Fruit Bats – “From a Soon-To-Be-Ghost Town”
Genre: Genre-Fluid/Non-Conforming
Feeling: When you hear a song in the background at a party and make a mental note to look it up later.
The Fruit Bats are one of those bands that I’m just certain never would have made it in the pre-internet era. Raise your hand if you discovered these guys without the Spotify algorithm. Exactly. They just kind of surreptitiously appear on the shuffle, have an unassuming sound and are just barely good enough not to skip to the next song. They are the band version of M.Ward in that regard.
Lyric Sample:
“You could’ve left with the first big wave
But you remember back to when you first came
And how you didn’t want to leave“
Kevin Morby -“I Have Been to the Mountain”
Genre: Mountain Rock
Feeling: when is it my turn for a religious
experience?
This is more of just a PSA to our readership to get on the Kevin Morby train if you aren’t already on board. I would put him in the same category with Adam Granduciel and Kurt Vile as the artists we will refer to for definitive 2010s Alternative Rock. Like, in approximately 2037, I will nod fondly as my son streams “Come to the City” by the War on Drugs” in the same way that my forefathers enjoy the contemporary recycling of “Man Needs a Maid” by Neil Young. Gotta start thinking in those terms as the decade comes to a close.
Lyric Sample:
“Calling out, demanding answers
Pleading skies, cry for hours
Dropping peace bombs, collecting prayers”
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros – “Hot Coals”
Genre: Post-Social Planning Rock
Feeling: Macro, Societal-Level Regret
For a minute there in say, 2011 or 2012, I thought we were reaching a critical mass to revive the 1960s counterculture. What with Occupy Wall Street and such. At its zenith, Edward Sharpe and his 47-member band represented the artist expression of the movement – every lyric seemed like an affirming nod to the back to the landers, human potentialists, and commune-builders. Then I went to the AT in 2014 and met all the refugees from the failure to launch. This song gives me a sense of what (I imagine) Sharpe’s alienation and disillusionment would look like in the present day.
Lyric Sample:
“Tender the strike of tinder gods
Hot coals
Embers across a rayless sky
Still warm my soul, I often cry
Hot coals“
