glad you finally got your car out of the mud / now we can make plans for the bar
[this is a post from the archives - originally sent january 11th, 2018]
Really stretching the meaning of "weeklyish" this week, but here we go. After much ado and much delay, here's the track-by-track explanation for December's playlist.
October's explanation email was a 6,000 word overkill behemoth / trial by fire for those who subscribed then blindly and probably weren't ready for all the rambling and capital-F Feelings it contained (sorry, sorry, very sorry). November's explanation was a dashed-off fever-dream that tried to present that month's playlist as a cohesive narrative where one ....lacked. For December, I thought I'd try an experiment to bridge the two and explain each track's inclusion, but limit myself to just two sentences per song and see if that'd get to the middle ground between October's overblown manuscript and November's post-it-note-on-the-fridge.
Somehow, I think the two-sentence rule brought this into even weirder territory but you can be the judge. (Coming next month - haikus! .....joking. probably.)
The playlist is here, for listening along.
"I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" - Jeff Tweedy - I didn't learn to love Wilco until, in a completist and insomnia fueled phase in high school, I tracked down a bunch of bootleg recordings of acoustic Tweedy solo shows that let the lyrics shimmer without all the shiny noise of Wilco proper. This version is a callback to those days for a month when life held up new magnifying glasses to the line of questioning that evolves through the lyrics.
"Let's Go Away for Awhile" - The Beach Boys - This playlist has a lot of Beach Boys on it. I'm not sorry.
"I'll Be Your San Antone Rose" - Emmylou Harris - If a genie granted me three wishes, I'd use the first on being able to sing like Emmylou. I'd use the second to ask that I learn to move through the years and stare down life's trials with an ounce of the grace she has.
"Help!" - The Beatles - I'm working on being better at asking for help, at accepting and appreciating it when it's offered. This song is a reminder that doing so doesn't have to sound miserable.
"I Think I Need a New Heart" - The Magnetic Fields - I put this song on a playlist for a roadtrip I went on with my siblings last summer. "This guy's kind of an asshole," was my sister's reaction when the song came to the bridge and it filled me with a weird sort of relief that she's learned to spot them much faster than I did.
"Pining" - Parker Millsap - I've been thinking a lot about the best shows I saw in the last year and Millsap in a revival style tent on Willie Nelson's ranch is pretty high on the list. He's one of those artists that brings their all to the stage - stomping and shouting and sweating - and this song is a good reminder that there are some things worth looking like a damn fool over.
"I Want To Sing That Rock And Roll" - Gillian Welch - When I put this on during a family car ride my dad asked who it was and I, apparently still capable of acting like a hostile teenager on family roadtrips, responded with "Is that a serious question?" (sorry, Pops.) I've said it before, but Gillian Welch is a national treasure and this song is so so good.
"In My Time of Need" - Ryan Adams - I've been having a weird midlife / existential crisis centered around a farm-based escape fantasy. This song was meant as a reminder that it's not as easy as all that, but has really just been fuel on the fire.
"Left Handed Kisses" - Andrew Bird ft. Fiona Apple - Conversational lyrics have been hitting the spot lately and this song is a masterclass in dialogue as music. Fiona and Andrew are perfection.
"I Just Wasn't Made for These Times" - The Beach Boys - This is probably not the best theme song to adopt, but lately I've been feeling like we're wading into uncharted territory and maybe none of us were quite made for these times. This is my favorite of all The Beach Boys songs that took over this playlist.
"California Stars" - Billy Bragg and Wilco - More Wilco, more escape fantasy soundtracking. I've loved this song for a long time and wikipedia claims that Woody Guthrie penned the lyrics in the city where I was born, so I'm claiming it for my own.
"No Depression" - Uncle Tupelo - Keeping the Jeff Tweedy train rolling because I got stuck in a rut in December. Also, a strong addition to my "songs for pessimists who like to boogie" playlist which has been my modus operandi of late.
"Wannabe" - Taylor Kingman - I mentioned this song in the last email, so I'll keep this brief. This song is a good encapsulation of the all the little stumbles and setbacks, details and dreams that go into the pursuit of trying to be a better person today than you were the day before.
"Wires and Waves" - Rilo Kiley - Another one of those songs that sounds happy, but maybe isn't; would be my karaoke go-to if you could find a place that had Rilo Kiley on the machine. A song with the line "sometimes planes, they crash up in the sky" that I wish didn't get stuck in my head every time I go to the airport.
"Jack at the Asylum" - The Felice Brothers- I love The Felice Brothers but this may be the first playlist all year that included them. I think I take my love for them, like my love for a lot of the things I hold most dear, for granted and as a thing that goes without saying - I'm saying it here.
"Getting Ready to Get Down" - Josh Ritter - "The Red Sea, the Dead Sea, the sermon on the mount - if you want to see a miracle, watch me get down." I tend to forget it, but Josh Ritter is one of my favorite songwriters and this is one of my favorite songs to boogie about getting ready to boogie to.
