What I'm Listening To This Week, 2025-01-26

I had tickets to a show this week to the Bright Eyes show at the Paramount that I wasn’t able to use. Ditching it was the right biographical choice, but I wish I could have made it. I saw them years ago and it was an unexpectedly wild time. A woman tried to throw herself from the balcony onto the stage and was held back by her friends. You know I do love a spectacle.

One day I’ll write a longer about this set in the future, but for now, I’ll just say that you owe it to yourself to listen to Gold Teeth Thief. It’s just over an hour and it will change your life. DJ /rupture is one of the all-time greats and you could teach a whole masterclass about how he blends global south beats, Arabic folk music, jungle, rap and much more into one cohesive whole.

Using Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On” as a jumping off point, it takes the listener on an artfully blended tour of incredible tracks from all over the world. It’s hard to know how to do it justice in a short blurb without falling into mere dissection, so just do yourself a favor and listen.

I also highly recommend his book, Uproot (published under government name of Jace Clayton). It’s deep exploration of global music and of technology as a folk instrument for creating and disseminating folk and popular music. I couldn’t recommend it more.

One of my favorite indie bands I’ve discovered in the past few years is Boston-based The Roland High Life. They exhibit some of the best trends of early 2000s loser rock without any of its excesses. I love their flare of self-deprecation and the ability to commit to a bit (they released an EP a few years ago mostly about comic books). Punk asks the question “life’s shit; what now?” Pop-punk answers that question with “fuck it; let’s party”.

Roland High Life articulate that answer better than most other contemporary bands of the genre.

“Always Almost Ready” is the kind of anthemic statement of malais that demonstrates why rock and roll is so well suited for conveying wry angst. The sensation of being “always almost ready” is so visceral that it still strikes me almost as hard at 40 as I think it would have if I’d heard it at 18 when this style of rock was more in vogue. I personally suspect that this kind of music about aimless anxieties will continue to be more resonant as Capitalism continues its steady ratchet of alienation.

I’ve been a Long Winters fan since their 2003 sophomore album When I Pretend to Fall. Their release last year of So Good At Waiting, a stellar rarities collection, is the first time some of their best material is broadly available. “Not Moving to Portland” is one of my favorite Long Winters songs, having seen them perform it live a handful of times over the past decade.

“Not Moving to Portland” is a touching and beautiful song on its own, but living in the Pacific Northwest enriches it. Every true child of the PNW has in their romantic annals not just “the one that got away” but also, specifically, “the one that fucked off to Portland”. This song captures the sensation of this particularized experience so well that it should be studied in Anthropology classes in a century’s time.

Aside from the resonate local experience, it’s just such a nifty little track. From the odd time signature and syncopation to its charmingly personal and libidinal lyrics, (“I want you just as you first came to me, wearing only perfume and a coat”), it’s a beautiful exploration of the peculiar things our hearts want and the sad fact that getting them won’t always make us happy.