What I'm Listening To, 2025.4.21

"I've done things in your room you'd be ashamed to accuse me of"

I’m on vacation this week, so it’ll be a slightly shorter column. I’m scheduling this post ahead of time, so if a meteor has hit the Earth or the Yellowstone supervolcano has popped off since last week, don’t get in my grill about not mentioning it. If it’s any consolation, we’ve apparently both got bigger problems on our hands.

I’m not the world’s biggest Nothing Painted Blue fan, but this is such a great track. It takes a genuine musical talent to create a song with this much darkness and imbue it with this much life. It’s also a great example of how to write a villain into music. We don’t often thing of songs as having protagonists (because in American music, it’s typically the narrator (I blame the culture)). In this case, the narrative protagonist is an evil, possibly murderous narcissist.

I want to draw a comparison here to Nick Cave and the Bad Seed’s Murder Ballads, but honestly I enjoy this more than any of the songs off that record. There’s more personality in “Houseguest”. I also think it does a great job of bringing the listener in to the narcissistic offense of a certain kind of abusive shithead who hides behind manners.

The noisy, bass-forward instrumentation gives it a unique sound and the swelling clatter in the chorus gives it a real sense of barely contained fury, hidden behind chipper major melodies.

Josh Ritter is one of my favorite artists from the rural area where I grew up (the Inland Northwest of the US). While his aww-shucks earnestness can be a little dopey at times, I think his lyrical cleverness and folk-pop sensibilities usually more than make up for it.

I especially like this live performance of his “Oh Lord (Part Three)”. The mandolin adds a nice jauntiness to it, and the vocal chorus (featuring the incredible Sarah Jarosz) really brings out the soul of the song.

As a matter of fact, let’s close out with a Sarah Jarosz tune.

This is by far and away my favorite of her songs. It potently evokes a feeling many of us have had, but I haven’t ever heard put to music quite so well. That weariness of someone who’s no longer welcome and who we want to relegate to being a stranger but who won’t stop coming into our lives.

Next week’s column will probably be up to the vagaries of travel chaos and jet lag. I’ll try to post something else I’ve been working on this week, but I’m on vacation, so I’m not making anything resembling a promise.