gonna live my life in this hot country
take a deep breath and you reach out to me.
In the absence of concerts as a way to stand in communion, I’ve been thinking a lot about all of the other ways music serves as a guiding light towards connection in my life. It is the thing that makes me feel connected to people, a way of opening a door when I’m not sure what to say.
Last weekend I stood at the top of hill to scatter the ashes of a man I didn’t try to get to know in the ways I probably should have, surrounded by family who had. I felt out of place, as I often do when confronted by the steps I should have taken, too late to lift my feet.
I felt out of place until the moment came to do what we’d all hiked to do and someone hit play on a small speaker that had been hastily thrown in a backpack. The opening notes of “Long Black Veil” rumbled out as we tried to ascertain which direction the wind was blowing from, stood in a line and let it carry our voices away with the ashes.
Some families are built on blood, others are bound with choruses.
—
These continue to be strange, hard times and though I told myself I was going to get better at doing these regularly again, that too has gotten stranger and harder. Bear with me. Thank you to everyone who continues to share what you’re listening to and thinking about. A blessing and a lighthouse, each one.
playlists:
Time continues to pass - here’s how July felt.
Western Wednesdays continue, as a thought exercise more than anything. The Sold My Soul edition is based on a single released in anticipation of Cut Worms’ double-album making its way into the world this October.
A few weeks back Bon Iver released a new song that merged the vocal talents of Jenny Lewis, Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak, and Bruce Springsteen into a largely pleasant but indecipherable chorus. On an impulse, I tried to pull out all of those pieces and turned them into this AUATC (Bon Jenny Springsteen, but WYE??) playlist. It kinda works. I kinda like it.
albums:
The very end of July brought the new Land of Talk album that I’d been (im)patiently looking forward to after its initial release date got bumped out of May. Indistinct Conversations was more than worth the wait. I got out of bed early the day it came out so I could listen to it twice through, wandering my neighborhood. The track “Festivals” stopped me in my tracks both times.
Back in February, which feels like ages ago now, Brooke Bentham released the stunning album Everyday Nothing that would surely make it onto a list of my top albums of this year if I could ever remember to make those things. One of its lead singles, “All My Friends Are Drunk” was released a couple days before I stopped treating sobriety like it was a thing I could afford to do only sometimes and has been a crutch in the process of my reality shifting - an anthem for when things felt loneliest. This week saw the release of a new album from Bentham, Sunday Self which borrows a line from that song and is a reimagining and re-recording of many of the previous album’s songs. I was a big fan of when Bill Ryder-Jones, who Bentham works closely with, took this approach with his releases of 2018’s Yawn and the following year’s Yawny Yawn. The stripped down approach is just as successful utilized by Bentham, and the lyrics have more room here to breathe, to sing, to punch you in the gut.
There’s a new Bright Eyes album out. I’ll always want to talk about Bright Eyes. Thank you to everyone who texted me about it yesterday. May we all meet in the future to scream-sing-along at a concert on the other side of this thing, Down in the Weeds, Where the World Once Was.
songs:
What’s your favorite of late? I truly want to know.
Until next time, Listen to Ted Hawkins.