What's a song you associate with your favorite person?

This song played as my favorite person walked down the aisle of a church in Baldwin, WI to meet me at the altar 19 years ago this month.

The last post was my favorite track from Enderness, so here's my favorite from Believers.

A.A. Bondy is so underrated. I go back to Enderness(2019) and Believers(2011) all the time. They are both haunting records.

What's your favorite song to listen to in the rain?

I also like Peter Gabriel's song by the same name, but this is the one I will actually put on when it's raining.

Share a song that captures the feeling of being seventeen.

1997, Driving around in a 1986 Buick Le Sabre and listening to The Colour and the Shape.

Continuing my catch-up on records I didn't get around to listening to earlier in the year, I'm listening to Greg Freeman's Burnover LP today and gotta say, "Gulch" contains perhaps the best lyrical encapsulation of what it feels like to be alive in 2025 in a single line:

Well, I love the world but I think its too fucked up to drive.

You and me both, Greg. You and me both.

Listening to some henceforth neglected 2025 releases over the last few days. Really enjoying the bdrmm record Microtonic. It's my first listen to this band and the sort electro-shoegaze sound they've crafted on this release is very much to my liking. The whole album is good, but "Snares" is one of a few standout tracks that make me excited to hear where they go next.

What's a song you associate with your favorite holiday?

I may be old fashioned, but Christmas and all of its attendant traditions are definitely my favorite festive season of the year. There’s a certain melancholy reverse-nostalgia to it—an unabashed longing for things hoped for—where we are allowed to imagine a world made whole, where injustices are uprooted and “peace on earth” doesn’t ring hollow. The roots of that feeling, of course, are deeply rooted in the Christian story, but that feeling pervades even in non-religious Christmas celebration.

Case in point: no song captures the aspect of Christmas nostalgia for a place that we have never really been like “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, one of the classic secular carols born of the Hollywood musical era. I love many renditions of it, but here’s a little sophistipop version I’m particularly fond of, recorded in a bedroom in Scotland during Covid lockdown in 2020.

Share a song that feels like it has healing powers.

Sometimes you can't believe because you can't see, but then you listen to Mimi Parker sing "I Believe, I Believe, I Believe, I Believe... Can't you see? Can't you see? Can't you see? Can't you see?" until you can and you do.

Continuing on yesterday's theme, I found my way into The Sundays' catalogue today. Their records were so great... and then they disappeared. But most bands would kill for 3 records as strong as theirs. This is one of my favorites of the bunch.