There’s never been a time when there wasn’t craziness going on in the world. Sometimes there’s more than others, and sometimes it hits closer to home, but nobody really needs to tell you about it. Instead, it might be more useful if you could have something to lessen the angst a little bit and provide a little solace for the spirit, a warm bath for the soul. That’s something music’s always been great at, and the heavier things get out there, the more we need it. With that in mind, here’s an ultra-mellow mix of tunes designed not just to chill you out but to immerse you in a restorative sonic cocoon.
We’ve plucked palliative tunes from a broad, seemingly disparate spectrum of styles—everything from ’90s alternative to ’60s spiritual jazz, bossa nova to folk rock, ambient electronics to Memphis soul. But the ostensible differences notwithstanding, all the tracks are unified in a singularity of purpose: talking you through, tucking you in, and taking your tension down as many notches as possible.
A mighty assemblage of artists is on board for that important task. There’s the cosmic jazz journeys of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, the harmony-pop heaven of The Beach Boys and The Bee Gees, the sweeping, synthesized textures of Ana Roxanne and Julianna Barwick, the gentle balladeering of Emilíana Torrini and Nick Drake, all tumbling together in the service of settling you down and sending you someplace that feels friendlier than what the wider world’s got to offer you at the moment.
Photo by Josh Boot on Unsplash
Source: Warp, YouTubeNozinja has been the producer behind many of the tracks that have put Shangaan electro on the map. The sound is a mix of cheap, MIDI-inspired post new wave electro and bright local folk music. Its deeply infectious, and its great to see Nozinja getsomelooks in the Western world. This is a playlist that his label, Warp, assembled on Youtube.
Although I don’t believe homo sapiens as species has improved, in this century we expect hotels to offer attractive bars serving cocktails with fresh ingredients and restaurants that can properly bake Brussels sprouts. We also expect boy bands to offer decent material. I don’t think my memory is playing tricks on me when I claim New Kids on the Block offered terrible songs: slovenly written and indifferently produced. Matters improved during the Backstreet Boys and NSync days, thanks to Max Martin and Kristian Lundin, among others.By the time the English quintet One Direction released “What Makes You Beautiful,” the boys were thinking in terms of sharp middle eights and crazy harmonies. For a while I was on SPIN’s unofficial1D beat even though it took me a while to get their voices and faces straight; I never would have figured Harry Styles to be the star but there you go (I also thought The Wanted had the career; I still prefer “Glad You Came” to “What Makes You Beautiful”). Brad Nelson’s rumination on how the loss of Zayn Malik crippled the band helped.In the meantime, we have songs, good ones. At an academic year-end banquet in April, students manning the smartphone playlist slipped “No Control” into the mix; these college radio devotees went crazy.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary and more.
A hopeless list, especially if you lived in South Florida. Using crossover hits as guides for drawing hard, bold, lines, it’s difficult to distinguish hi-NRG (Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round”) and Italo disco (Baltimora’s “Tarzan Boy”) from fellow travelers like Stacey Q, early Taylor Dayne, and Lisa Lisa + Cult Jam, not to mention Nu Shooz’s “I Can’t Wait” and “Point of No Return.” Matters got more complicated went house hit American clubs; its pop crossover coincided with freestyle’s, therefore listeners had to deal with a bunch of Black Box singles and The Adventures of Stevie V, and CeCe Peniston’s “Finally” sharing space with Lisette Melendez’s “Together Forever” and Corina’s “Temptation” at the same time that Stevie B, Timmy T, and the Cover Girls followed the Lisa Lisa (“All Cried Out”) and Expose (“Seasons Change”) template by scoring their biggest hits with slush. To add to the confusion, on WPOW 96.5 I’d hear what in 1987 and 1988 we called bass, which wedded orchestral blasts and the Roland TB-303 to Triassic Era declamatory rap: Dimples T’s “Jealous Fellas,” JJ Fad’s “Supersonic,” early Six Mix-a-lot (“Rippin”), and anything — anything — by 2 Live Crew. Meanwhile the Stock-Aiken-Waterman remix of Debbie Harry’s “In Love with Love” and Samantha Fox’s “Touch Me (I Want Your Body)” insisted on airplay.“You can listen to this record as many times as you want and still not have any strong impressions that human beings actually made it. In other words, it’s the perfect disco record,” the great John Leland rhapsodized about Nu Shooz in SPIN. The perspicacity of this insight, however, doesn’t include most of the tracks below, sung by amateurs who could no more suppress their humanity than they could the swelling of their hair (assume this phenomenon was limited to the women and please goggle at Google Images’ supply of Stevie B photos circa 1988). There’s a reason why “Let the Music Play,” the urtext of freestyle and eighties disco, tops this list: the fluidity with which Shannon ducks from hysteria to detachment. I’ve written about dance floors as spaces where desire and fantasy call a delighted truce — until the next hunk of hotness ponies up at the bar.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.