"Wouldn't It Be Nice" - The Beach Boys - This is the song I was looking for when I started my pursuit down the Beach Boys rabbit hole that took over this playlist. It's also the Beach Boys song on here that got skipped most often.
"Into Desperate Arms" - Goldheart Assembly - I'm not sure that I actually like this song all that much, but I don't dislike it and in trying to find the lyrics to see what it was that made me like it, I found a website where the songwriter talked about how he wrote it when he was really just trying to pick out the chords for a Tom Waits song. I like that.
"Wires" - Basia Bulat - I think I put this song on here to remind me to go listen to the "new" Basia Bulat album because the "new" Basia Bulat album came out almost two years ago and I still haven't gotten around to it. The reminder didn't work, because I still haven't but I do like this song.
"Jumper Cables" - Widower - I listened to the EP this song is on, on repeat for a few hours of aimless driving one Saturday. This song, with it's first verse's spiraling metaphors that manage to toe the line between honest and insulting, is my favorite.
"Carpetbaggers" - Jenny Lewis - Every few years, I try in earnest to learn the guitar and every time I do, this is one of the first songs I convince myself I can play. I've been trying in earnest to learn the guitar again so here we have it.
"No Moon At All" - Milt Jackson - My lullabies for the last months have move exclusively into either Milt on the vibraphones (because holy hell) or Wes Montgomery. Earlier this week, I found an album with the both of them together and all felt right in the world.
"Near You" - Courtney Marie Andrews- I first heard Courtney Marie Andrews while riding in the backseat of the car of a musician I very much admired, talking to the head of a record label I'd never heard of but should have, on a strange quest for pizza and modelo, when all conversation was paused to drive a few dark blocks just listening. My favorite kind of people are the kind of people that know how to say "shhh, no, wait. Have you heard this? Listen." and then let you.
"God Only Knows" - The Beach Boys - Since I started writing this email, more people have told me the things they don't like that much, I've become a sort of guilty un-pleasures confession booth. I won't name names, but one of those confessions included The Beach Boys, but whoops, here we are.
"Truth Hurts" - Lizzo - This playlist was starting to take itself too seriously. This song seriously jams.
"Crybaby" - Kevin Morby - This playlist was still taking itself too seriously, in a boo-hoo-oh-woe-is-me sort of way so I figured I'd just lean into that. Kevin Morby's coming back to Austin in a couple months to give me another chance to see him play twice in one week since that's apparently my thing now.
"Give Back The Key To My Heart" - Uncle Tupelo - Anyway, here's more stuff with Jeff Tweedy on it. Not sorry.
I Lost It - Lucinda Williams - Lucinda's birthday is coming up and she's playing a show at the House of Blues in New Orleans the day after and I've been thinking of making a foolish run to see the show (and also there's a crawfish dish I can't stop thinking about). I like this song as a response to the Uncle Tupelo above.
"(When Your Phone Don't Ring) It'll Be Me" - George Jones - December had a lot more parties crammed into it than most months, which meant more hangovers, which for me has also come to mean more old country music. This one was new to me at the beginning of the month but thanks to one too many a few too many times, one I know forward and backwards now.
"Once A Day" - Connie Smith - According to Wikipedia, when this song came out in 1964, "it was the first debut single by a female country artist to reach number one, and held the record for the most weeks spent at number one by a female country artist" until Taylor Swift came along in 2012. At some point I should probably have my wikipedia privileges revoked for all of the useless knowledge I use it for, but I like this song.
"Pretty Feather" - Joshua James - Joshua James is one of my favorite songwriters for the way he examines life through a lens that takes in and holds close all the good and bad and middling of life. This meditation on this song is better than anything I could write.
"Card House" - Deer Tick - Earlier this year I was 99% certain that I had purchased tickets to see Deer Tick when I 100% had not. I didn't get to see Deer Tick after all and life and things made the first verse of this song became the mantra I didn't want, but none of that outweighs just how much I love this song.
"Steam Engine" - My Morning Jacket - I tend to think that everyone has a few songs that are wrapped up in the core of their being; this is one of mine. For better or worse, these closing lines are the ones I consider some of the music's most romantic: "Your skin looks good in moonlight, and goddamn those shaky knees. The fact that my heart's beating is all the proof you need."
"Tear Stained Eye" - Son Volt - Uncle Tupelo adjacent, this is one of the best songs that I tend to forget about and then have to listen to on repeat for hours when I come across it again. Another entry into the escape fantasy theme - "I would meet you anywhere the western sun meets the air. We'll hit the road, never looking behind."
"Night Shift" - Lucy Dacus - There's a note in my phone about the albums I listened to a lot in 2017 that, talking about Lucy Dacus' debut album No Burden: "this album makes me wish I was either ten years younger and listening to it as the teenage version of myself or fifteen years older with a teenage daughter to give it to." This song, off of an album yet to come out is on heavy, heavy, heavy rotation.
"Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)" - The Beach Boys - "Don't talk, put your head on my shoulder. Come close, close your eyes and be still. Don't talk, take my hand and let me hear your heart beat." I mean... come. on. So good.