NEW MUSIC FOR OLDS #8
You just made the list, pal.
Welcome to this extremely share-worthy edition of NMFO (hint! hint!). Featured herein:
Midtempo charmers
Prince’s goofy motorcycle
Awkward sexual positioning
and…the official Finnegan Method of Musical Listification!
Release the hounds!
GOOD STUFF
As always, a Glossary of Terms.
Clothesline From Hell, “Open Up!”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: Open Up! (single)
Nutshell: Lo-fi acoustic indie with a “Paid in Full” beat
Voltage: 5
Thoughts: ”Open Up!” starts as one type of song, starts off with a funky drummer-ish beat that sounds as if it was yanked directly from “Yo! MTV Raps”. Then something resembling an Elliott Smith vibe floats in and takes over. Sounds weird, right? On paper it shouldn’t work, and yet… Clotheslines From Hell is a dumb name, but I can’t think of a band who sounds quite like this, not since the late mid-90’s. I’m intrigued to see where they go from here. Also, I strongly support their stance against standing still whilst on an escalator. Keep it moving, people.
Pairing Suggestion: As per the song’s suggestion, “smoke pot, drink beer”.
Meg Toohey, “All I Know”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: All I Know (single)
Nutshell: Slow-burning folk pop
Voltage: 3
Thoughts: Man, does this sound nice on headphones—warm and expansive, with a really diverse palette of sounds. It evokes not only my favorite Perfume Genius song, but also The Blue Nile (two good things to evoke). “All I Know” builds nicely, but never explodes into the sort of bombast our ears have been trained to expect. The song also features that rarest of joys: a restrained saxophone solo. With all due respect to The Big Man, nothing turns me off quicker that a loud, farty sax. I will, however, admit to a few past instances of loud, farty sex. My body is a wonderland.
Pairing Suggestion: Writing, then deleting a 3500 word email to your ex
Harborcoat, “Go To Sleep”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: Joy is Elusive
Nutshell: Openhearted adult contemporary
Voltage: 4
Thoughts: The most fraught sentence in the English language is “You should listen to my friend’s band.” The situation is even more perilous when the exhortation is made on twitter, with the artist in question tagged! Ill. Ad. Vised. But intrepid NMFO reader Dan McDonald deemed Harborcoat worth the risk, and in a shocking turn of events, he was correct. Musical reference points abound on Joy is Elusive (Springsteen, The Hold Steady, James), but the tunes still feel personal. “Go to Sleep” is like your favorite hoodie—warm, cozy and lived-in. The minute I heard the chorus I knew I’d be humming it for days.
Pairing Suggestion: Blowing the foam off your pint after a long day of yard work
Slings? Arrows?
FOR FANS OF…[Prince]
I’m not going to pretend there’s a contemporary analogue to Prince. There is not. First of all, which Prince are you talking about? Sweaty funk jam Prince? Top 40 rock icon Prince? Omnisexual Howard Hughes Prince? The man was vast—he contained multitudes. Hell, Prince was special enough to briefly convince us that this Boomer Vespa was cool.
I’m dropping Mr. Rogers Nelson into this section as an excuse to mention my recent appearance on the “I Love Rock ‘n Roll” podcast with Ken Krantz and Chip Chantry, the most alliterative duo in the podcast biz. We talked lots and lotsa Prince. It’s a lovely way to spend an hour.
This podcast on Apple // This podcast on Amazon
While we’re on the topic, I recently re-watched (and re-enjoyed) “LET’S GO CRAZY: A Grammy Tribute to Prince” (2020), which features a handful great performances. The video is too big to embed, but I highly advise clicking that link.
Here are a few extremely Prince-y originals by artists featured in the special:
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Quick word about this last one: When Miguel’s 2015 album Wildheart first came out, reviewers fell over themselves with praise. But I resisted, hung up as I was on the album art.
What exactly is going on here? Is this some sort of weird abdomen-based frottage? I’m as horny as the next guy, but I draw the line at “torso jobs”. And something about his expression makes me laugh—he looks like a farmhand who just got caught molesting a sheep. “Ummm, this isn’t what it looks like...”
You may ask, “How is that different than the cover of Lovesexy?”
