The train keeps rolling with Warm Selections, now on our third week. I have no lack of music to include, some of which I ramble on and on about, but it’s all excellent of course. There are a few older tracks in here… this is how I get ya. Music isn’t all about the new new. We need to keep re-discovering our old favorites, or classics that we just hadn’t hit play on yet. Or really it’s mostly just going to be tracks I found on shuffle listening to my iPod. Alas! We persist.

(Apologies if the writing is a little bit more rambling and incoherent than usual. I had some beautiful things written, but the way the new WordPress functions is that if I accidentally click back, or in this case my trackpad inaccurately maps my fingers errantly swiping across it as going back, it deleted all my work. So keep reading on. The tunes are worth it. My words are not). 

Alexis Taylor – “I Can Feel Your Love” [Night Time Stories]
Hot Chip singer Alexis Taylor is releasing his new solo album Paris In The Spring, and the latest single “I Can Feel Your Love” was produced by The Avalanches! It’s got a nice dreamy / driving split going on, feeling both weightless in its romantic vibe, but still with a good amount of momentum keeping it moving forward.

Carla dal Forno – “Going Out” [Kallista]
Club goths unite: Carla dal Forno is back! The minimal, unsettling atmospheres she so well-curates returns on new song “Going Out,” the first taste of her upcoming album Confession, out April 24th. If you dug dal Forno’s previous work: eerie synths, minimal but meaty basslines, and her uncanny vocals, you’ll definitely need to tap in here.

Cashier – “Part From Me” [Julia’s War]
The vibes are good with Cashier, Lafayette, LA’s premier export of gripping rock. Their debut EP is out this coming Friday via Julia’s War, proprietor of buzzy, similar-sounding bands like Her New Knife and They Are Gutting A Body of Water. Cashier however has a certain spark, a certain hunger that sets them apart from their contemporaries. Ever since I saw them in some random parking lot at SXSW last year, I had a good feeling. Bandleader Kylie Gaspard has a certain drive in her vocal delivery that’s understated but still pushes the envelope more than a lot of other stooges whining their way through a song. “Part From Me” crushes with huge guitars and a killer vocal from Gaspard – things are looking up here!

Cat Power – “The Moon” [Matador]
Had the pleasure of catching Cat Power perform her 2006 album The Greatest in its entirety at Webster Hall this past weekend. I witnessed a view into my future: a 40 year-old self, hopefully with my wife, both attending the 20th anniversary tour of a record / artist we both love. Anyhow, Chan performed “The Moon” solely with a mic laced with autotune, giving the rendition of the song an icy, modern quality. Something about crooned autotune vocals, when done right, nails the emotion even better.

Fcukers – “if you wanna party, come over to my house” [Ninja Tune]
A dosed, hallucinatory, paranoid, limitless descent into a night you cannot remember, but one you felt was inevitable with how your life has spiraled thus far. The siren’s call to the party, your mind ensnared in its clutches. Fcukers debut album Ö is out March 27th.

Gia Margaret – “Good Friend” [Jagjaguwar]
I was not prepared for the vocal turn from Gia Margaret. After greatly enjoying her 2018 album There’s Always Glimmer, which was the last album that featured her vocals, I figured 2020’s Mia Gargaret and 2023’s Romantic Piano, two predominantly melancholy & introspective ambient projects, was the way forward from her debut. Imagine my surprise to then turn on “Good Friend,” not only a song that features some of Margaret’s most forward vocals yet, but one that’s bursting with what feels like unabashed happiness, like unironic joy. Not only is the track bubbling with energy from its outset, with a snappy drum beat and rotund, friend-shaped bassline + timbre, but it’s also BURSTING with ideas and other rogue sounds. There’s record scratching, little chirping video game synths, strokes of autoharp, Gregorian chants, slippery violin playing and tabla percussion, synthetic harpsichord… it’s got it all, folks. Plus it’s about writing a song for a sick friend – how sweet! I hear all this in the song and get progressively happier while listening, and then read that this is her first vocal record sine 2018 because she had been recovering from a vocal injury all this time. Now I’m emotional. If this record is the first step back into the world of Singing (out April 24th), what a bold, joyous and freeing return for Margaret. I’m very glad I pre-ordered this record on this past Bandcamp Friday!

