aux-blood

a music diary

[aux-blood]

July ‘17 

1. Broken Drum - Beck (Guero, 2005)

2. Far Out Feeling - Susto (& I’m Fine Today, 2017)

3. Feeling Fruit - Palehound (A Place I’ll Always Go, 2017)

4. Forget the Stones - Gramma’s Boyfriend (Perm, 2015)

5. Sponge - R.E.M. (Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation, 1996)

6. Crazy - Pylon (Chomp More, 1983)

7. City Of Angels - The Distillers (Sing Sing Death Hour, 2002) 

[aux-blood]

June ‘17 

1. Time’s Been Wreckless - Marika Hackman, I’m Not Your Man, 2017

2. A Wall - Downtown Boys, “A Wall,” 2017

3. Fast Cars - Buzzcocks, “Another Music In A Different Kitchen, 1978

4. Fruity Pebbles - Dillinger Four, C I V I L W A R, 2008

5. Two States - Pavement, Slanted & Enchanted, 1992

6. This Time Tomorrow - The Kinks, Lola vs. Powerman and the Moneygoround, Pt. One, 1970

7. Here Comes The Summer - The Undertones, The Undertones, 1979

8.  Total Mess - Rozwell Kid, Precious Art, 2017

9. I’m Not Like Everybody Else - The Chocolate Watchband, Inner Mystique, 1968

 10. Old Heads, Chad VanGaalen, “Old Heads,” 2017

11. Trinity Lane - Lilly Hiatt, “Trinity Lane.” 2017

12. Down Down - The Coathangers, Nosebleed Weekend, 2016

[aux-blood]

May ‘17 

1. Waves - Susto, I’m Fine Today, 2017

2. Never Say Never - That Dog, Retreat From The Sun, 1997

3. The Lion’s Roar - First Aid Kit, The Lion’s Roar, 2012

4. Born On A Train - The Magnetic Fields, The Charm of the Highway Strip, 1994

5. My Lover Cindy - Marika Hackman, I’m Not Your Man, 2017

6. Scott Get The Van, I’m Moving - Cayetana, Nervous Like Me, 2014

7. Fan the Flames - Sheer Mag, Compilation (I, II, & III), 2017

[aux-blood]

April ‘17

1. All I Can Do Is Write About It - Lynyrd Skynyrd, Gimme Back My Bullets, 1976

2. Shaking Paper - Cat Power, You Are Free, 2003

3. 700,000 Rednecks - Nikki Lane, Highway Queen, 2017

4. Wrong - Archers Of Loaf, Icky Mettle, 1993

5. Sympathy - Sleater-Kinney, One Beat, 2002

6. Birds Trapped in the Airport - Craig Finn, We All Want The Same Things, 2017

7. Make It Nice - All Night Drug Prowling Wolves, Make It Right, 2011

8. Harnessed in Slums - Archers Of Loaf, Vee Vee, 1995

9. Same Side - The Casket Girls, True Love Kills The Fairy Tale, 2014

10. Hard Drugs - Susto, & I’m Fine Today, 2017

11. Life Form (Transmission Received) - Major Organ and the Adding Machine, Major Organ and the Adding Machine, 2011 

[aux-blood]

April ‘16 Playlist

Interviewed Andrew Bird for work and it was surreal and just totally wild that that actually happened and I kept my cool. Sang ‘80s covers in a swanky bar for a party while sipping Moscow Mules with housemade ginger beer from copper cups on April Fools’ Day. Occasionally playing in a cover band singing Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Devo, and New Order is a really terrific and fun thing. Fell head-over-heels for the new Bleached record. “Sour Candy” is one of the best songs of 2016 - Pat Benatar delivery with girl-group vibes and a treading water narrative that hit home in a painful, get-it-together way when I first heard it. Had a blast playing a house show with Tomboi. Devoured the new Mitski singles, cried my eyes out, so hungry for the full album. Can’t contain the excitement and anticipation for White Lung’s Paradise. This is new and different and just gorgeous, so moving and gorgeous. 

