You’ve always thought of yourself as a hip youngster who is constantly up to date with the rising tide of popular culture and musical trends. Unfortunately, you’ve also always struggled with a wildly misconceived and grandiose sense of self. In reality, the last album you bought was in 2015 and it wasn’t even that good. Your friends have been writing to us to help facilitate a sort of ‘taste intervention,’ but we don’t really have time. Also, we just don’t want to. In lieu of cramming a bunch of people into your apartment to tell you how sick they are of hearing you play that Titus Andronicus record over and over again, we’ve compiled a list of songs that might help you feel as cool as you think you are.
Al Menne “Kill Me”
If you’ve ever heard the excellent Seattle based indie-rock legends Great Grandpa, then you are already familiar with Al Menne’s penchant for hooks and incredibly relatable lyricism. Marking the debut solo single for Menne, ‘Kill Me’ finds the songwriter softening their edges without sacrificing the elements that made their latter band so compelling, thanks in part to production and mixing credits from Christian Lee Hutchinson and Melina Duterte. For months to come, we’ll be hard-pressed to find such a joyous song that features the hook: ‘please kill me now.’
MJ Lenderman “Rudolph”
Tired of listening to the new Wednesday album on repeat, but don’t want to venture too far out of your comfort zone? Give MJ Lenderman a try. When he isn’t busy adding absolutely insane lap steel licks to everyone’s favorite Wednesday tracks, he can be found adding even more riffs to his impressive and expanding solo discography. ‘Rudolph’ serves as his first single since signing to Anti-Records this summer and it fucking rips. While Lenderman’s solo work is separated from his Wednesday output by a healthy dose of twang, fans of the latter will be immediately invited in by the familiar woozy growl of his fuzzy sonic backdrops.
Big Thief “Vampire Empire”
Honestly, how fucking dare they? We’re just now regaining the emotional balance that was obliterated by last year’s massive ‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You’ and these assholes have the gall to release yet another devastatingly gorgeous single. Big Thief have been teasing audiences with ‘Vampire Empire’ for a couple of years now but have only recently put it to tape. This single serves as one side of an upcoming 7-inch to be released in October. It’s quite possible the B-Side will kill us when it’s released, so say your goodbyes while you still have the chance.
DeathCollector “Coarse Visions”
It’s been a pretty heavy week for indie releases, and we’re afraid we might be bumming you out. Allow us to take a severe left turn here. Some people collect baseball cards. Others (virgins) collect Funko Pop Dolls. The gang over at DeathCollector collect… err, death? Believe it or not, this is a death metal project and it cuts to the chase immediately. No drawn out intros, no clean passages- this is meat & potatoes death metal. And by meat: yes, we mean human meat. One of our writers told us that ‘Coarse Visions’ from the band’s latest full-length, ‘Death’s Toll,’ is one of his ‘go-to study jams.’ That makes the anatomy books on his desk even more distressing. It’s been hard to make eye contact with him ever since.
The Mountain Goats “Clean Slate”
Alright, back to it. As most people are aware, John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats almost exclusively listens to bands like the aforementioned DeathCollector, but you’d never know it from his material. ‘Clean Slate’ is no exception to this rule. It has everything you’d want from a proper Mountain Goats single. Scholarship essay-length lyrics? Check. An understated and shockingly well-produced backing track? Uh, check. That thing where Darnielle spends the beginning of each verse kinda talk-singing until sorta belting it out in an anthemic chorus? Oh boy, check! Slap this one on to impress or annoy your friends depending on how literary they are.
The Gaslight Anthem “History Books ft. Bruce Springsteen”
Noted up-and-comer Bruce Springsteen has always cited The Gaslight Anthem as an early influence on his sound. While some think of Springsteen as merely a copy-cat version of TGA, the guys in the band are smart enough to know that he’s simply paying homage to his elders. We think it’s super sweet that they let him perform on the excellent new single and title track to their first album in 9 years, ‘History Books.’ While we’re obviously excited to hear new music from Gaslight, the gap in releases has made it so that none of our vegan leather jackets fit anymore. Looks like we’ll need to find alternate ways to celebrate once the full album drops.
One of our writers had all four of his wisdom teeth pulled this week and asked everyone to make a playlist to ease his recovery. This was undoubtedly a mistake that only caused his blood pressure to rise and increase his bleeding tenfold. Still, it was a heartwarming effort by all involved. Here are some of the highlights.
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets “Mundungus”
This suggestion came with the guarantee to ‘tear our writer’s face off,’ which would have been great had it been true seeing that’s exactly what he wanted to do for a few days after the procedure. Despite still having his dumb face intact, it was undeniably a fun listen. Reportedly, he could ‘like… see the guitars, man.’ We’re pretty sure he was just experiencing the after-effects of the anesthesia, though.
Green Day “Pulling Teeth”
We’re pretty sure someone just typed ‘teeth’ into their search bar and hastily added it to the collaborative playlist we set up. Despite the title, this song doesn’t mention major restorative oral surgery even once. In fact, it’s a horrifyingly cheeky song about an abusive relationship that only served to make our writer a little bummed out. Still, Green Day is his favorite band for some reason, so we guess we can see the strategy here.
Wavves “Sinking Feeling”
It was recommended to queue this one up as the Vicodin started to wear off, but most people know that Wavves sound best when you’re at the peak of mild drug use. That fact is compounded when you consider this song came from the band’s supposed ‘psychedelic’ album. That’s a fancy way of saying that they added a couple acoustic guitars to the mixes and panned things a little weird.
Handsome “Needles”
Our guy was under for the operation because he hates ‘needles,’ and his hope is that having his wisdom teeth out will make him feel more ‘handsome,’ so this was a solid addition all around. For those who don’t know, Handsome was a short-lived supergroup formed from members of Cro-Mags, Quicksand, and Helmet. This is a fact our writer might have appreciated had he not been looped out of his mind for 72 hours.