I always love when Spotify provides some details on my listening patterns, habits and overall time spent just jamming out to music. While I will never top my 101,000 minutes of music in one year, I still enjoy these and wanted to share what I had, including:
62,510 minutes listening to music!
1,377 Artists listened to
149 musical genres listened to
I’m in the 0.5% of listeners to Mac Miller this year
The star of this week’s mixtape is Falle Nioke, a man from Guinea now living in the UK. I stumbled across “Leywole” which stopped me in my tracks. What a sound! What a presence. What a beat.
There’s something going on that I can feel. Something hopeful and energizing. The success and future of bitcoin (and cryptocurrency in general) - a transparent and decentralized currency that can essentially be owned by anyone for any amount which no government can control, usurp, or overtake - is setting the stage for the emergence of sort of a global community no longer defined by borders and lines on maps.
Yes, there will still be wars and extremist religions and corruption and greed, but these things will be harder to finance (like US taxpayers paying $2T for a war in Afghanistan that cost 170,000 lives, 47,00 of which were Afghan civilians) because the world population will have control of the money, and that is where power lies.
There will still be borders separating countries, but those physical representations will fade as technological advances and “cloud communities” (as Balaji calls them) will become the norm. This is a decade or decades away, but it is happening.
Why the hell am I saying this? Falle Nioke may be singing in a different language, but I feel like I understand him. I feel connected to him in a way I haven’t felt before with a person singing in a different language. And I think it represents a connection I hope occurs globally with all sorts of people with different life experiences, upbringing, cultures, norms, and so much more humanity could benefit from understanding more.
A lot to come to mind by just one song, I suppose.
Happy listening.
This Saturday, I had the joy of seeing My Morning Jacket in concert at the beautiful, one of a kind, Greek Theatre in Berkeley, CA. It was my third time seeing them, and my first concert since pre-COVID. As they always do, MMJ kicked ass, starting their set with the hard rocking, riff-spitting “One Big Holiday,” followed by the classic, “Touch Me I’m Going To Scream, Pt. 2” (and yes, Pt. 1 was played later!), and then into “Wordless Chorus.”
Their setlist was an epic spectrum of their entire discography. They played at least one song from every single album except for their first (and worst, IMO), The Tennessee Fire. They even played one of my favorite MMJ songs, “Steam Engine.”
They played their two newest songs, one of which, “Love Love Love,” I started this week’s mixtape with. It’s a great song with a distorted guitar’s bull rush of rhythm, constantly pounding and leading the track while the Carl Broemel falsetto of “Na Na Naaaa” adds a catchy hook.
One track from the show, “Wasted,” was an unknown to me. It’s the second to last track on their most recent album, Waterfall II, and the track has one of the best changes of trajectory (coming in at 2:20) that MMJ has ever done.
All images by @jayblakesberg taken @greekberkeley
“Wasted” takes a route you would never expect it to take, particularly because listening to the first two minutes of this track doesn’t add much to the imagination, and then BAM, we go to funky town on the keys (as the rainbow lights shined down while they played live) and then the horns come in, and then the song comes back around, jumping in line with the original trajectory of the track. What. A. Song. So cool to see live.
The concert was a reminder that MMJ stands in the Mount Rushmore of rock bands over the past two decades. There is an aura MMJ exudes, one that bands rarely shine.
Here’s the setlist of the show if you were curious:
It was 2012, I was a spry 28 years old spending a weekend at Austin City Limits in Austin, TX with a group of great friends and music lovers. We walked into the concert at Zilker Park in the early afternoon on a sunny Friday to a band I had heard of but never heard, Delta Spirit.
The song we heard is indelibly marked in my brain as a reminder of that day, that weekend, and the joys that music can bring, bringing friends closer together:
“Tear It Up,” from Delta Spirit’s self-titled third album, was the opening to our weekend of fun and a hell of an anthem. What a memory.
Eight years have passed, and Delta Spirit just released their fifth album, What Is There. I’ve listened to it all the way through a few times, and it’s great. I want to say it’s their best, but I’m still debating whether their self-titled album was better.
Wherever I end up on that internal debate, nothing will take my ears off of “Making Sense,” the first track on today’s mixtape, and on e of the best songs Delta Spirit has made. There’s something to the spacey synth that punctuates this song. It ties together a typical yet great Delta Spirit song.
“The Pressure” is another banger by Delta Spirit on the mixtape. Their energy is infectious and the pace non-stop.
Another thing I’ll never forget from that awesome set at ACL in 2012 was their frontman/guitarist, Matthew Vasquez, in the midst of his band going to town on a hard rock interlude, started climbing the scaffolding on the side of the main stage. Easily twenty feet into the air, high off god knows what (I can’t imagine it was just life at 1pm in the afternoon, but who am I to judge?), he starts dangling with one arm and swinging on the scaffolding.
We’re all witnessing a potential death while also getting to see some crazy rock star shit a la Eddie Vedder.
