The Apache Relay – Good as Gold
Hooks like this you can visualize. You feel like you’re grabbed and taken up, down, and over the hump when the chorus of “Good as Gold” hits. It’s a song with infinite replayability until the inevitable moment when the song loses its luster from overplay. But until that happens…
Side note–did they film this in an airport? Where is all the live indie rock when I land?
Perpetual Groove – Out Here
Before the Chinese took over the shortform video market with TikTok, pre-Elon Twitter gave us Vine. It was inferior to TikTok in every measurable way, but it was innocent and laid the groundwork for the rapid-to-the-punch humor we’re so accustomed to today on social media. I was never a Vine star, but I did star in a few Vines. One featured a teenage Ned walking the streets of his hometown in the middle of a summer night after a party and smoking a gas station cigar. When my friend and cameraman asked me to comment for the video, I replied, “yeah, we out here.”
It was stupid, it was funny. It did not go viral. But it did sum up the simple freedom of youth. We out here. Not accomplishing much, just roaming. Walking from one point to the other at an hour when we weren’t really supposed to be. Now, I think I’ve been fortunate enough to experience several kinds of freedom in my life–freedom to drive across the country, to change careers, to write and express my ideas, to be healthy and active–and Perpetual Groove’s “Out Here” evokes more of these big freedoms of life, but the small freedoms are what came to mind. The song has everything you need to drive across the barren plains of Nevada, but for me, it’s all about walking through small-town Maine during an endless summer and an endless night.
Ben Howard – Burgh Island
Burgh Island is a speck of land a stone’s throw from the English Riveria, at the mouth of the Riven Avon and close enough to Plymouth. A fancy hotel dominates the rock; it would be a Bond setting were it not so quaint. Past the cliffs on the shore, estates bounded by hedgerows surround villages. I imagine the weather oscillates between foggy and misty.
This is all my impression from a 30-second Google Maps surveillance of the area. But Ben Howard’s 8-minute ode to this outcropping does little to dispel my idea of a well-dressed chap who just got kicked out of Eton for neglecting his studies (and some pranks gone too far) rethinking his life as he sits on the rocks of Burgh Island, looking back towards the mainland and the second chances he is sure to have there.
Wild Child – 1996
It enters with a trip-hop beat and turns into a big-band banger, interluded by a poppy refrain, and all the time is worthy of an alone-in-the-kitchen-while-the-ovan-warms-up shimmy. It’s heartwarming with just a pinch of edge–the New Girl of pop-folk, maybe.
Silverchair – Tomorrow
The Aussies can really do it all. They’ve taken everything the UK and US can throw at them, melted it down, and shipped it right back across the seas in better form. Mid-90s grunge was not spared, and Australia’s Silverchair are Oceanic legends for it, selling six million records on top of their heavy riffs and catchy chori.
This song got me amped up for some late-season mountain biking in the woodlands outside Boston last weekend. I ran into this guy named Fez, helped him conquer a challenging boulder section by yelling “yeah bro you got this” in rapid succession, and he showed me a hidden trail in return. The guy also survived cancer twice and didn’t start riding until his late 40s. Rock on, Fez. Never wait ’til tomorrow.
…and the rest of ’em… more Aussie action: Parcels do not miss with the new tune “Hideout”… The The does THE thing with a grooving piano… Thievery Corporation provides you with the Choose Your Fighter screen soundtrack you didn’t know you needed to fix spreadsheets and edit that presentation… and it’s dark out these days so lets get dark with some Radiohead and Sun Kil Moon…
Dutch urban planning ASMR
https://twitter.com/BrentToderian/status/1865242168157442396
You ever be having a good day then you think about the geoeconomic struggle of the two 21st century superpowers?
https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1864224598516211723
Urban neighborhoods are often portrayed as dirty, polluted, unhealthy, and so on, but I reckon the health benefits of daily walking trump the “away from the city” benefits of suburbia.
https://twitter.com/kaseyklimes/status/1857078170580558074
Thanks for listening. –Ned