Jason P. Woodbury – “Get To Meet Them” [Always Happening]
Add “Get To Meet Them” to the widening canon of cosmic americana folk music that’s been practically beckoning me to return to the Southwest, where the deer and the antelope play. It shrugs with a nonchalance borne from that magical corner of the country, much like the SUSS track I shared last week, but still burns with passion, speckled with piano, organ, pedal steel and reverbed-out drums. It’s a cool combo, and you can hear more via Jason P. Woodbury’s new album Jason P. Woodbury & The Night Bird Singing Quartet, out this Friday.
 

John Carroll Kirby – “Suntory” [Stones Throw]
This past weekend I was reading the great retrospective review in Pitchfork on David Wise’s brilliant “Stickerbrush Symphony,” part of the Donkey Kong Country 2 (Diddy’s Kong Quest) soundtrack, a piece of music that’s been in my life since its release; over 30 years or so. In the reflection, writer Billie Bugara references an upload by Taia777, which was a 15-minute loop of “Stickerbrush Symphony” that many on the internet regarded as an “internet checkpoint.” A place of grounding, a special shrine that encouraged introspection in its online travelers. All this to say, and maybe it’s just because it’s on my mind, but “Suntory,” John Carroll Kirby’s newest piece, carries some luscious “checkpoint” energy. It bridges Carroll Kirby’s ambient, solo piano works with his bigger band jazz funk romps, as a glimmering keyboard line works as the base that flourishes of jazzy piano, spacey hand percussion and gentle upright bass perform upon. It’s what plays in a jazz bar on a distant planet. A respite for the hero before they conquer the water temple in the same warp zone as this lowkey club. It’s a sublime and evocative track, giving enough space for the listener to craft their own narratives to the music, achieving introspection if they desire, but also a moving, gently kaleidoscopic place to breathe.

Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares – “Stani Mi, Maytcho” [Nonesuch]
An experiment worth repeating on these entries: I recently got my old iPod Classic restarted and decided to fill it up with songs I had in my iTunes library that had zero plays on them and put it on shuffle. That’ll be my algorithm – take that techbros. An easy way to find new music that I’ve had sitting in my lap for over a decade. One such “new” “discovery” is Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares Vol. 2 album by the Bulgarian State Television Female Choir, released in the late 1980s. “Stani Mi, Maytcho” is just the song that came up for me, I’m sure there are better tracks, but getting hit with some traditional Bulgarian folk choir music on my Monday commute was pretty awesome. From what I remember about this record series of from the Bulgarian choir is that they were decently popular at the time, even deeply inspiring the composer of the Ghost In The Shell anime film soundtrack, Kenji Kawai, along with other contemporaries like Dead Can Dance. 

Ora Cogan – “The Smoke” [Sacred Bones]
I’ve been a fan of Pacific Northwest singer/songwriter since I saw her open for Emma Ruth Rundle in 2024 – one of the better, more mystical shows I’d seen. Her music seems twirled with smoke, a kind of folk that hasn’t been spun with psychedelia in some time. Conveniently for me, she’s putting out her new album Hard Hearted Woman this Friday, March 13th. The latest taste is a likewise conveniently named single “The Smoke,” which sure enough sounds like how it’s named. It’s an upbeat jaunt that still carries an air of mystery, like all Cogan’s music does. Can’t wait to dig into the rest of the album!

Setting – “Gum Bump” [Thrill Jockey]
North Carolina trio Setting intrigued me in 2024 with at Eulogy, and are primed to do it again with their upcoming self-titled record, out April 24th. It’s murky music, this stuff. Synth passages squelch and meander around woozily as percussion drives and claps around them, the electronics eventually cracking open and bleeding everywhere. It reminds me of SML in a way: a group of weirdos improvising the most hypnotic, heady grooves they can. Submerge your head in the bog. The “Gum Bump” will chew you up and you’ll be nice and tenderized when it’s done.

Telefon Tel Aviv – “At The Edge of the World You Will Still Float” [Ghostly International]
Another discovery in my iPod shuffling journey, and this one certainly takes you on a journey. On Telefon Tel Aviv’s 2004 album Map of What Is Effortless, it’s a glitchy slice of pop and a bit of R&B. It’s an ambitious, intriguing track that makes me want to check out the rest of the record. A cool snapshot back to 2004.