I remember the look on his bandmates’ faces. They continued to play, but they all saw their future falling before their eyes in the name of rock. Most of them looked slightly bemused. No one was angry, no one was particularly scared. That was Matthew being Matthew, I suppose.
But I’ll remember the energy. The feel of the crowd’s shock, fear, and genuine appreciation of some dude’s craziness and commitment to being a showman.
Vasquez climbed down easily, grabbed the mic, and screamed on.
My Morning Jacket just released a surprise album, The Waterfall II. It’s a release of other songs that MMJ recorded while making their last album, The Waterfall. Check out my album review from 2015 of the Waterfall here!
What I’m left guessing with this second installment is that the songs on this new album are b-sides. I’ve listened through the album a couple times, and it needs many more, but “Feel You” is the standout. It’s a great ballad with a killer guitar riff that will bring you back wanting to hear the song again. Love these guys.
There’s some new stuff from a couple bands that have made frequent appearances on the mixtape: Whitney and Foster the People. There’s also some brand new bands, like the unique teenage artist, boy pablo (hailing from Denmark!) and the spacey Mildlife.
Have a great week!
A Moon Shaped Pool is a dark confessional, most likely about the ending of his relationship with his girlfriend of 23 years. This album is a mini-orchestra with horns, cellos, violins, who knows what else. It all starts with the first notes - the strings - of the album on "Burn the Witch. "
It's further explored on "Daydreaming" and all of the orchestral elements come to an unforgettable crescendo on the most delicate song of the album, the wandering "Glass Eyes":
And the path trails off and heads down a mountain through the dry bush. I don't know where it leads and I don't really care.
Read MoreAlbums make music permanent. Albums are the story to the chapters, the theme of so many thoughts. Albums are what make songs something more.
This year has provided so many albums - to the tune of 1,457 artists, 6,426 songs, and 100 thousand minutes of music that I’ve listened. And I listened to and loved nothing more than Tame Impala’s Currents.
As I wrote in my album review, Currents is a wonderfully freeing musical expression and acknowledgement of adaptation for the sake of Parker and no others. One of the coolest things I noted was that Currents is so different than its two top notch predecessors, yet it eclipses both.
"Yes, I'm changing," Kevin Parker sweetly serenades the critics, haters, and trolls, "Yes, I'm gone / Yes, I'm older / Yes, I'm moving on / And if you don't think it's a crime / you can come along with me / Life is moving / can't you see?"
My love for Natalie Prass is evident if you read this blog. It all started because of her debut album. I did not write a review, I just enjoyed the many, many instruments and Prass' vocals delicately absorbing the wind and strings to harmonize above it all.
It’s been the best year in rap in many many years. Six rappers made it onto my list, and three of them - Drake, Lupe Fiasco, Kendrick Lamar - in the top six! Each album was completely different.
Read MoreThe Waterfall runs on a theme of water, its never ending flow and seemingly endless supply stream rampant through our lives and veins, yet as humans this breath of life is finite. We live before we die, we attempt to swim through the currents, sometimes we drown. "Time has come / world in motion / Heart of man swept into the ocean / like a river flowin' / like a river washes away," James sings in "Like A River."
This idea of water, life, and death plays itself throughout the album as James seems to be wandering himself.
Read MoreMy Morning Jacket released their new album last week, and "Compound Fracture" is my favorite song on the album. My review of the album will be published tomorrow!
Best Coast also released their new album, California Nights, last week, and as they tend to do on each of their albums, I become crazily fixated on a few track. In this album's case, it's "Jealously" and "Feeling OK." Bethany Cosentino knows how to make a simply structured song sing. Her formula has pretty much stayed the same since their debut Crazy For You, but it's always worked for me. If you like these two tracks, check out my 5 Faves playlist I made a while back!
Future Island's new track is a continuation of their last album, specifically the tracks "Spirit" and "Seasons (Waiting on You)," so you guessed it - it's a great track!
Ryley Walker is a singer/songwriter I recently stumbled upon. "Primrose Green" should be played outside in a garden, it's sound is so delicate and warm.
Miguel, Miguel, Miguel. This is such a sexy song. This is the version of the song without Wale because Miguel should be the only one singing on a track like this.
Monday is here, sorry about that. But it's not all bad, you have a little mix to get your morning started or daze off to at the end of the day.
I started adding a few tracks that I've been digging recently, and I realized a theme was coming together with these songs: they are all very ethereal and chill in their own way and sound. Each genre of music in this mix, whether it's rock (The Bright Light Social Hour), electro-pop (Miami Horror), pop (Soko and U.S. Girls), rap (Action Bronson feat Wiz Khalifa), or a singer/songwriter (Alice Boman), has ways of providing laid back versions of themselves. I love making chill mixes (which I'm surprised I haven't posted yet, but this is a swift kick in the ass to get that posted) because I feel like I can get so much work done with a mellow vibe rolling in the background. Hope you enjoy!
By the way, if you're a fan of My Morning Jacket (new album release date May 5, 2015!) and you like the track "Dreamlove" on this mix, you HAVE to check out The Bright Light Social Hour's album. It kicks ass.
