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March

  • Writer: Leo Abercrombie
    Leo Abercrombie
  • Apr 6
  • 12 min read

This month was defined by the reemergence of the sun, songs that capture highly specific feelings, and of course, more Jeff Rosenstock. 


We Are Making Out, Mura Masa + yeule


As with “Rave Angel” last year, March tends to bring the first real sunshine and the first real dance tracks of the year. This one, Mura Masa’s “We Are Making Out,” is a lyrically simplistic but sonically expansive club track that gives Mura Masa full creative freedom to try anything he wants. He takes practically one repeated line from yeule and turns it every which way, building a montage-esque collection of moments that feel like sun through train windows and cracks in the rubber of corded headphones and stickiness on venue floors. And perhaps the most fitting description, according to the song itself, is the euphoria of making out. It’s an excellent example of how to capture a sensation through music, a theme that’s going to come up a lot on this month’s list. This song feels spurned from experience, in the same way that the advice you hear most as an artist or a writer is that you have to go out and live life in order to find inspiration. It’s a track pulled from the corners of the most tangible sensory moments one can experience. 


Besties, Black Country, New Road


Like much of Black Country, New Road, “Besties” took me a few listens to fully warm up to. It’s an unusual song: you don’t hear many tracks beginning with a harpsichord these days and the melodies are all over the place. The structure is unconventional both musically and lyrically—and it probably would’ve been much more fun for me had it been released this time last year when I was deep in studying for the AP Music Theory test. But once it clicked, it clicked hard. For the first week of March, I played it every morning. It got the honor of being the last song I blasted daily through the school halls before my school finally brought the phone ban into full effect. The weirdness of it worked so well for me once I got used to it, which is a running theme with a lot of my favorite music. It’s a song unlike any other I’ve ever heard, and (although since I’m writing this in April I can tell you that it doesn’t fit quite as well as I expected to represent the album) it is such a phenomenal single. It’s one of those songs that holds narrative form–introduction, setup, build, climax, and resolution–so well within an independent 3 and a half minutes that you can’t help but appreciate the story of it all. I didn’t realize until I looked it up that the title is a reference to the common lesbian trope of falling in love with your best friend, which is both funny and unfortunately relatable. That fact makes the line “I’m a walking TikTok trend, but the color runs out in the end” make a lot more sense, though it still feels incredibly strange to hear the word TikTok in a song as sonically timeless as this. Overall, it’s an incredible taste of Black Country, New Road’s unique sound. One of the best tracks of 2025 so far. 


M.E., Gary Numan


The bass line of this song was the first thing to catch my ear. I recognized it from somewhere–which, as it turns out, was the opening of my favorite Black Keys song that I wrote about last June. Upon further listening, there was another song from back then that it recalled just as much: The Knife’s “Heartbeats,” perhaps my favorite song of summer 2024 that somehow never made it on here. “M.E.” feels very much like the perfect blend of the two, which is ironic given that it predates both by decades. But I think that’s the magic of music. Some expressions are timeless, and all 3 songs feel like they could’ve come from any chronological point. They each nail this specific sensation of a slightly messy but sun-kissed summer, which is perhaps one of the most iconic visuals of humankind. I think this song will continue to be made over and over again in some form as long as music exists, and that’s for the better. As long as the sun keeps coming back out and people keep basking in it, we will always need these sounds. 


Masterpiece, Big Thief


Adrienne Lenker continues to be one of the best writers I know. I came across this song randomly on Spotify and it became an instant favorite. The visual of someone being “the masterpiece” is such a strong concept to write a song from, and Lenker builds a life story around it with her usual poetic skill. Upon researching, I learned the song is actually about her mother, which is perhaps one of the best dedications of familial love I know. Lenker writes a lot about her mother, often in conflicting and complex ways, as is most people’s relationship with theirs. But this song‘s message is clear: this is the side of the mother-daughter relationship that encompasses the unbreakable bond unlike anything else. It’s the ode you write to your mother when you’re old enough to apologize to her, when you see her on a visit home and realize she was once young too and she never lost the beauty of those days, when you look in the mirror and see the same look you know in her eyes reflected in your own. It’s beautiful. For a long time, though, I interpreted it differently. I liked it because it reminded me of the artistry of nature and of love; the ties between artistic depiction and the feeling you get when you see someone and think they’re beautiful. There’s a friend of mine I’ve always thought looked like they came from a painting, and this song reminded me of them. I also want to touch briefly on the instrumentation–my dad described this song as making him miss guitar bands, and I think he has a point. The use of the strumming to accent each of the most hard-hitting of Lenker’s lines is something that can’t be replicated by synths. This song feels real in the way that you can see the brushstrokes when you get close enough to a painting. I’ve put it on at every moment that the world comes to me in vivid color. 


