I forgot my headphones at home most of the week, so it was a light week.

Redd Blood Cells, the White Stripes w/ Redd Kross.

To me, this one is a classic. I love it. Steven McDonald took White Blood Cells (drums & guitar) and added a bass line. It’s pretty amazing. This came out in 2002, when I was in the early days of really discovering music for myself–outside of the influence of my parents.

Chronologically, Anna E. Garman (and friends)

Chronologically

This is not called Chronologically. It’s some contemporary, classical composition someone who knows someone I know did. I’m into it. There’s bassoon.

Demo, Transpiler (or Xpiler)

Demo

Some of our friends started a band. This is that band.

happy forever EP, Fern Mayo

happy forever

Here’s some Fern Mayo, including happy forever. I am so into it. SO INTO IT.

Major Arcana, Speedy Ortiz

Major Arcana

Fern Mayo made me think about Speedy Ortiz. Speedy Ortiz is one flavor of perfection.

Flood, They Might Be Giants

Flood is also a classic, to me and my people at least. I played this while cooking dinner, and did a little dancing, because that’s how we roll at the PSA.

Bonus song: Sugarman, Rodriguez

Got this song stuck in my head somehow. Did not realize how much about drugs it was.

Tiny Desk Concert, The Front Bottoms

I pulled this old one out because I had Au Revoir/Adios stuck in my head. Did not get it unstuck. Also, kind of sick of Maps by this point. Still love these dudes.

Playlist, Kate Micucci

I actually was listening to the Ducktails Theme as sung by the new cast and was reminded of how much I love Kate Micucci. Sang along to myself, stopped when I realized how unfunctional this was.

Fetch, Melt Banana

The start of this album, while it has a lot of noise to start, feels like it’s building to something. It pulled my attention at the start, and I felt that sensation of waiting, of holding my breath and feeling my body push forward into the sound. Waiting. Something about the repetition of sounds and patterns on this album also leads itself to expecting lyrics–like the music is, again, leading to something.

There are lyrics. They are, as far as I can tell, in Japanese and completely unintelligible to my “I studied Japanese in college seven years ago” ears. It took me a bit to work on tuning out the noise around this, but I liked it. I liked how dadaist it was–how rather than the vocals meaning anything, it’s just another use of noise and phoneme to make music.

Into it. Biggest downside: Made me want to dance.

Come to Mexico, Totorro

I like this album a lot, in part because it’s easy to totally tune out while making a particular type of friendly rock noise. There are no lyrics, even though I keep expecting the to come (musically that is). At times there are brass sections that sound like they’re singing.

Cute music, incredibly listenable, have already played more than once.