From Blown Speakers

Sunday, July 20, 2025
in the stick count for the song of knowing you're gone

I’ve been thinking a bit about my relationship with streaming music. It’s so obviously different from buying CDs or records exclusively. But it's even a big change from downloading.

I caught myself thinking about the radio, something I only really hear now as background noise when I jump into an Evo car share. But the radio used to feel like a portal into a whole different universe.

I keep getting stuck on how it felt to sit poised ready to record a song off of the radio for some reason. You'd sit around waiting just to end up with this terrible quality recording, often with a commercial or the DJ’s voice bleeding over the beginning or end. But before an actual CD was out, when there was no other way to hear something on demand, it felt priceless to me--a treasure that I captured out of the air.

Don't get me wrong. Having access to almost everything on demand is incredible in a lot of ways. I certainly wouldn't be doing this every week, even if the barrier to entry was as minimal as having to torrent all the new music I end up parsing through each week. But it also makes me care a lot less about any snap judgements I make on something. Dragging a song into my trusty "temp" playlist is more or less effortless and making a song disappear into the aether is even quicker.

Eventually, I'd dub over those radio recordings with newer radio recordings, but all those songs would live at least a nominal life of re-listening.

There was a Chart Magazine (RIP) editorial that ended with a sentence that I think back to now and then and that I'm thinking about now, now that I'm contemplating all the songs I've skipped halfway through on YouTube or scrubbed forward on Spotify.

“I mourn all the songs deleted from hard drives over the last ten years that would have been tolerated and eventually, perhaps, fallen in love with if they were on cassettes or LPs or CDs”

Having most of popular music at your fingertips is a gift, but I wonder how many songs that I could have loved that I'm missing out on.

Album of the week

Alex G - Headlights

With every album release, there's always one Alex G song that I love, but I've never really been able to get into an entire full length. It's funny to say this, because I typically gravitate towards weirdness, but I think it's all the weird little experiments that get jammed between his best songs that have turned me off really diving into his catalogue.

This one's got a couple too--I'm not sure who the vocal affection on "Far and Wide" is meant to sound like, but I don't care for it--but all the little idiosyncrasies generally seem to add colour to the songs without distracting from them.

And there are some songs on this record.

Opener, "June Guitar," is this bittersweet, but gorgeous little love song with a chorus that seems aimed directly at the "I'm not into emo, but I am very emo" adult man demographic (hi, it's me):

love ain't for the young anyhow/something you learn from falling down

And "Afterlife" is going to land near the top of a lot of song of the year lists in December.

On this week's Indiecast, Steven Hyden compared it to REM's great major label records, and as a New Adventures truther, I'm inclined to agree.

Even though none of his previous albums really grabbed me, I respected how he wasn't afraid to throw anything he felt like on them. He's probably still doing that here, but it all sounds so much more cohesive and whole.

Song of the week

Winter - Without You

I'm kinda getting burned out on how every second band seems to be a shoegaze band these days, but I constantly seem to dig the acoustic ballads that the same bands put out. This one tries to capture the feeling of the Portuguese word "saudade." Apparently it can't be translated to English, but from what I understand after a quick Google, the line about an ex-love "who are you when I'm not with you" sounds like it sums it up pretty well.

Classic of the week

The Weakerthans - Night Windows

I was walking around listening to Fallow the other day and it sort of struck me that I continued to care a lot about the Weakerthans past Left and Leaving, but I, relatively speaking, started caring way less about their recorded output after Left and Leaving.

I definitely bought (and before that probably eagerly downloaded the leak of) Reconstruction Site as soon as I could, but for whatever reason, it didn't grab me like those first two records did.

But this song always stuck out as their "late" period masterpiece.

There's maybe no Weakerthans lyric that screams "THE WEAKERTHANS" more than opening line to this one and while it's a song about longing and losing someone, the descriptions of modern life that fill space in the verses make it feel political in the way a lot of the band's songs do, without ever being explicitly about politics.

It sort of feels like John K's talking to that person from "My Favourite Chords" a decade later or something.

Sidebar, but, it's real Roughriders hours that the Weakerthans have a song called "Tournament of Hearts" and the Cons have an album called Tournament of Hearts.

More heat

Jeff Tweedy - Enough

I still love Wilco, but it feels like there's this weird samie-ness with Jeff Tweedy songs (solo or with band) these days. And this one kinda starts like that with the riff, the guitar tone, and the bouncy, but understated verse. But then the chorus opens up and it's a reminder that this guy's been one of planet earth's greatest songwriters for my entire adult life.

Spiritual Cramp - At My Funeral

This sounds a lot like "Slick Rick" (one of the standout tunes from their last record, not the guy), but that also means it reps Spiritual Cramp's hardcore-by-way-of-GbV vibes perfectly.

The Armed - Sharp Teeth

I have a feeling I'm going to be writing about this whole album next week, so I'll just say that this fucking rules.

DJ Haram feat. Armand Hammer - Stenography

Armand Hammer sound good over anything, but this beat is something else too.

Eliza McLamb - Like the Boys

If I'd written a single song with a line this cool at 24, maybe I'd still be writing songs:"I like the boys like the boys like to shoot their guns/something I can hold in my hand pretending to be someone."

now playing: Great Grandpa - Kid

posted by Quinn @ 1:03 p.m. Comments:0

Album of the week

Song of the week

Classic of the week

More heat

0 Comments: