listening to Your Favorite Songs 2024, part 13

Let's, rock, let's, rock, today.

Part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, part nine, part ten, part eleven, part twelve.

"THE END" - Bilmuri
from Tom Bown
"Hard to pick just one song from Bilmuri’s insane 2024 album AMERICAN MOTOR SPORTS, which mixes classic pop-punk melodies and modern emo with thick metalcore-style riffs and Gabi Rose’s killer sax work, adding a country sheen that absolutely should not work but ends up completely seamless. Going with this one because of one of my favourite choruses I’ve ever heard."

Bilmuri is one of those bands that I feel like I've heard about in The Alternative's cinematic universe, but never took the time to listen to. Well now I've listened to "THE END" and my jaw is now on the floor, and my tongue has rolled down a flight of stairs, maintaining the shape of said stairs. A thing that I love, which I'm can probably track back to my adolescent reverence for the mashups of Girl Talk, is Genre Chaos. I love when a song is everything at once, with fingers in dozens of different pies, becoming uncategorizable and therefore ungovernable. "THE END" has pop schmaltz, emo mega-riffs, and most importantly, a freaky contemporary country element that makes it sound like it should be played at Stagecoach to a throng of Bud Light-soused hoedowners. Take the intensity down a tick and this could go on the Twisters soundtrack...just kidding, never take the intensity down.

"She's Leaving You" - MJ Lenderman
from Trevor M.
"It falls apart/we all got work to do"

The first ever marketing brochure that the newly formed Apple Computer Company released in 1977 featured the tagline "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." I often think about this tagline in the context of MJ Lenderman's music, which has a simplicity that projects maturity, rather than childishness. The "She's Leaving You" chord progression remains mostly consistent from verse to chorus, as does the miniature guitar scale that connects each segment, and all of that repetition hammers home the off-screen bad deeds of the sad sack narrator. No wonder Vegas is the setting—the mood is of dopamine all spent, slot machines tapped dry, a receipt for a minibar bender that still needs to be signed. Will this guy's luck change? Maybe not, but those four chords will keep on playing until he at least pretends to get his shit together.

"Vanessa" - Midwife
from Heaven
"There were a lot of good ones in 2024, but this one tops my list because when I first heard this song, I thought it was about a break-up. Turns out it’s about the singer’s (Madeline Johnston) van that broke down. At first, it seemed kinda funny but when you’re a touring musician it makes sense you would have a deep connection with the vehicle that’s taking you across the country to do the one thing you love: play music."

What did Midwife do to get this gauzy, eerie vocal tone? It sounds like a voicemail from the grave, I love it. This song should be in the dictionary under "minor key." I am not sure I have heard anything more minor key in my life.

I should say that I also didn't read anyone's rationales behind their picks for fave song until after I had listened to the songs, so I also listened to this and thought it was about a break-up. The fact that it is about a van is pretty amazing. Something about this song captures the feeling of loving something that can't talk back to you. I would love to have a conversation with my Kia, just to make sure I'm doing everything I can for him (he is a boy named Bobby) to have a pleasant ride.

"Kingdom Come" - Cindy Lee
from Giuseppe Cannelloni
"It whips the hardest"

Part 13 and we're finally doing a Cindy Lee song. In the words of Lizzo, "it's about damn time." My music blogger tendencies meant I got more excited by the lo-fi Geocities launch of Diamond Jubilee than by the music itself—anything that positions itself as post-streaming is going to get a thumbs-up from me—but I'm surely not gonna kick the ghostly Motown vibes of "Kingdom Come" out of bed.

A few years ago, in my YouTube wanderings, I discovered an amazing category of video: individual songs or full playlists, played with environmental ambiance. "Vintage oldies playing in another room and it's snowing." "Billie Eilish, but you are in the bathroom at a party." "Yellow' by Coldplay but it's raining and you're staring at the wall." Simulations of real-life ways to experience music, delivered digitally with excellent metadata. Incredible. When I was in college, my library music was always something like Clams Casino or Flying Lotus, but paired with rain sounds from RainyMood.com, so these sensory remixes make total sense to me.

And I feel like the Cindy Lee album has that environmental ambiance thing going for it. Everything is très liminal. It all feels like it's heard from another room, from a passing car, bleeding from the headphones of your crush. The atmospheric component of Diamond Jubilee is so appealing because it never takes up 100% of your brain space or sucks up all the oxygen in the room—there's lots of space for daydreaming.

“Do You Wanna Go With Me To The Cloud Nothings Show?” - The Deals
from Cee Dertz
"Spiritual guitar playing, earnest singing, feels like consequence is swirling through the air of this song, listen to The Deals"

I have no notes for this one. The melody is perfect, the guitar heroics are perfect, the soft fuzziness of the production is perfect, the lyric "And you know I ain't been drinking / But if we go I might" (this scenario is so real for the "ain't been drinking" folks out there), those fuckin vocal harmonies that come in mid-guitar solo are perfect. Perfect song

"In the House of Angel Flesh" - Agriculture
from Acid Couch
"There's not many black metal songs that are about uplifting community and the lyrics really add to that"

Hey more Agriculture! Nice. More monolithic energy, more exploding Irish folk song fireworks, more frenzied strumming that makes me genuinely wonder what the arm/wrist warmups for the band entail, in order to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome. Agriculture seem to often embody their earthbound name, ever since they dug a big hole in the sand, and the lyrics to "In The House of Angel Flesh" are especially vegetal. The mention of an okra invokes the sweetness of a child; a tomato is urged to "feel the spring." And despite being on the extreme end of musical intensity, I keep hearing something pastoral in the music, like it would be played in the Shire in order to start a massive hobbit mosh pit. Piquant as a relish, nourishing as a bowl of minestrone.

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