1. At The Back Of The Shell - The Kills

2. Goodbye To You - Patty Smyth

3. Tenuousness - Andrew Bird

4. God In Two Persons - Lithuania 

5. Sour Candy - Bleached

6. Surrender - Tomboi

7. Your Best American Girl - Mitski

8. Townie - Mitski 

9. The Reasons - The Weakerthans

10. Sea of Love - The National

11. I See London - None More Black

12. Below - White Lung

[aux-blood]

[aux-blood]

February ‘16

If this month’s playlist reveals anything off the surface, it’s that Protomartyr came to town and played one of the best shows of recent memory.

Heaven is Whenever is my least favorite Hold Steady record, and I never listen to it, but somehow I finally really listened to “The Weekenders” and good lord is it a perfect song when you detach your Almost Killed Me filter and just listen. I’ve listened to that song more than any other in 2016, I think. 

Dum Dum Girls is/are no more, hence a delve back into their catalog. I’ve always loved how “Coming Down” nearly makes you lose interest for its repetition but it becomes meditative and almost sedative by the end. I love the way Dee Dee’s voice is recorded, how you can hear how crisply and carefully she sings each word on the bridge. It’s uncomfortable, the clarity.

Why’d it take me this long to listen to Gramma’s Boyfriend? New favorite band, y’all. 

New Paws, produced by Mark Hoppus, is the stuff my blink-182 youth lives for. 

1. The Devil In His Youth - Protomartyr

2. The Weekenders - The Hold Steady

3. I Live My Broken Dreams - Gramma’s Boyfriend

4. Jesus On The Radio - Guster

5. Incinerate - Sonic Youth

6. Pontiac 87 - Protomartyr

7. Deep V - Gramma’s Boyfriend

8. Coming Down - Dum Dum Girls

9. I Forgive You - Protomartyr

10. No Grace - Paws

[aux-blood]

January ‘16

Better late than never? 

January was cool, there was even snow in the swamp, though it didn’t stick. I moved into an old home that would seem drafty with its creaking Victorian-era floorboards and thin windows, but it’s strangely been one of the coziest homes I’ve lived in.

The month’s playlist - songs that just stuck at the moment - is coldly familiar in retrospect, made nearly entirely of old favorites. By favorite, I don’t necessarily mean the comfortable, reassuring ones: I haven’t listened to Neutral Milk Hotel in years. After years of super-concentrated fandom and obsession, it’s too intertwined in milestones to listen to without feeling thorny, but one weekend I did little other than leave the house, make tea, and listen to the hundreds on hundreds of unreleased material and bootlegged live takes I got off a fan forum years back. 

It’s a cold kind of vulnerability, this. After all, Mercury was in retrograde. 

1. Bang Bang - My Baby Shot Me Down - Nancy Sinatra

2. Naomi - Neutral Milk Hotel

3. I’m Gonna Get You - CUSSES

4. Kill V. Maim - Grimes

5. Your Legs Grow - Nada Surf

6. Where You’ll Find Me Now/Glow Into You - Jeff Mangum

[aux-blood]

If It Makes You Happy (Sheryl Crow cover) - Screaming Females

Many days, this is all I want to hear. 

[aux-blood]

December ‘15

It was cold, then it wasn’t. Cold is time to listen to Phil Elvrum. Recorded a Phil Elvrum cover. 

Returned to my favorite Christmas song. Always need a little morbid handwringing in holiday tunes. 

Fell in love with the new Grimes after several tries. Just like Visions. Can’t stop listening now.

Sat in Christmas weekend traffic on I-26 playing this Lily Hiatt song over and over and over and over again. Never got tired of it but got scared I might and switched to Darkness on the Edge of Town.

Found new Burger artists. Really dig parts of this Warpaint side project jennylee, reminds me of early Cat Power at moments and tranquil spaces between first-LP Warpaint times at others.

Lots of meditation with the new Baroness. 2015 was a year led by sociopolitical rock ‘n’ roll for me, but this gets highest marks for just a raw, personal kind of visceral. What a beauty. Watched them play right at home in Savannah, one of the best performances of the year. 

Winter is also for Waxahatchee’s American Weekend, though so much of it seems like summer. Maybe it’s most fitting to listen to here in Savannah where it’s December and 80 degrees outside. 

Beatles on Spotify means repeat listens of my favorite, “It’s All Too Much.”

Began the new year with greens and cornbread and black-eyed peas and Shovels & Rope on the speakers.

Here’s to finding new gems in 2016, rediscovering old favorites, and digging through the crates and vaults for surprises and treasures. 

