Rambutan Jam Band – East Point (Live)
They flipped the globe on its head to make that geography work. They flipped me on my head with their face melting groove.
Rambutan has a sparse discography–one full length from 2015 plus an EP from 2017. But rumor has it they’re back in the lab cooking up something fierce.
Spoon – The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine
An intro riff reminiscent of Neil. A timestamp reminiscent of pop-punk. And signature serious piano pops scented with some percussive distortion.
Spoon’s Gimme Fiction is one of their best. Intent is high to buy the CD for my car.
Less phone time and more end-to-end listening is good for the soul.
Griffy Jams – Market and Black (ft. Tennis)
Indie rock and folk can teeter toward despondency. When done wrong it can your cloud your mind.
When done right it can make you feel the deeper parts you ignored.
And when Tennis comes in with a Flume-esque vocal sample it can make you shiver on a hot day.
Chance the Rapper – The Highs & The Lows (ft. Joey Bada$$)
Is Chance back? Chance is back.
Well he’s in Italy here with “Joseph Badman.”
But he’s back.
Go inside SoCal with Laguna Beach rockers Spliffriff.
Looks like Sarah’s beach house thing has gone from laid back barbecue to straight up chill sesh.
<===>And the rest of ’em… come through and bring the crew with Durand Jones & The Indications… one of my recent biking jams courtesy of Bad//Dreams… and a hammock swinging tune off New Madrid‘s Sunswimmer.
<===>NotJustBikes explains how car-centric suburbs drain city coffers.
A consulting firm, Urban3, measured and mapped “municipal return on investment per acre.” They showed suburbs cost a ton in services and return little in property taxes. And they showed dense, walkable mixed-used neighborhoods were major net positives.
One lesson: productive dense neighborhoods and downtowns subsidize wealthy, single family zoned areas.
But America made these dense productive areas all but illegal to build.
<===>Arizona communities would ‘collapse’ without cheap prison labor, Corrections director says.
Those damn *checks notes* slave laborers are taking our jobs!
<===>The Liberation of Cosmic Insignificance Therapy
The hazard in any such discussion of “what matters most” in life, though, is that it tends to give rise to a kind of paralyzing grandiosity. It starts to feel as though it’s your duty to find something truly consequential to do with your time—to quit your office job to become an aid worker or start a space flight company—or else, if you’re in no position to make such a grand gesture, to conclude that a deeply meaningful life isn’t an option for you.
Oliver Burkeman
Don’t let the perceived inadequacy of your goals stop you from achieving them. Pursuing only the “highest tasks” will leave you on the starting line.
<===>Finally, I don’t like “such a perfect metaphor” tweets, but I’ll make an exception here: