what i'm listening to (summer 2021)
I labored through (and orphaned) seven drafts of a ‘check-in’ newsletter since June until I realized that this is how I was ever going to catch you all up about what I’ve been feeling, thinking, doing – through what I’ve been listening to. I love a good, take-me-to-the-bowels-of-the-night, graduate-thesis-length personal essay as much as the next person, but this is just not the time for that.
Playing around with form in this one – I hope you have as good a time reading it as I did writing it. I’ve been listening to a lot of albums this summer, so in this newsletter, I recommend an album I’ve been listening to based on a hypothetical mood you might be in.
Music is one of the few aspects in 2021 that remains ✨ bright ✨ , it seems.
Listen to:
Home Video by Lucy Dacus
If you’re emotionally ready to be impaled on nostalgia for a version of yourself you can never return to again.
Blue by Joni Mitchell
If you’re homesick and tired of the news but believe there is still so much beauty in heartbreak to not shake off the weary dust of living.
Saint Cloud +3 by Waxahatchee
If you are muscling your way through your lowest lows and are unconvinced that you will be met by some of your clearest, most hopeful revelations on the other side.
The Baby by Samia
If you are embarking on a hero’s odyssey only to find that the journey has changed you so fundamentally that you can no longer return home.
Cinema by The Marías
If you long to be transported to the dreamy landscape of non-English language cinema – somewhere between sunny reggaeton, bouncy and dark club pulses, and misty horns and harps.
Happier Than Ever by Billie Eilish
If you believe youth is not at odds with versatility, maturity, artistry. If you are in awe that someone still so early in her career can be so in command of her own talent and aware of the perils that lay before her. If you enjoy a track list with flawlessly executed transitions between tracks.
Sling by Clairo
If the relentless expectations and double standards of young (and very public!) womanhood leave you embittered about the future and wanting to retreat into the woods indefinitely.
Jubilee by Japanese Breakfast
If you’re tired of feeling everything made weightless by grief, so you invite pure jubilation in to fill the room instead.
Solar Power by Lorde
If the chaos of the world right now is leading you down the steps to the last still-preserved natural beauty left. If a return to Y2K wellness culture appeals to you for its familiar comforts.
Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios) by Kali Uchis
If you’re a melodramatic bitch. If you’re feeling yourself.
CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST by Tyler, The Creator
If you like to have fun. If your musical tastes are playful, richly textured, sometimes contradictory, freed from expectation or a particular aesthetic.
Hues by Fana Hues
If you want to be blown away by shimmering talent, rage, honesty, tenderness, and braggadocio. (“Icarus” is my top-of-my-lungs, speeding-down-the-highway-at-night song.)
Raw Honey by Drugdealer
If you’re mentally shuttered somewhere in time between The Carpenters, The Righteous Brothers, Elvis, The Beatles. If it’s raining where you are. If no one else is around or awake. If it’s late evening. If it’s early morning.
Heaven or Las Vegas by Cocteau Twins
If you got through middle school and high school with The Perks of Being A Wallflower pressed to your heart.
Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? by The Cranberries
If Faye Wong’s and Japanese Breakfast’s covers of “Dreams” are pointing you here, and O’Riordan’s powerfully moody yodeling (yes, yodeling) keeps you hanging around.
Lucid by Raveena
If your brain is going too fast and you need a sign to take it slooooow.
Starry Ache by Hope Tala
If you want to hear what I would play in a coffee shop – you’re sipping your drink, having a very productive morning, and the sunlight is filtering in through the window in a really lovely way.
SINNER GET READY by Lingua Ignota
If Biblical devastation / a vengeful God / the cultishness of Christianity has always fascinated you as a mythos in storytelling, and you are also too into Midsommar than your S/O should be comfortable with.
Dreamboat Annie by Heart
If you need some incredibly epic, extended electric guitar solos (think: heartthrob intro scene) by an iconic female rock duo to break up the monotony of your work days. Or, if you’ve been wronged by some dude and are now gassing yourself up before getting into the ring.
Doomin’ Sun by Bachelor (collaborative project between Jay Som and Palehound)
If you’re in the mood for some sparkly, grungy girl rock. Need I say else?
Listening Party
Absolutely nobody asked me for this, but I made a companion playlist for Perfect Blue. Because who else would I be otherwise :~)
All of the tracks and artists I mention in my newsletters are / will be added. You can listen to the playlist here:
Drop Me A Line
Have you listened to anything you’ve loved recently? Looking for a recommendation for a specific mood that I didn’t cover here? Do I owe you money?
That’s it! That’s the newsletter!
Going going gone,
Grais
