter than a feather. 

Trouble, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory

Last month I talked about a different song from this record, but as I was packing for my move, I finally listened to the whole album. It’s an excellent record, but there was one song I couldn’t get out of my head. “Trouble” is a dreamlike, bittersweet ballad, delivered with the same quiet heartbreak Beyoncé sang with. Sharon Van Etten shared that the song was about the slow break of a relationship that comes with knowing you have to put their needs above yours and keep part of yourself hidden for their sake, but the poetry of it can hold many meanings. For me, it’s about struggling to hold onto something that you care about immensely and also know it doesn’t make sense to have; the battle between each side that emerges less as violence and more as a slight cavity in the chest, a strange feeling of melancholy and love swirling together. My partner and I made the decision to at least try to stay together through college, but the first two weeks of being apart have been both harder and easier than expected. On one hand, I’ve been so caught up in the joys of my life now that I haven’t had much time to sit down and miss them. On the other hand, it instead creeps into small moments throughout my day in much more painful incisions–things that remind me of them, or when I can’t sleep because all I want is just to touch them once, just to feel their skin on mine one more time. To see their smile in person in full beauty. They’re still in my life, but it’s not the same, and I can’t make it the same. I wouldn’t give up this life for them, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt not to have them in it the way I want to. This song has been a comfort in my most vulnerable moments of that feeling. I listened to it on repeat on the way home after seeing a movie that they love, and feeling so strange because I saw it alone. The beauty of the Cocteau-Twins-esque soft instrumentation wraps me in a kind of cold-fingered hug–comfort, but always a bit uneasy. The song sits with that feeling in me, letting it coexist with all the others without shame.  

I quit, HAIM

I’ve been a casual fan of sister-band HAIM for a few years, so when their latest album came out to great reviews, I figured I’d give it a listen. I played in on an hour-and-a-half solo drive to Pasadena in very early August. It’s a record made for Los Angeles sun and long open highways, so it was a good choice of setting. The first song, “Gone,” is a reserved guitar-driven track that samples George Michael’s “Freedom! ‘90” as Danielle Haim chronicles her philosophy of running away. It’s a table-of-contents opening track, declaring upfront that “You can hate me for what I am/You can shame me for what I’ve done/You can’t make me disappear/You never saw me for what I was.” This prelude hangs over the entire album, a chronicle of women using freedom to the fullest extent. To me personally, though consistently good, the next 6 songs are not particularly interesting. But the back half of the album is where things really pick up. “Lucky stars” caught my ears the second it began, because it sounds so different from anything else they’ve done. Much like “Jealous,” it’s one of those songs that strikes that little worm in my brain that loves any kind of slightly distorted synth pop, but it’s also such a sweet song that reminds me of my own love–a kind of destiny-driven relationship that forms as the stars shift in a way no one expected but is more beautiful than anyone could’ve imagined. Another highlight is “Everybody’s trying to figure me out,” which is the classic HAIM sound at its absolute peak. Similar to the opening song, it reflects on perception and the way one chooses to divide personal identity from what is perceived. The catchiest part, “Renter’s rights, squatter’s rights/I’ll be the gatekeeper for the rest of my life,” is something I can’t get out of my head, leading me to play this song over and over again. Possibly the best song on the record is unexpectedly the second-to-last track, “Blood on the street,” a country ballad where all 3 sisters unite to deliver the most powerful assertion of their own independence and a giant “fuck you” to those who doubted them, not in intensity of music but in intensity of their words instead. The song isn’t afraid to take up space and time, because they are going to make you listen. The best line is “You saw what you wanted and not what was there/Now you turn around and say I was unfair/Well, I wasn’t,” the last part delivered out of the rhyme scheme and meter to hit like a punch to the face. It’s one of the best songs I’ve heard this year. The closing track flips “Gone” into “here”, relaying the result of their escape and what it’s changed in retrospect. There’s no running happening here, nor waiting or asking. They know what they’ve done now, and what they haven’t, and they know what’s theirs. It closes with a euphoric instrumental break that serves as an epilogue to the whole record, wrapping up every complexity in the final lines “It was not for me to wait/It was not for me to change/Am I reaching out to say/I never gave two fucks anyway?” This record takes you on a journey like all the greats, and I can’t recommend it enough as a masterpiece of modern songwriting. 

you can listen to this month's playlist here: