listening to Your Favorite Songs 2024, part 2
Let's keep it moving...let's keep listening to your favorite songs of 2024!
Tanerélle - "I Wish"
from Jasmine Danielle, host of Black Bubblegum Podcast
"describing why i like something is not my strong suit, its usually just like 'wow this hits'”
I keep wanting to call this song "horny" but I'm going to be honest...I hate that word. It's so silly. We can't do better than horny? At this point it just makes me think of Austin Powers, not that I ever really mind thinking about Austin Powers. Anyway, "I Wish" isn't really a horny song, it's a lusty song. Over a subtle but club-ready beat, the Atlanta-born singer Tanerélle sizes up a reluctant paramour and wishes strongly for them to make a move; she sings with such fluidity that even an out-of-pocket line like "Need you all in my mouth like molars" sounds elegant and tasteful. I'm especially interested in her astronomical assessments—she "don't need that much space like solar" but is down to sexually clown upon the arrival of a full moon. Awooo!
"Cold Water" - Christian Sean
from Noo Jii
"The timeless legendary Christian Sean... the sense of urgency in the music and lyrics, the groove, everything is hypnotizing. Cant wait for the album to come out early next year."
Randomly this is kind of an amazing photo-negative pairing with "I Wish"—you can still get very down to this song on the dance floor, but the longing is cranked up, the instrumentation is blown out, the drums are restless, and the lyrics mark a romantic relationship's end, rather than its potential beginning: "I gave you my devotion / You gave me your persona." I really like the vocal production in this song, which gives Christian Sean's tenor an otherworldly quality that cuts through the chaos of the production like a translucent ghost cruising straight through walls. Like recommender Noo Jii, Sean is a Montréal artist...Montréal is so cool. You should go to Montréal if you haven't already and eat a hot dog (steamé ou toasté).
"Never Be Lonely" - Quivers
from Jasmine Sankaran (Jangus Kangus)
"These days I tend to mostly discover music when I play a show. Kabir invited me to play in his Sun Kin set opening for Quivers at Permanent Records Roadhouse. Was stunned by these Aussies. This song has tasty country guitar licks, and (this FF Coppola quote i've been obsessed with lately) "capital A Answers." Gorgeous songwriting, sweet people."
Here's a thing I'm never going to be mad at: a song that kind of sounds like it could play during the dénouement of a John Hughes film. Not that "Never Be Lonely" is explicitly '80s—it just has that wistful pulsating bassline that makes me envision a misfit in an outlandish thrifted outfit walking across an empty football field.
Hey I was at this Permanent Records show!! I've seen this song played live. Quivers came all the way from Melbourne, Australia to California before heading across the U.S. on a hefty multi-month tour, some of which involved providing support for freakin Superchunk. The band played with a captivating, quiet confidence, and their live approach bloomed the studio tracks into something richer and more expansive. This song is a winner but the whole album—that would be Oyster Cuts, which came out in August of this year—is awesome.
"Living Is Easy" - Agriculture
from Natalie Marlin
"No other track this year made me feel as much as this one—strength, melancholy, chills, perseverance... you name it, it did it. Does the kind of thing I always like in this form of black metal: pummels with a sheer emotional force that it's hard to resist. Bonus points for its incredible ending stretch; false endings and unexpected chord progressions always a killer move."
I listened to this song with zero context, so I didn't know the Los Angeles-based Agriculture describe themselves as an "ecstatic black metal" band but my goodness is this song ecstatic. Not sure if I've heard anything like it. Every time it seems like the song peaks, and it's impossible for the guitars to scream any louder, there's another element brought in that pushes the energy further. At one point it sounded like an Irish folk song, liquified and blasted through a firehose at high pressure.
I did a little background research on Agriculture and saw that someone on r/BlackMetal said their album cover "is giving global village coffee house." Wow, I love it so much. This cover art looks like it's going to give you the best soy latte that you've ever had.
"Only Living Girl in LA" - Halsey
from Josiah Hughes (SILLY)
"I've spent so long being contrarian that now I just listen to things when everyone seems to hate them, and that meant choosing to love the Halsey album. Some of it is awful but some of it, like the opening song, is just purely so good — Alex G's production and Halsey's slightly subdued vocals (although she still does some musical theatre laughing) build this nice little acoustic strummer, then the song explodes with a kind of deconstructed Animal Collective style outro. It's just great music."
Oh hell yeah, this is some good food. I love a consciously contrarian take and "the Halsey album is good, actually" is bait I feel good about chomping. Let me air my grievances first, or rather just singular grievance: I thought the marketing for The Great Impersonator was...garbled. There was an advent calendar approach to the rollout that involved Halsey recreating iconic portraits of musicians; the music on the album was meant to mimic the musical stylings of the chosen portrait subjects; the reason Halsey was doing all of this is because the illnesses they were struggling with (lupus and a T-cell disorder) alienated them to the point where they felt like they were "impersonating themself"; the health situation was serious enough that Halsey thought this album might be their last.
This information, presented all together, is a lot. And "a lot" is a Halsey specialty—one I enjoy in some contexts! I love Badlands Halsey! I love Tumblr-Shakespeare-techno-paranoia Halsey! Have you heard their contribution to the soundtrack of the criminally underrated Emma Roberts movie Nerve (2016)? It sounds like something the main DJ character would have spun in the criminally underrated Zac Efron movie We Are Your Friends (2015).
Of course, The Great Impersonator came out, and to me it didn't sound like Fiona Apple or Fleetwood Mac or Kate Bush. It sounded like major label bedroom pop made by, well, Halsey. And I didn't vibe with a ton of it, but "Only Living Girl in LA" did stand out to me, specifically for that spectacular crashout of an outro. This song is about how miserable it is to be famous, to be expected to never flop, and to realize that your chief talent—expressing emotion, expressing negative emotion—is starting to take more from you than it gives. Halsey's voice is positively denuded and the whole thing is pretty raw. I believe them when they sing "I've never known a day of peace." And I think they're incredibly good at turning extreme pain into art, but I'd hate for them to think that should be the only trick in their arsenal.
Thanks for reading I Enjoy Music! If you like it, tell a friend.
Thanks to all the song recommenders <3 See you...tomorrow?