The answer is simple: One sucks and the other is awesome. Make sense? Great. Good talk.
SOME BULLSHIT
To prep for my Prince conversation, I spent a bit of time pondering his discography.
(sigh)
That’s not accurate. Let’s try this again:
I recently used a podcast appearance as a flimsy excuse to ignore my personal responsibilities and dwindling career prospects to instead spend three-plus hours hunched over a spreadsheet like some unpaid incel accountant. And to what end? To make a dumb list? For whom?? Finnegan, what are you doing with your life??? ALSO, YOU ARE FAT.
Huh. I thought typing that out would make me feel better—you know, like a burden lifted or whatever? Interesting. Anyway, click through to see how things shook out:
Musical listmaking is what you might call my ‘happy place’—like my wife with ice skating or your cousin and his nazi memorabilia. I understand this hobby is not at all unique to me. The sky is blue, most fried calamari is actually bleached pig anus, dudes enjoy making music lists—these things are known. Nick Hornby wrote a whole book about it.
What’s perhaps different about my strain of brain damage is that I do this despite having no interest in debate. I Dunning-Krugered my way through plenty of musical bar fights in my Twenties, but these days I’m mostly interested in knowing my own mind. Do I prefer Houses of the Holy to Zeppelin IV? Let’s spend the afternoon figuring it out! It’s narcissistic, but not particularly macho.
I do, however, cop to some ego when it comes to my list-making methodology. With all appropriate humility, let’s call it The Finnegan Method. It’s something I came up with 15-20 years ago when I began spending more time on airplanes. You whippersnappers may not believe it, but there was a time folks were not allowed to use electronics while the plane was taxiing. Like, at all! Reading is for squares, so I needed something to keep my brain occupied until we were up in the air and I could get back to my Bejeweled game.
I’d arbitrarily pick a band and jot every song I could remember into a my notebook and then set about reordering them. Most of these lists went through multiple revisions, filling page after page. I’d filled an entire notebook with these lists when I accidentally left it in a seat-back pocket. I’m sure the Jet Blue flight attendant who stumbled upon it figured I was the Zodiac Killer. Eventually I moved the process to the safety of spreadsheets.
What’s that you say? You’d like to end today’s newsletter with a step-by-step walkthrough of The Finnegan Method? I was terrified you’d never ask.
The first step is to pick an artist. No wrong answers, but consider much time you want to spend. If you have a small window you might not be able to tackle an Elvis Costello, but you could probably bang out a Stone Roses.
Next, I go through the artist’s discography and enter every song I like into Column A. Determining “like” is not always cut and dry. There are countless songs for which I have a general notion of fondness, but I’d be fine never hearing again. With a catalogue as vast as Prince’s, that principle applies to entire albums (Rest easy, 3121—you were fine at the time.) My personal metric is, “When Song X pops up on shuffle, how unlikely am I to hit ‘skip’?”
Keep in mind that all songs are skippable if you’re not in the proper frame of mind. I love Elliott Smith, for example, but I’m nixing anything from Either/Or while I’m behind the wheel. Whether due to fatigue or ennui, I may drift into oncoming traffic.
This most recent list of Prince “likes” topped out at 79 songs, rounded down to a clean 75 (sorry, “Breakfast Can Wait”). Next, I separate the songs into tiers, using Column B to assign each a 1, 2 or 3. I sort the spreadsheet by this new column and repeat the process, now using Column C to assign the songs within each tier an a, b, or c. I keep sorting until each subgroup has five or fewer songs and then simply rank each tiny batch by dragging rows up or down.
Once fully sorted, the spreadsheet looks something like this:
Would you look at that—before my wife’s lawyer has even had time to draw up divorce papers, I’ve got myself a list!
Why am I sharing The Finnegan Method? I truly do not know. It’s entirely possible this is how everyone does it. Or maybe it’s a cry for help. Substack doesn’t support reader polls, so please register your vote in the comments:
The Finnegan Method is:
A) Duh. Pretty standard
B) Life changing
C) A mental health red flag
Aaaaaaand scene. Use this new power wisely. Thanks for reading!
B AND C!
Loving the newsletter. Tried out SOAK, and love them. Try music by Goose, if you haven’t already covered them.