Here we have a playlist that’s super fun to listen to yet deeply flawed in regards to its educational mission. Part of Pitchfork’s Essentials series, the Grayson Haver Currin-curated guide would make a worthy soundtrack for a weekend of mountain hiking. The only problem is that it isn’t at all canonical. The playlist spotlights too many inconsequential outliers while shunning numerous artists central to psychedelic folk’s identity. These include Love, Tyrannosaurs Rex, Kaleidoscope, Donovan, and The Holy Modal Rounders. Since there’s nothing in the accompanying text suggesting Way Past Pleasant is an intentionally unconventional guide, we’re left wondering why a music critic would think Hiss Golden Messenger is more essential to defining psych-folk than Donovan, who it can be argued invented the genre.
There is only one dude in rock who has Miley Cyrus, Tame Impala, Yoko Ono and Lightning Bolt all on speed dial, and that is Wayne Coyne. His long list of BFFs and partners in crime is just as phantasmagoric and unpredictable as the psychedelic murals splashed across the façade of The Womb, The Flaming Lips’ art space in Oklahoma City. One would think a playlist featuring such a motley assortment of musicians would yield to musical chaos, but that’s not the case at all. It doesn’t matter if he’s crafting high-polish chart pop with Kesha or unleashing noise-rock tantrums with Yoko — the trippy, alt-rock messiah has a way of drawing those around him deep into his Day-Glo surrealism and candy-coated, kaleidoscopic wondrousness. You will be, too, after hitting play.
Tamara Lindeman released her fourth album as The Weather Station, a self-titled effort, on Oct. 6 through Paradise of Bachelors. Here, the Toronto-based singer-songwriter compiles a Dowsers playlist of her favorite Canadian artists—but she looks beyond the obvious icons (Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, et al.) to shine a light on her many talented but unsung peers in the contemporary Canadian indie scene.“There is a type of writing I associate with Canadian lyricists, and specifically with those in my community. A habit of asking questions—of ambition and curiosity in what a song can say and what it can address; philosophy over romance; a specificity of detail; a richness of language; and all delivered with a sort of humility, a conversational approach to the big questions. I think, in a way, Bruce Cockburn may the godfather of this tradition, but you can trace it through bands like The Rheostatics or King Cobb Steelie, or even The Tragically Hip, who were the stadium band all the bros in high school listened to, despite their being led by a shambolic stream-of-consciousness poet who often referenced obscure Canadian history in his lyrics and I don’t think ever said love or girl in a song. This type of writing coalesced in Toronto as I was coming up, going to shows, becoming a musician, and learning to write myself.“This playlist encompasses many of the most influential lyricists in my life, most of whom I know or are in my community. But I can honestly say these writers have had as much if not more influence on me as Leonard Cohen, Bruce Cockburn, Joni, or Dylan, all of whom you already know anyways.“Shout-out to the many albums from this scene that are not on Spotify (i.e., Forest of Tears by One Hundred Dollars, You Cant Take Anyone by Castlemusic, etc.).”—Tamara Lindeman, a.k.a. The Weather Station
Toronto indie-rock quartet Weaves have just released their wonderfully hooky and kooky second album, Wide Open. On this playlist she created specially for The Dowsers, frontwoman Jasmyn Burke breaks down the rock classics that inspired the record’s mind-bending melange of glam, New Wave, and avant-pop. “These songs are from albums that inspired our new record! Playful, insightful, and direct. Simplicity meets extremity.”—Jasmyn Burke, Weaves
Kendrick Lamar isn’t just the most talented hip-hop lyricist of his generation; he’s also a transformational cultural figure. He meets with gang bangers and world leaders. Protesters chant his lyrics at rallies to voice their opposition to police brutality and Donald Trump. And millions of fans from across the globe absorb and internalize his knotty, progressive lyrics. As a pop-culture figure, his power is unrivaled. It’s not innappropriate to speak of him in the same breath as Bob Marley, Dylan, or Fela Kuti.In many ways, he gets this—and so does the music press. Few stars have had their lives as extensively chronicled as Kendrick. There are literally hundreds of interviews, thousands of think pieces, and tens of thousands of blog and message-board posts trying to piece together his story. With this series, we’ve consolidated all those different sources to provide you with a comprehensive look at the rapper. We’ll start off with this playlist of his essential tracks, and then, over the course of the next 10 posts and playlists, we’ll tell the story of his childhood, and the story of Compton. We’ll track his early years in the rap game, and provide you with a deep dive into his collaborators and inspirations. If you’re a casual admirer, you’ll come away feeling that you know Kendrick so much better. And if you’re already an obsessive fan, you’ll still learn a few new things. And, regardless of your level of engagement, you’ll have 11 awesome new playlists. Enjoy.