1. With My Hands Out - Mount Eerie

2. Merry Christmas, Baby (Please Don’t Die) - Crocodiles, Dum Dum Girls

3. Between Two Mysteries - Mount Eerie

4. Flesh Without Blood - Grimes

5. Get This Right - Lilly Hiatt

6. Love You All the Time - La Lenguas

7. long lonely winter - jennylee

8. Shock Me - Baroness

9. I Think I Love You - Waxahatchee

10. It’s All Too Much - The Beatles

11. Kemba’s Got The Cabbage Moth Blues - Shovels & Rope

[aux-blood]

I Think I Love You - Waxahatchee (American Weekend, 2012, Don Giovanni Records)

It's late We are not awake and I smashed my phone I am learning how to be alone Resoundingly unpretty girl stares back at me and I become what everyone's harboring from And is it your fault No, I think it's my fault We digress You're inhaling smoke, emotionless somewhere on a map unaware that I am falling flat And you will hurt me And I deserve it It's late. You are not awake and it's nothing I want you so bad it's devouring me and I think I love you but you'll never find out

[aux-blood]

The Con - Tegan & Sara (The Con, Vapor, 2007)

It’s wild to think this album’s eight years old. It pierces just like it first did. I was home from college and went to the record store I’ve been going to since I was a kid, that my dad was going to when he was my age now, and got my copy and drove around and was so taken aback by the darkness and intensity, but few albums function like a lifeline as fiercely as this one.

[owlswallowvowels]

Get This Right - Lilly Hiatt (Royal Blue, 2015) 

Completely fallen in love with Lilly Hiatt. Can’t stop listening to this one.

[aux-blood]

in which Spotify tells me I basically just listen to Screaming Females and The Hold Steady #nosurprise

[aux-blood]

November ‘15 Playlist

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What a weird month.

Remembered how much I love S-K’s One Beat, did the thing where I rekindle my long deep Radiohead love for a minute, move on, then dive back in around a year later, decided that Harvey Danger album is actually really good beginning to end, was super-super-super-super-late to that alt-J single, danced madly in light of the triumphant return of Dressy Bessy, cried to Third Eye Blind covering Beyonce and felt very early Millenial in doing so, binged on the monthly Chad VanGaalen, listened to that new Beach Slang entirely too many times, clung to the ever-present Hold Steady...yeah. 

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1. Myxomatosis - Radiohead

2. Baby It’s You - Smith

3. Grin - The Gerbils

4. Punk or Lust - Beach Slang

5. I Break Guitars - Beach Slang

6. City of Electric Light - Chad VanGaalen

7. Flagpole Sitta - Harvey Danger

8. Adderall - The Hold Steady

9. Breezeblocks - alt-J

10. Mine - Third Eye Blind

11. Lady Liberty - Dressy Bessy

12. Borrowed Bike - Living Decent

13. While We Were Dreaming - Pink Mountaintops

14. One Beat - Sleater-Kinney

[aux-blood]

With My Hands Out - Mount Eerie (Lost Wisdom, 2008)

I want to go back across that sea with my hands out and I will rise from the water though I'm cold and wet I will be clean I want come back from this robbery with my hands up and lie down and be handcuffed take me I will be yours dripping wet just try and hold me I am dripping wet and limp

[aux-blood]

Best Songs of 2015

Every month, I drop new discoveries and frequently-played songs into a monthly playlist on Spotify. I went down those 11 lists and pulled all the tracks released in 2015, resulting in a screwball playlist that does strange things like place Lightning Bolt and Elle King back-to-back but is packed with a lot of great stuff I forgot about and others I’ve still got on repeat. 

Some thoughts on some of these tracks later. Year-end roundup time is my favorite, for both discovering music I may have missed, but also being reminded of what came out in the past 12 months, and dang, this was such, such a good year: new bands, well-executed and fresh comebacks, fuzz, guitar solos, and women and queer folks generally running punk rock in the US of A.

Still mulling over what may be the “best,” but I’m pretty sure my most-played albums of 2015 are, in order: 

Payola - Desaparecidos

No Cities to Love - Sleater-Kinney

Cemetery High Rise Slum - Creepoid

Full Communism - Downtown Boys

The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us - Beach Slang

Listen to the full playlist here.