Track X, Black Country, New Road


I’ve spent a lot of this month finally returning to Black Country, New Road in anticipation of their new record. I always knew that someday I would hear Ants From Up There again and I would finally understand, and I found that moment one night in a cafe where I needed to write poetry for an assignment and I put the record on to access the level of feeling I needed to do so. I’ve gained a new appreciation for the version of the band that existed back then, for Isaac Wood’s heartbreaking diction and the sonic world that the rest of the members built around him. Their music is very different now, but still just as good–we’ll come back to that more at the end of April. For now, my favorite track of theirs this month was actually not on that album at all (though “Chaos Space Marine” was a late cut from this list): it was “Track X” off their debut record from 2021. It has the same delicate sound as AFUT, but it also has a level of experimentation and freshness that can only predate a sophomore record. Each instrument is seemingly living in its own rhythm, looping on its own melody, and layered together like a collage of completely different parts that somehow still feel completely united in the end. For some reason, it works. And it’s unlike anything else I’ve ever heard. The feeling it captures is initially quiet, restrained in comparison to most of Wood’s intensity. He leaves the chorus unfinished, though whether it was to leave it up to interpretation or because he just didn’t have the answer I’m not sure. It works either way. By the third verse, it gets much darker in a way that initially took me by surprise but I realized in retrospect was led up to the whole time. But like everything else, he leaves the question he asks in it unanswered. It’s a song for the moments when sometimes things just exist, and there’s no fitting response. The silence after someone tells you a heartbreaking secret that there’s no “I’m sorry” for. Not every problem needs to be solved, though. To me, it is perhaps an ode to the idea that joy is not the only valuable feeling. Sometimes you need space for the sad, too. And the unity of the instruments and backing vocals captures the feeling of connection that comes from telling someone your deepest fears in the first place. Everything is bittersweet in the end. 


You Are The Morning, jasmine.4.t


“You Are The Morning” is the kind of magical art piece that captures such a specific feeling so vividly that it’s almost as if it appeared out of the gentle morning air itself. I’m a sucker for imagery, and the things she chooses to open the song with–”You are the morning/You make the grass grow/You are the hawthorne tangled in dog rose/The open window with the curtains closed/Hearing your pulse between your breaths/Hearing the trees when the wind blows”–paint one of the best pictures I’ve ever known to come out of lyrics. I’ve written about this exact feeling before, but “You Are The Morning” not only captures it in poetry but serves as an excellent argument for the value of expression through music. The instrumentation in this song is ultimately what makes it so effective, written and mixed as angelically as the light coming through the morning windows. Jasmine’s performance is an important element as well, and the decision to keep her breathing in the recording is perhaps the best detail of them all. Jasmine describes it as an ode to “queer friendship,” which I think is fitting. It illustrates a feeling I’m lucky to have become accustomed to; the queer sort of love between friends which is so strong it feels cosmic. Sacred. Something beyond the bounds of traditional heteronormative labels. Among the moments I count as most holy, I know I love someone when the time I spend with them feels akin all the time to the magic of a morning spent waking up in their room, the sun streaming through the closed curtains and the gentle sound of their breath just before they wake. This is what Jasmine captures in “You Are The Morning,” one of the most beautiful love songs I’ve ever heard. 


The Giver, Chappell Roan


Chappell Roan is taking her time with her return to music. After releasing “Good Luck Babe!” in 2024, she took almost a year’s hiatus before returning with an out-of-the-blue country hit titled “The Giver.” She debuted it live on Fallon in full drag with a wig twice the size of her head, amping up the camp as a fitting juxtaposition to her joining the queer takeover of one of the most traditionally homophobic genres. But she knows what she’s doing. In “The Giver,” she nails one of the best kinds of country music: the songs that get played in line dance bars and on nights out with friends, the kind of country that can spur laughter and bring people together like no other. It’s a song with the kind of infectious energy that’s impossible not to get excited about. It’s catchy as hell and I’ve found myself playing it on repeat in every joyful moment of the last few weeks. For Chappell, I think it’s an attempt to alienate the new part of her audience that seems to miss the gay sex subtext of her songs by putting the gay sex in the foreground instead, though I’m sure some people will still find a way to miss it. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing this time around. “The Giver” feels meant to bring community, and if that means your lesbian girlfriend rocking out to it next to your southern, deeply heterosexual mother, then the more the merrier. I think a song this explicitly about lesbian sex hitting #5 on the Billboard charts says more good things about the world than bad. If this is what the people want to hear, then I’m happy to let them have it. There’s always more Chappell to give. 


