04/20 - You'll Have To Learn To Live A Different Way

Things are shifting. Small steps taken start to add up to a critical mass. Change comes rumbling. It should be good, it could be bad. Things are nervous.

Billie Eilish - No Time To Die

I have not caught up with the Billie Eilish hype. I have yet to form an opinion on her, and it might even be that this song will have lost its luster a couple of months' heavy commercial rotation from now. But just at this moment it definitely feels like the best Bond song – except for Radiohead's discarded Spectre contribution of course – since the 1970s. It's gutsy, because it's so subtle: Billie holds back, quavers and doesn't go full throttle until the dramatic crescendo in the final 40 seconds. It's got nerve and it sends a chill down my spine.

Dave - Black

Maybe it looks like I'm desperate to stay hip and contemporary by including two performances from last week's Brit Awards, but how can you look over a performance like this? Between Dave and Stormzy it feels like there's at least a cultural antidote to the Tory Brexit. Just wish that extra verse was on the record.

Tirzah - Go Now

We spend a lifetime trying to learn when's the right time to leave.

Low - Disarray

Did a bit of catching up with this album. It's a near perfect distillation of zeitgeist. Stunning humanity in the midst of distortion and... total disarray.

Melanie - Mr. Tambourine Man

The richness of a Bob Dylan song still has few matches. There are always at least two sides to every verse. You could do a Byrds-like take of Mr Tambourine Man and make it into a paean to delirious freedom and escape. Or you could do like Melanie, and pick out the sleep-deprived anxiety and indecision, to sing with tense, anguished voice:

Please let me forget about today until tomorrow

And because I forgot it last week; here's Goat (Japan). They're not on Spotify, but they're absolutely extraordinarily awesome live.

03/20 - Leave Your Bad News For A While

Bleurgh. What a dismal season. One has to look for shimmering distractions.

Nina Simone - You've Got To Learn

Continuing last week's resilience theme with one of the best. Can anyone listen to this without clenching something? A fist, a chest, some legs...

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Mr. Brown

The economy of early Wailers tracks is what puts them up and above. You have an absolute killer bit like the "From Mandeville to Sligoville, coffin running around..."-chorus, used once, and then a second time only for the fade out. Because that's all a backbeat ghost story needs to utterly slay.

The Weeknd - The Birds Pt. 1

Uncut Gems prompted me to look into The Weeknd a bit more, and would you know? I found uncut gems. Always a fan of heavy marching drums. And a timely warning: Don't make me make you fall in love!

Jessica Pratt - Jacquelyn in the Background

Rainy days have always been the ones most urgently calling out for a soundtrack, and now I've found a new rainy day favourite. That disorienting tape warp effect at 2:45 makes it sound just wrong enough to make it absoutely right for a pissy February Thursday.

Bon Iver - 00000 Million

This is for after the rain. Whenever that is.

Where the days have no numbers...

02/20 - Don't Mean You're Beaten Now

Sheets of rain are attacking my windowpane from highly imaginative angles. This playlist is a mood.

Angel Olsen - Impasse

Saw Angel live on Tuesday, and now I'm trying to figure out what overused clichés could be employed to liken the force of the performance with. Some kind of storm perhaps? Or something geological, like an eruption/explosion? Best perhaps to sidestep the similes all together and simply imply that a live reindition of this and other recent songs is something one better braze oneself for. Above the larm of the full-fledged band, her voice adds a sort of pummelling punch coming for the audience's sternum.

Sharon van Etten - Beaten Down

This was released just the other day. It's subtle, creeping and cleverly persuasive. By the time the chorus comes around for a third time, the jump from that low gurgle "it ain't.." to the high soaring "...beaten down" has become an addiction. And Sharon looks hella cool.

Bill Callahan - One Fine Morning

The doom and gloom will be met with a stoic, beauty-loving mind.

When the earth turns cold, and the earth turns black
Will I feel you riding on my back?
For I am a part of the road
The hardest part

The Smashing Pumpkins - Soma

The teenager inside jumps out and wants to listen to angsty Smashing Pumpkins from when they were still great, had the best guitar solos, and wrote songs about Brave New World-drugs, anger and loneliness.

Scott Walker - Phrasing

Angst in a different, more artful guise, with some dissonant samba thrown in for good measure.

Did ya spot the die-cut crosses?

...

Did ya?

01/20 - We Can Make Our Bad Dreams Come True

2020 has had a slow start. Or rather, it has had no start. It feels like time has been standing still since December. Sweden is grey, visually and mentally. But, January skimmed through and done with, now it's February, and I'm ready to shake the dust off and give this new decade a chance to redeem itself. New colours on the blog, new tunes in the play queue. Let's start the year here.

LCD Soundsystem - Dance Yrself Clean

Waking up, furtively. Warming to it, warming to it... until BLAM you throw the blanket off and jump up into the cold dark dawn. This winter malaise does not wash off; you have to dance yourself clean.

Tierra Whack - Unemployed

One of the best things that happened in 2019 was this song and video, and I didn't even catch it til this year. Luckily we live in a culture where everything lives forever on the internet. And soon I intend to be unemployed with gusto, preferably with this as my recurring soundtrack.

"Are you ok?" Please don't ask that.

Fattaru - Hörde Jag Skål

I'm frustrated, lethargic, disappointed with myself, but in the long run I'm fucking determined not to accept a boring life. Did I hear 'cheers to that!'?

Lars Hollmer - Boeves Psalm

A melody for starting on a new page.

Louis Armstrong & Velma Middleton - Baby, It's Cold Outside

I'm now feeling like I've defrosted a bit. One way to keep the temperature up is with old school, jocular, innuendo. With mutual consent and understanding like with Louis and Velma of course.