Great Songs From Q3 2024.
LL Cool J — Passion
Caught the recommendation for this one at random from a buddy who has always been into most of the same shit that I’m into, but also roams way more deeply into the classic hip-hop and soul genres. When I saw that he had sent me an LL Cool J track? I was absolutely baffled. Is this old shit? New shit? Irony? What is going on right now? But to be honest, coming out of this track I was kind of blown away by how L was still able to deliver a solid vocal track with a cool jazzy beat that felt like he was trying to shed a little light on some old school music and how it can still have a little bit of a foot hold in modern music. (YouTube)
Clairo — Sexy to Someone
I’ve talked about this song a lot since its release as a single and then later on the full length. This is one of my favorite tracks of the year for sure. There’s a slow and simmering burn that rocks through the entire song with a smooth drum beat that sticks throughout the entire work. Clairo’s vocal delivery is restrained and confident in a way that hovers like a cool daydream from copasetic verse to groovy hook. I’ve spoken to a bunch of people about this song and something that keeps coming up is the word “Sexy” is just such a funny and awkward adjective to throw into a song and a title, and I’m not sure if that’s where we all sit as a society, but I can’t get that sentiment out of my head. This song feels like its found on an old VHS tape, man. It feels like it has existed forever. I love it. (YouTube)
Soccer Mommy — M
This is another stripped down and melancholic song from Sophie Allison off of her album which drops October 25th. There is a faded western ambience that tracks through the heart of the song with faded reverb on clean electric guitar. Sparkles spread and flake off of low and hazy beams of sunlight throughout the song, with the instrumental acting as an atmosphere more than a driving portion of the song itself. The spotlight rests on the vocals and the lyrics, an admission of being utterly spun in a time of loss. The last couple of records from Soccer Mommy had a very electronic and heavily produced feeling about them and this song seems to hint at a more grounded and organic approach at the music. Really looking forward to it. (YouTube)
Horse Jumper of Love — Wink
It’s getting a little too obvious that I’m loving this record. I’m giving it a lot of attention, like some favorite child. The slow burn of this song really highlights a lot of the emotional weight that this record hefts upon the listener. The sparse instrumentation is wound tightly, spread heavily and abstractly across a limited dark space. I love the way that the shadows in the darkness of this record take a shifting shape, frayed ends of sound echoing and rattling out into a bleak atmosphere. So many little deliberate things are happening in the background of this one. It’s not only a masterwork of maximizing the grand fluidity of long and intentional brushstrokes, but also of putting an artist’s vision on display through the work of a focused and aligned producer. (YouTube)
Extinction AD — Desperate Grasp
Anytime a Rick Jimenez band comes on for me, I know it’s going to be a blast. There is such a specific sound that he is able to accomplish. There’s the modern aggression that a lot of modern metal bands bring, but there’s also a classic sense of throwback thrash in the mix as well, sort of an anger that bridges generations. I love the big shredding riffs that open this track up, and the way the theme repeats itself in a punishing way at the end of the song. This is about as traditional metal a song as I can stand, but when it’s done with this kind of proficiency and fury, I’m all in. The part right before 2:30 is such a nice way to open the gate into the spiraling pit that the song concludes with. “Goodnight trash!” is a sick touch, too. (YouTube)
Glare — Mourning Haze
I found out about this band and this song through a post on the Deathwish Inc. post on Instagram. They were talking about releasing a 7” of this song, and the song instantly hit me in a really good place. The enormity of the distorted guitars make the jangling parts during the clean verses sound that much more spectral. I’m really excited to see what else this band is going to bring to the table with an EP or a full length. This is a band that sounds like they’re going after that shoegaze crown. (YouTube)
Fontaines DC — In the Modern World
So I was really high on the band’s release of ‘Favourite’ off of Romance, and I expected a lot out of the album. While I didn’t really get everything I was expecting out of it (it’s fine), this song is one that has stuck with me for a lot of reasons. The main one being that it sounds like it was written explicitly for Lana Del Rey. I’m almost certain that at some point in the [near] future, there is going to be a collaboration or a cover or a rerecording of this song with Lana involved. It has the melodrama of the strings, the crooning and the moaning and the layering that she always brings to the table, and it embodies that old and fading Los Angeles vibe that she has always personified. There is something really cool about Chatten’s vocals, so doing a song in this style really works. Something so cool about this band, something super unique. (YouTube)
Sabrina Carpenter — Juno
I wasn’t able to avoid the viral moments of Carpenter’s enormous songs ‘Please Please Please’ and ‘Espresso’, but I did manage to miss out on the songs themselves until the full length came out. I thought it was such a great pop album that wasted no time, made the absolute most of its brief real estate. There were a bunch of songs that I wanted to put on this list from the album, first of which was ‘Bed Chem’, but then I heard it in an instagram reel so I pivoted to this one… which is also now becoming “One of Those” songs, so I imagine that the more I try to jump around and pick a song that isn’t a huge single, I’ll never find a song to pick. This one just feels good. (YouTube)
Blind Girls — Home Will Find Its Way
I saw a post that my local record store had restocked the shelves with this album and I had never heard of the band (or obviously their album) so I pulled it up on Spotify and almost instantly had one of those experiences where I needed to hear the whole thing again. This is some of the most desperate and urgent music I’ve heard all year, a dark and tragic expression of smeared and scratched fervor. This is an immediate chemical reaction. (YouTube)
Nails — Lacking the Ability to Process Empathy
Another battering ram of a song, Nails never pulls any of their armaments from the front. This one churns and grinds forward, leaving bones and nothing else in its path. This song is simply two minutes of me making a twisted scowl and banging my head in pace with this brutality, and then hitting repeat two or three times. This one lights my amygdala on fire and throws it into the street. (YouTube)
MJ Lenderman — Rudolph
I’ve heard a lot about MJ Lenderman this year! Maybe it’s just the bands that I’ve started gravitating towards (Lenderman, Horse Jumper, Hello Mary and last year’s brilliant Wednesday record are all touched by the production of Alex Farrar), but I was peripherally excited about this release. I kind of haven’t gotten into it all the way yet, but this song’s particular expression of smirking alt-country is kind of filling the void that Pinegrove left when they went on hiatus last year. Big unironic slide guitars, cowbell and a “oh gosh” drawl all work together to make a song that feels like sitting in a great big parking lot under an enormous butter-yellow prosthetic moon. (YouTube)
Hello Mary — Footstep Misstep
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to drop this song or ‘Float’ on this list, but this was the first song in my listen through of the band’s record that really got me going back for more. I saw the band open up for Silversun Pickups in May and was floored by the sheer volume and size of sound that a three piece was able to conjure. These guys made a single guitar sound so heavy and this song really explores a lot of the dynamics that the band is capable of employing in the way that they construct their music. I think one of the biggest weapons that this band has on their side is the element of surprise, and this song does a pretty good job of showing off the varied library of techniques that they use. Is the song pretty? Sure, but it’s weird too. It often sounds like it’s on the verge of breaking apart, like something going too fast, too erratic to stay together. But the center surely does hold. (YouTube)
Retail Drugs — 41
I was done, this list was done. But just this afternoon (10.3) I heard this song for the first time and felt like it was right in the same kind of vibe that I was feeling over the past few months. The fuzz is turned up to the max. The burn marks are all about eating into the core of the picture. Everything sounds a little oxidized, a little worn. I am excited to check out what the band’s full length is all about, but until then, this song certainly deserves some attention. (YouTube)
