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1. Parquet Courts picks 'If I Were with Her Now' by Spiritualized
Every week we ask an artist we love to tell us about one song they love. This week we talked with Parquet Courts' Sean Yenton.
Justin Barney: Sean, what is one song that you can’t stop listening to?
Sean Yenton: It is the second song on “Lazer Guided Melodies” by Spiritualized. It’s called “If I Were with Her Now.”
Justin: Why?
Sean: It’s just the perfect song to me. I’m obsessed with that album in general, but that one song is so much different than the rest of the songs he writes.
He is a musician that I really admire. He’s obsessed with music and obsessed with other songs. And I think that he has a lot of other music in his music.
For some reason, when I listen to this song the whole thing to me just feels like a lot of songs at the same time. And even though it doesn’t stand out as sounding like this song or that song, or whatever, it feels like a song that was really put together with a love of music and wanting to write a song about someone by saying so much with so many other sounds.
I listen to it probably every day. It’s a record that’s always happening in my life.
- “If I Were with Her Now” was released in 1992 on Spiritualized debut album, “Lazer Guided Melodies.”
- Listen if you like: art bands from Athens GA, space rock, The Flaming Lips
2. Margaret Glaspy – 'You and I'
I have this question I used to always ask bands. The question: “Heartbreaker or Heartbroken?” What are you? Heartbreaker or Heartbroken?
I wouldn’t even have to ask Margaret Glaspy. I already know. Margaret Glaspy is a heartbreaker. If her heart-crunching guitar weren’t enough, I think I could deduce it from lines like, “I won’t give a f*** about you and I.”
At times Glaspy can be downright mean. Telling her “not-boyfriend” it’s just a matter of time before he cries. She can be brutal. But is it worse to lie and draw things out? Or to tell the truth and have some tears?
I think we know where Margaret Glaspy stands. She’s gonna give it to you straight.
- Margaret Glaspy’s debut album, “Emotions and Math” will be released on June 17 on ATO Records.
- Listen if you like: heart-crunching guitars, apathy, being a heartbreaker
3. Dad feat. Fivy – 'Lake Drive'
Dad is a father figure and local rapper in Milwaukee. This song is a cool song.
I really love the automated pitch shift. It's the effect you will hear working in and out of his voice. It starts so incredibly low and vacillates through the song. It twists reality. Takes the moment that you are in, slows it down, and puts you in the back seat of dad’s car, hand out the window, slow motion doing that hand-wavy thing, just vibin, late night, driving down on Lake Drive, down on down on Lake Drive.
- Dad’s album, Father Figure, is available now.
- Listen if you like: chopped and screwed, father figures, Milwaukee music
4. All Dogs – 'That Kind of Girl'
I sat down with our Digital Content Coordinator, Amelinda, who also is in Group of the Altos.
Justin: Amelinda, what is one song that you can’t stop listening to?
Amelinda: Every time I want to pick a song out I keep going back to the same song, and that song is “That Kind of Girl” by All Dogs.
I feel like, it’s probably a song about love, and it’s not exactly a break up song, but maybe it is. But to me, when people write love songs it’s usually “holding hands in the sunshine through a field.” But I think the truth is, for most people, is that while love is this amazing thing, it’s also terrifying and vulnerable. You find this new completeness and then you immediately feel the anxiety of losing it. And maybe it’s a fear of not being enough, or you come up with scenarios to prove it, or maybe you read too much into something you heard, or try to read into a text too much.
But in this song, the singer Maryn Jones had this honesty, and it’s not quite anger, it’s kind of accusing, like “What does that mean when they say, ‘Stay away from me?’”
- That Kind of Girl was released in 2015 on All Dogs debut album, “Kicking Every Day.”
- Listen if you like: Alvvays, Frankie Cosmos, Sports
5. Alexis Taylor – 'I’m Ready'
Alexis Taylor is the lead singer of the band Hot Chip. So when I saw he released a song off his solo album, I expected it to sound like disco-inspired, groove-heavy electronic dance music. But that's not what this song is. This song is something totally different.
Alexis Taylor. By himself. At a piano. It’s quiet and it’s soft. At times it’s hardly even there.
Listening to this, I think, reveals just as much about Hot Chip as it does about Alexis Taylor. Prior to Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem I found a lot of electronic to be cold and mechanical. But there was something in both of those bands that broke through to me. There was some “thing” -- some beating heart -- that cracked the chilly ice of electronic music for me. In listening to this song I figured out what that thing is: it’s Alexis Taylor. And this is it, free of Hot Chip’s electricity. Laid bare, the heart of Alexis Taylor.
- Alexis Taylor’s new album, “Piano” will be out on June 10th, on Moshi Moshi Records.
- Listen if you like: piano ballads, Tobias Jesso Jr., Hot Chip