***BNB/Ohio Porkpie, Jeff Rosenstock


Yep, I’m going to talk about Jeff Rosenstock again. Don’t be fooled by the 6 other artists on this list–Rosenstock’s music has not released any part of the incredibly tight hold it’s had on me since February. If anything, as I keep being introduced to more and more of his albums, I’m only getting further in. One of these is NO DREAM, his 2020 record that took me a minute to warm up to but is now one of my favorites. Similarly, “***BNB” was not an initial highlight for me, but one day it just came on and something clicked. Though my Spotify statistics tell differently, I’m convinced this was my most-played song of March. I don’t have many deep things to say about it beyond that it’s just my favorite thing to listen to. Every rhythm hits and every line is fun, and the part in the bridge where it breaks into the key change is easily my favorite moment of music this month. It’s a fantastic song that I love dearly, and every cymbal crash gets stuck in my head until it’s the only sound I want to hear. 


However, along with NO DREAM, I’ve also come across some of the stuff from SKA DREAM, Rosenstock’s 2021 full remake of NO DREAM as a ska album. Though he claims it to be an epic April Fool’s prank (released on 4/20), it’s also one of the most interesting musical moves I’ve seen. The infinite editability of music is something I’ve been thinking a lot about since Charli xcx released Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat back in October. The idea that every song could’ve easily been 5 completely different songs is so intriguing to me, especially as I think about the relationship between music and poetry and the way that said idea is simultaneously a unique element to sonic expression and a universal part of creating art. The song from this record I love the most is “Ohio Porkpie,” the ska edition of the original album closer “Ohio Tpke.” I go back and forth frequently on which one I like more, but I certainly do think the instrumentation is far more interesting on the former. To throw a silly horn section on what is ordinarily an emotionally intense rock song is kind of a crazy move–but somehow, it works. There are moments that are stronger on each: like, for example, how my favorite part of the whole song (in the bridge) is given absolutely no weight in “Porkpie,” but I think the additional instruments take the build in the ending to a whole new level (much like how I feel about the version of the chorus on Big Freedia’s “Judas” remake). Which one is better is up to personal preference, but regardless, it’s certainly an interesting musical experiment that I greatly appreciate. 


HELLMODE, Jeff Rosenstock


On HELLMODE, Jeff Rosenstock has finally found the answers to the questions he’s spent his whole career asking. Every record of his has dealt with the line between youth, maturity, and the monotony of grown-up life, but for the first time in his music, it feels like he actually has grown up. He comes at it from the other side now. What does it look like to let go of the harsh life that’s all you’ve ever let yourself know? What happens after you do? This record was made following his move to Los Angeles, and you can hear it in the songs. For all of LA’s own intensities, it’s much slower-paced than New York City. Softer, even. There are moments on this record that are quieter than anything else I’ve ever heard him make. My friend described “HEALMODE” (the mid-album acoustic ballad) as an oasis, and I think that’s a fitting description. Like everything else, Los Angeles shines through on it, though in imagery more than sound. It’s still faster, tenser than the folk music that Angelenos have historically produced. But it feels like it’s made by someone who’s trying to figure out what to do with the slow life for the first time. In the same vein, “SOFT LIVING” is both my favorite song and the one which I would assert as the centerpiece of the record. It is also an undeniably LA story–”sunset dream smog” is an image I know all too well. It plays with the balance of resistance to and desire for “soft living,” or actually getting your shit together and taking care of yourself in healthy ways. There are some amazing lines in there, and it still holds the same juxtaposition of love and violence that marks all of Rosenstock’s best work (like what I talked about in my review of WORRY. last month). Another favorite is “DOUBT,” an affirmation-driven song about anxiety with an incredible build. I’ve found it helpful as both a fitting soundtrack to and a reminder in my own most anxious moments. There’s also “I WANNA BE WRONG,” a track about sarcastically hoping that the world can’t seriously be as evil as it’s looking. Especially because this is Rosenstock’s most recent record, this album is perhaps the most lyrically relevant. I’m not sure anything he talks about has gotten better so much as it’s gotten worse since its release in 2023, but like any of his work, there is always a level of genuine hope, too. “GRAVEYARD SONG” is about learning how to keep yourself together in an incredibly chaotic world; learning how to set boundaries and let go of the things that need to die. It peaks with an anthemic “FUCK ALL THESE PEOPLE!” that somehow doesn’t feel negative so much as euphoric–not a realization that everyone sucks, but the realization that you don’t actually have to be around them if they do. The closer, “3 SUMMERS,” feels like a conclusion to all of Rosenstock’s solo work so far. It touches on the same feelings of doubt and moral questioning and the evils of the world, but it comes at it with the answer of love for both yourself and others in a way that feels much more confident than all the times it’s been approached in the past. It reminds me a lot of a famous saying from AIDS activism in the 80s: “Bury your friends in the morning, protest in the afternoon, and dance all night.” That’s the answer, at least for now, and Rosenstock proposes perhaps forever: the fear will still be there, but so will the love, and most importantly, you have to care for yourself just as much as you care for everyone else or there’s no way you make it through this. 


you can listen to this month's playlist here:






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