listening to Your Favorite Songs 2024, part 4

More songs! More songs! More songs!!!!

Here are part one, part two, part three.

"I'm All Fucked Up" - This Is Lorelei
from Josh Richmond
"A lot of my favorite music in 2024 mixes warm country-ish sounds and laid-back vocals, a comforting style that's been a balm in a stressful year. This Is Lorelei is the best of the bunch, and I love this run-on sentence of a song that's instantly memorable, effortlessly melodic, and sneakily melancholy."
and from brian x
"i'm fucked up"

When a musician does a side project that reveals a different facet of their artistry, going off-genre to expand their palette and dip into a deeper well of influences ...well, I think that's nice. Water From Your Eyes's Nate Amos veered off into the softer side of Sears this year with Box For Buddy, Box For Star, tapping into folk, alt country, and even The Postal Service-y electro-emo to get the job done.

"I'm All Fucked Up" has a cadence that sounds like tripping and falling down the stairs, with Amos singing about going on a clumsy Spanish bender that offers both divinity and depravity: "I got a nosebleed and my nosebleed tastes like God." The mess of the narrative contrasts compellingly with Amos's deadpan delivery, and the tempo makes it sound like they're speeding right past any meaning that might be gleaned from an abject existence of impulse haircuts and unruly dogs. "Give me chastity and temperance, but not yet" vibes.

"Bang The Bus" - Maxo Kream
from Noah (a screen printer based in Minneapolis)
"As sounds and trends evolve within a genre, some artists are better off adhereing to what made them successful in the first place. Standing in opposition to that not so hard/fast rule is Maxo Kream, a 10-year vet of Houston rap. Rather than sticking to the regional narrative trap sound that put him on the map, he has more recently experimented with production that could be called avant-garde considering his past sound. Rapping over a dreamy cloud-rap flip of Frou Frou produced by Surf Gang All-Star evilgiane, this song is Maxo not re-inventing the wheel, but he certainly is iterating."

One of my favorite Christmas movies is The Holiday. I know this movie isn't good, but it's really weird, and that's why I like it. It won't teach you much about love or Christmas, but if you want to watch Cameron Diaz drink a bottle of wine in an English grocery store, drunk-drive home and then scream along to "Mr. Brightside," The Holiday will hook you up.

Anyway, I watched it this year (on Blu-ray, mmhmmm) and there's a needledrop of Frou Frou's "Let Go" that totally schmacked me, likely because I had turned up the volume in order to really give the soundbar a workout. What a fabulous song. "Let Go" by Frou Frou is one of my sleeper agent activation triggers, so hearing it flipped into this evilgiane beat is just delightful for me. It's an ethereal backdrop to Maxo Kream's corporeal subject matter; he lusts for a woman with a fake ass, "Megan knees," and maybe even some adventurous friends who would join up for a pill-enhanced large format sexual experience, but his plainspoken delivery makes all the sex and drugs feel like part of a balanced breakfast.

"Rich" - Young Jesus
Daisy Alioto, co-founder of Dirt

With wealth inequality being what it is 'these days,' it feels like an unorthodox time to write an acoustic ballad empathizing with an ultra-rich American family ravaged by tragedy. But Young Jesus's John Rossiter is such a good songwriter that he makes it work. The unwell cast of characters in "Rich" reminded me of reading Edie: An American Girl, the Jean Stein biography of Edie Sedgwick, a book that delves into Sedgwick's aristocratic background (her mother came from railroad money, and her father came from ancient unspecific Massachusetts family money) and excavates layer upon layer of madness and maladjustment.

The singer of "Rich" is an artist who feels guilt about their trust fund even as they maintain art saved their life. This is sort of an Uno reverse card to the previously written-about song Sinai Vessel's "Birthday," putting forth the idea that privileged children are just as human as disadvantaged children. In Jeff Tweedy's memoir Let's Go (so We Can Get Back), there's a scene where Tweedy, in rehab for an opiate addiction, expresses discomfort about his comparative level of wealth and status during group therapy. Another patient has an incredible response: "We all suffer the same, motherfucker! Mine ain’t about yours. and yours ain’t about mine. We all suffer the same. You don’t get to decide what hurts you. You just hurt." Something to chew on...

"Karma Police" - cumgirl8
from em from seattle
"it’s so bright and catchy and they sound like fairies"

Man, cumgirl8 rock. I last wrote about their single "picture party," a burst of lightly scatological electroclash that features guitarist Veronika Vilim making a laundry list of beauty-enhancing compounds like Juvéderm and Botox before announcing "I just took a huuuuge shit." On "Karma Police" the band maintain that sense of fun, which is still proportional to their penchant for being a little gross.

It'd be funny enough to name a song "Karma Police" after Radiohead did it first and famously—I'll even throw Harry Styles a bone for writing a song called "Sign of the Times" too, it takes serious sack to stake your claim in such iconography—but the bouncy pace and batshit falsetto vocals ("I'm gonna vomit all over your face / My brain feels engraved") certify this one as a deranged bop for the ages. That guitar line is soooo satisfying, I could engrave my brain with it all day.

"Not My Problem" - Laila!
from John
"It’s catchy as hell. Jamming. Soothing. Both can hype me up and make me feel better if someone got me f*cked up. Hard to capture all those in one. Shout to Laila!"

I love that Laila! has an exclamation point in her name. And I love the repetitive and hypnotic way she sings, with calm precision, that people talking shit about her simply isn't her problem. Unfortunately I have a gossip antenna about a mile long, and if people talk shit, I make it my problem. That's bad! I wish I could be more like Laila!!

Here's a wild thing that happened: I was listening to this song on a walk in the morning in Los Angeles, where I live. As the song began, I passed a little basket on someone's front lawn that said GUAVAS, PLEASE TAKE. So I took a guava, dusted it off and took a bite as I kept walking. At the precise moment I bit into the guava, I heard Laila! sing "Now I got the juice / Passion fruit and guava juice." It was amazing. Laila! somehow knew I was in guava mode. I'm actually not totally sure if I had tasted a guava before this moment. This was true synergy. Laila! had given me the power of guavas. I had the juice. I completed the walk with renewed purpose.

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