NAILED Songs of the Week #45
“The way the north will always be jealous of the south”
Matty Byloos, Publisher and Contributing Editor of NAILED:
“Butterfly” – Twin Peaks
That guy in front of you in the middle of nowhere walks into the gas station mini mart and you just know he’s living on stale beef jerky, red vines and orange soda. You’re jealous ’cause you know he sees more of everything than you ever will. The way the north will always be jealous of the south. The way fast is jealous of slow, or city and the tall green grass with the sound of crickets. He’s sloppy in all the right ways. Drinks worse beer than you and enjoys it better. There’s a charity to him. He spends more time in the garage then you ever dreamed possible. His name rhymes with something psychedelic. You have every reason to hate him, but you can’t, so you don’t.
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Shenyah Webb, Arts Editor of NAILED:
“Spaceship” – Peacock Affect
Sometimes a sad song is all you need to remind you that you are human.
I remember sitting with my boombox, a removable speaker to each ear, laying on my bed waiting for something to happen when I pushed play. Songs on repeat, songs to summon the confusion of being me. Feeling it at the edge of my insides, trying to get out, getting closer with each repeat. The tears would eventually come, giving me a reason to feel. Releasing me from my chamber of teenage boredom, confirming that I was alone, that I wanted out, yet it all felt so good, so right.
“Spaceship” is a song about escape, a great listen for these human reminders. Perfectly simple, perfectly slow, with just the right amount of absence and minor chords. George Holman’s euphonious voice becomes the escape with lines like “You do your best but the world doesn’t make any sense to you” and “I can hear the sea even though I’m in the city.” He invites the moments when we need to feel. And like the clarity after a good cry, it begins and resolves in the perfect circle of a wind.
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Carrie Seitzinger, Editor-in-Chief of NAILED:
“Steer the Canyon” — Big Black Delta
Big Black Delta’s new album, Trágame Tierra was recently released, much to my delight. I’ve been a long-time fan of Jonathan Bates; I’d go see him play at Highland Grounds in LA when I was 17 years old, back when Mellowdrone was just him and a bunch of instruments and a looper pedal. It’s impressive, given our distracted culture, this musician has been in the game (or studio or stage) so consistently over the last 14+ years.
Trágame Tierra has a shaking pop bliss, electric emotion, and a backbone of beats. Plus there are delicious collaborations between Bates and Debbie Gibson, Kimbra, and Dhani Harrison. It’s clear that Bates hasn’t only been rocking this whole time, he’s been learning along the way. Once you put on these headphones you won’t want to take them off.
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Kevin Meyer, Writer and Contributor to NAILED:
“Daydreaming” – Radiohead
Twenty-three years. That’s the length of Thom Yorke’s relationship with his partner, Rachel Owen, the mother of his two children. Reverse and pitch-correct the back-masked vocals at the ending of Radiohead’s new single “Daydreaming,” and you end up with Yorke repeating the phrase Half of my life, half of my love. Thom Yorke was forty-six years old when he and his partner separated.
It’s math I can empathize with. I left my wife of thirteen years at the age of thirty-five, and watching Yorke walk silently, aimlessly, through door after door, finding himself in strange places that don’t connect to where he was before—a house to a hallway to a beach to an elevator—I know how he feels. Divorce is a time machine. You step into the unique, constructed reality only two people can share, and thirteen or twenty-three years later, when you step out of that reality, the world has changed.
Yorke’s growing frustration—the facial tics, the way he yanks at doors stuck shut, how he shakes his head when a door leads somewhere different than he expected—in the never-ending maze of rooms filled with happy families, long empty corridors, stairways, and vacant parking garages, that’s the way the new world feels sometimes. Familiar places become rotten with old memories, and new places are strange, distant.
Twenty-three doors. That’s the number of doors Thom Yorke opens in Daydreaming before climbing alone into an icy cave, shivering by a small fire, to fitfully fall asleep.
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Check out Songs of the Week #44 for even more great music from the editors and contributors behind NAILED.