Music For Memorial Day Weekend
For many of us, this is the weekend where it all begins: summertime is here and everybody’s having…a panic attack? Doubts that it’s actually arrived? Can you cancel summer? Last year we were Hot Girls, this year we’re not, girl. At least that’s the case in the city, and despite the blinds going up and the signs being flipped all over the country, the five boroughs are filled with a quiet reluctance, tip-toeing into the warmer weather, masks on and ready for some very unusual tan lines.
If the pools were open, we would swim. We would expose our sheltered skin to the sun and set our minds to SPF-soaked daydreaming. Let SadGirl’s melancholic “Learn To Swim” ease you into this season of strange. The opening lyrics “feels like I’m treading water every day” couldn’t be a better fit. For more hydration, I also, and will always, recommend SadGirl’s 2019 debut album Water, one of the last releases I worked on at Suicide Squeeze.
South Africa feels a million miles away from the city, but we can travel to the Silwerstroom Resort as virtual witnesses to the Endless Daze Festival. The documentary highlights the festival’s performers, attendees and atmosphere, including Los Angeles trio L.A. WITCH debuting a new song “I Wanna Lose” from their forthcoming album. Also recommend listening to the “one woman guitar menace from Cape Town” Elle E and psych/noise rock outfit PXLS back to back to ride a guitar and fuzz-laden wave into the summer night.
The miles of imagination that comprise the roadmap of Matt Healy’s brain likely extends further than this galaxy and back. The 1975’s new album Notes On A Conditional Form finds the frontman in the next chapter of hyperactive weirdom, pop-tastic songs about heartbreak and saving the planet. It’s random and disorganized in the most attractive way, like my Watch Next queue. Play the Temptations-sampled “Tonight (I Wish I Was Your Boy)” and “Jesus Chris 2005 God Bless America”, which features Traitor Joe herself Phoebe Bridgers and a song title that could earn Father John Misty a songwriting credit.
One final recommendation: get outside and take a walk if you can. Make it last, breathe it in and get off the internet, per Kota the Friend’s first piece of wisdom from “Summerhouse” off his new album EVERYTHING. And listen to EVERYTHING in its entirety - the Brooklyn MC comes in with a 12-track manifesto of positivity, no skips.
Remember that the greatest freedom resides in the few square inches between your ears. You’re never too far off when you trust yourself.
Have a great weekend.