October 9, 2026
SOMETHING OLD
Birth Control - No Drugs
1970
Birth Control - No Drugs
1970
Last weekend, I went to my third Geese concert. As always, hearing the music I love most live and loud affected me tremendously. It has the power to completely alter my personality as if I were a few drinks deep. My perpetually shy and anxious exterior, surrounded by thousands of people, was shattered instantly by song and song again. I screeched, I sang, I jumped, I danced, I flipped my hair. And it felt impossibly good.
It's much easier and frequent for this ecstasy to come to life without an audience. A night in my bedroom with the door closed and a good pair of headphones or my many fond memories of sitting alone at my college radio station while hosting my show in the soundproof studio have facilitated some of my finest moods. Similarly, there is music that's taken the starring role in helping me navigate moods like melancholy and anger.
As corny as it sounds, music has always been a potent drug for me. That's what this song is about.
I discovered it in my adolescent through some awful German movie called Me, a Groupie. I have zero memory of what happens in this film, but I just remember liking the song enough to seek it out elsewhere. Birth Control were a Krautrock group from West Berlin, and the peculiar name was chosen as a statement against Pope Paul VI's anti birth control policy. I always found the album cover depicting the band in a package of birth control pills to be very funny and cute, and I've never forgotten it. But frankly, after close to a decade of knowing it, I've only just paid attention to the lyrics enough to deduct what this opening track is about.
They're simple, almost primitive lyrics. But they get the message across.
Be a dragger
Shovel music
In your home
And you'll never be alone
Shovel music
In your home
And you'll never be alone
Get high and higher
Just like a flyer
High in the clouds
And never come down
Just like a flyer
High in the clouds
And never come down
We live with music
We love with music
Did you try it too?
We love with music
Did you try it too?
It then goes on to repeat that last verse several times. I sort of have to stop myself from asking someone in a sour mood if they tried music, as I don't anticipate it'd be well received by most, but I think these guys kind of hit the nail on the head with that question. But just remember: while music can serve as an option when you're looking for an upper, it's ineffective as a contraceptive.
SOMETHING NEW
Stanley Welch - Earring
October 7, 2026
Stanley Welch - Earring
October 7, 2026
Glasgow-based Stanley Welch is someone I hope will be stepping into the limelight soon. I named his 2025 EP, Loe, my EP of the year. Its opening track, No More Room In Your Heart, which blew me away with its beauty and idiosyncrasy on my first listen, still has under 10,000 streams on Spotify and 300 views on YouTube a year and a half after its release. You might not have heard him yet, but here is something special about his songwriting.
I have been blown away again by this brand new single. It opens with mystery and serenity, which doesn't set you up for how grand it becomes later on. One minute in, Welch and a female singer hum along to the rhythm. This is when we start to hear instrumentation grow a bit heavier and even get bits and pieces of a sonorous cello sound.
Then, Welch sings about weightlessness in a sort of spoken-word style before diving into some stunning belts, and then a robotic-sounding phrase starts to repeat. His vocal style in the song is described by returntosound.co.uk as "at one moment lackadaisical, at the next soaring." He doesn't shy away from journeying through all different kinds of sounds, but they all manage to come together seamlessly. This skill of seamlessness seems to have been honed since his last release, as the idiosyncrasy I mentioned above aids in a fairly abstract and slightly discordant sound. As much as I adore it, this one seems to mesh in a way that might be more approachable for new listeners. The aforementioned site writes that the single "is pulled away from abstraction by Welch’s innate pop-sensibility and that "what could become esoteric ends up with riffs and melodies pulled timelessly from the canon."
I'm tempted to compare this song to an epic. Sort of Odyssean in its ability to wind through a wide tapestry of powerful, resonant sounds and create such an imposing work, it reminds me of some other songs that have touched me the most in my life.
I am hoping a new single from Welch means something bigger is on the way!
SOMETHING BORROWED
Flyte - Archie, Marry Me (Alvvays)
2017
Flyte - Archie, Marry Me (Alvvays)
2017
I have loved the music of Canadian band Alvvays for a long time and the music of English duo Flyte for less time, but hadn't heard this cover until very recently. This is a cover that I would never say is "better" or "worse" than the original, nor would I dare to bore you by emphasizing how "different" it is. What I can most accurately say about it is that I believe it's best listened to immediately after the original. The comparison is stark. When you listen to to this way, Alvvays' hit song fades out of its distorted electric guitars, pulsing drum beat, and layered pop vocals. And for an extended moment, there is complete silence. Then with Flyte comes the most hollow, yet resonant thing you've ever heard. Suddenly keywords in the lyrics such as "matrimony" do not remind you of societal conventions about marriage and sin, but rather conjures images of a holy wedding in a grand cathedral.
In spite of a rather heavy subject matter such as marriage, the original has always managed to feel lighthearted and somewhat satiric. It's relatable storytelling about that stage in adulthood when you're expected to have settled down. Even outside of marriage, lead singer Molly Rankin expresses what stage of life this is with lyrics like too late to go out / too young to stay in. When you are still young, but not maybe beginning to lose your freedom. Even the music video partially takes place on a boat, where Rankin dives into the ocean in the face of associated maritime themes such as being anchored, or even simply being stranded in the middle of the sea with no escape. Even while she pleads for Archie to marry her, she is the one jumping into the water to be amongst jellyfish alone. There's dissonance here that I think many people can resonate with when they feel the mounting pressure to get married.
Somehow, the Flyte cover manages not to evoke the same dissonance for me. Its bare, echoey, a cappella presentation makes the lyrics suddenly feel more earnest. While listening to the hey, hey, marry me, Archie chorus, I can almost swear there's a desperate "please" hidden in there. There isn't. Where Rankin makes it sound like the narrator and Archie are partially on the same page about their contempt for matrimony, Flyte create a sonic universe where the narrator is truly begging Archie for something he doesn't want, but the narrator truly needs.
I am amazed by the potential for the exact same source material to elicit such different feelings and interpretations within me, and this is a stellar example of that.
SOMETHING... featherY
Nikka Costa - Like a Feather
2001
Nikka Costa - Like a Feather
2001
A song driven by the same chromatic chord progression as George Harrison's I Dig Love but with the funk turned up to 11, how could it not be great?
I discovered this song fairly recently on the radio and have been obsessed ever since. Daughter of 1950s producer Don Costa and goddaughter of Frank Sinatra, Costa stepped way out of the box of her family. Her style is incredibly fun and soulful, dripping with funk and R&B influence. While the lyrics are slightly vague, there's a clearly optimistic theme of setting something free "like a feather." I don't want to negate the lyrics, which are fairly thought-provoking, but they sort of couldn't matter less to me if I'm in the mood to dance. This whole albums has such a fantastic groove, which is led by music legends like Questlove on drums, Pino Palladino on bass, and even Billy Preston on the clavinet!