listening to Your Favorite Songs 2024, part 1

I could begin this series with a long preamble about how much it means to me when people share their music taste with me, how magical I find the act of listening to a song that someone told me they love, bla bla bla...but I have no time! I'm like the stressed-out singer in The Waitresses "Christmas Wrapping"—it's December 11th, bustling holiday times, eggnog exploding everywhere, a new Lindsay Lohan movie withering unwatched in the Netflix queue, and all I really wanna do is listen to your favorite songs. So let's do that right now.

These are your faves of the year. I solicited "friends of the blog" and opened up the floor to social media strangers, and at the end of this we're all going to be great friends. Let's gooooooooooo...

Japandroids - "Chicago"
from @afuckingmohawk

A strong start. Japandroids know how to go hard and they rarely go home. This bursts with the usual unquenchable rock energy but the mood is a little melancholy, rather than exuberant—it's the last beer of the night, not the first. "Sorry baby / We call it like we see it in Chicago" is the full lyrical employment of the title city.

This was a big year for Chicago in songs: Joe Keery, Stephen Malkmus's deliciously gooberish avatar in Pavements, had his 2022 song "End Of Beginning" go viral this year, largely thanks to a clean drop that paves the runway for the line "And when I'm back in Chicago, I feel it" (It's also perfect for dramatic TikTok transitions.) There's also a dance track by the electronic duo DRAMA feat. DJ Pharris called "CHICAGO," which celebrates the city's house music heritage ("Where house music was born / And it's still on / Bitch, I'm from Chicago"). And the New York Times published a trend piece this year about Malört, the bracing herbal liquor / paint-thinner that I love dearly. Let's give a big hand to this humble but mighty city.

"I Think I Saw" - Chanel Beads
from Matty Monroe, host of Indieheads Podcast
"You ever have a dream where you're running late? Say you get stuck at home doing an endless amount of chores and busywork, knowing there's somewhere you've got to be ASAP. What happens when you actually break out of that cycle? And not only that, but breaking out of that cycle after so many failed attempts? 'I Think I Saw' imagines that scenario, even down to the dream logic of it all. You're not supposed to be here, and yet you've missed out on so much. But you're here now, and that's all that matters."

Definitely picking up on the dreamlike quality here—dare I say it's...hypnagogic? Something about the insistent chimes, which almost have a vaporwave quality—those chimes belong in a song whose video is a continued loop of a convertible driving into an endless neon sunset. But this isn't vaporwave, this is a unique and analysis-resistant brand of indie...uh...something, coming out of Downtown New York City. Things are getting liminal over there, at long last. You still have plenty of punks who would vote for Eric Adams if he promised to turn the John Vavatos store back into CBGBs, and gals who celebrate Brat summer year-round (a hoe never gets cold), but I'm very interested in this blurry, genre-squidgy music that's coming from the biggest apple lately. Lost in the fog...forget vaporwave, this is just vape-wave.

Little Kid - "Bad Energy"
from Josaleigh Pollett

An astonishing piano-driven epic poem that chains diffuse bits of history into an elegant litany of causes and effects. "Ancient birds" become gasoline, which powers your car and tears "a gash right clear through the atmosphere." Jesus, who was conceived "quite exceptionally" calls "occupied Palestine" his birthplace. The instrumentation is lowkey and Kenny Boothby’s voice is gentle as he lists the atrocities we've committed over time, then rendered banal with sheer repetition. But there's nothing soft about the stories being told. Isn't it funny that so much of Christianity is basically about deciding what to do with some special guy's blood?

"shower song" - Big Nick
from (leave) nelson b
"This song, while the subject is very different, perfectly captures the levels of self destructive victim energy I had when I was going through my wife leaving me way back in 2011 on xmas day. Sure I have ran into songs that can soundtrack that time in my life very well. But to have an actual document of what it felt like and the way the lyrics are sung so recklessly, that desperation for anyone to listen I have felt and still feel to this day, I am a PTSD post substance abuse military veteran after all."

Not gonna lie, opening a song with the lyric "You're the only person that I shower for" is wild. Following it up with a rowdy, sloppy pile of distorted guitar that you could probably cheer obliviously over without fully clocking the desperation that Big Nick's Josh Lesser expresses is also wild. And then cutting all that chaos short with the sickly sweet, sing-songy bridge is wilder still. But I'm actually stuck on the very beginning of "shower song," an innocuous synth—a MIDI flute?—that coats the song's pain isolation in a film of normalcy. It runs through almost the entire song, but drops out at the end, leaving the guitars to squabble amongst themselves. Unsettling, like watching a sitcom without the laugh track.

"Alice" - Bassvictim
from Jordan Michael Iannucci
"This song has lyrics that are the thoughts I have when I'm at work responding to emails and music that plays in my head when I'm horny. If you can't relate to this we have nothing to say to each other."

As living proof that music blogs still matter and are capable of showing people new music that can become meaningful in their lives, I found out about the existence of the London boy-girl electronic music duo Bassvictim through the newsletter of the NYC-based showpaper GUNK. Writer Julia Harrison attended a "reliably, criminally over-capacity" Bassvictim show at Baby's All Right in Brooklyn and reported from the mosh pit; you can read about the show here, and if you're more of a visual learner, the great hyperlocal YouTube channel pointoneseven captured the dark and sweaty scene w/ a video camera.

When I first heard "Alice," it rehydrated the beef jerky that is my heart these days, because it reminds me of the music that bubbled up while I was just a wee lass running around at my liberal arts school, carefully filling my iPod touch with Pitchfork's finest offerings. The haunted aura of Salem, the shouty glitch of Alice Glass, the sarcastic debauchery of M.I.A...this was the asylum where they raised me, the cursed VICE magazine party I was slightly too young to attend but dreamed of regardless.

When I hear "Alice" I taste Camel Lights smoked in the 25 degree upstate New York night air, and I feel the sensation of a thong beneath an American Apparel double U neck dress freeze-branding itself onto my ass, and I remember how any awareness of being young and fun never made up for the self-consciousness that chased me down like a dumb dog. I'm certainly not 21 anymore—thank god, lol, lmao—but the rawness of that time stays with me, and it's kind of nice to be reminded of how not nice things used to be. Like Jack Black says, you're not hardcore unless you live hardcore. I just wish I could go back to Young Molly and tell her she'd grow up to one day stop fearing visible panty lines. "Boom boom, fuck you mean, bitch?" gets stuck in my head for days at a time.

Thanks for reading I Enjoy Music! If you like it, tell a friend.

Thanks to all the song recommenders <3 See you...tomorrow?