Chart the journey from the Fab Four to Flying Lotus through The Dowsers virtual box set devoted to all things psychedelic. Your trip begins in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...
The ’90s have never sounded better than they do right now—especially for modern-day indie rockers. There’s no shortage of bands banging around these days whose sound suggests formative phases spent soaking up vintage ’90s indie rock. Not that the neo-’90s sound is itself a new thing. As soon as the era was far enough away in the rearview mirror to allow for nostalgia to set in (i.e., the second half of the 2000s), there were already some young artists out there onboarding ’90s alt-rock influences. But more recently, there’s been a bumper crop of bands that betray a soft spot for a time when MTV still played music videos and streaming was just something that happened in a restroom. In this context, the literate, lo-fi approach of Pavement has emerged as a particularly strong strand of the ’90s indie tapestry, and it isn’t hard to hear echoes of their sound in the work of more recent arrivals like Kiwi jr. or Teenage Cool Kids. Cherry Glazerr frontwoman Clementine Creevy seems to have a feeling for the kind of big, dirty guitar riffs that made Pacific Northwestern bands the kings of the alt-rock heap once upon a time. The world-weary, wise-guy angularity of Car Seat Headrest can bring to mind the lurching, loose-limbed attack of Railroad Jerk. And laconic, storytelling types like Nap Eyes stand to prove that there’s still a bright future ahead for those who mourn the passing of Silver Jews main man David Berman. But perhaps the best thing about a face-off between the modern indie bands evoking ’90s forebears and the old-school artists themselves is the fact that in this kind of competition, everybody wins.
It may be that 2019 was the best year for ’90s metal since, well, 1999. Bands from the decade of Judgment Night re-emerged with new creative twists and tweaks: Tool stretched out into polyrhythmic madness, Korn bludgeoned with more extreme and raw despair, Slipknot added a new drummer (Max Weinberg’s kid!) who gave them a new groove, and Rammstein wrote an anti-fascism anthem that caused controversy in Germany (and hit No. 1 there too). Elsewhere, icons of the era returned in unique ways: Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor scored a superhero TV series, Primus’ Les Claypool teamed up with Sean Lennon for some quirky psych rock, and Faith No More’s Mike Patton made an avant-decadent LP with ’70s soundtrack king Jean-Claude Vannier. Finally, the soaring voice of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington returned for a moment thanks to Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton, who released a song they recorded together in 2017.
Taking a look at the playlists for my show on Boston’s WZBC might give the more seasoned college-radio listener a bit of déjà vu: They’re filled with bands like Versus, Team Dresch, and Sleater-Kinney, who were at the top of the CMJ charts back in the ’90s. But the records they released in 2019 turned out to be some of the year’s best rock. Versus, whose Ex Nihilo EP and Ex Voto full-length were part of a creative run for leader Richard Baluyut that also included a tour by his pre-Versus outfit Flower and his 2000s band +/-, put out a lot of beautifully thrashy rock; Team Dresch returned with all cylinders blazing and singers Jody Bleyle and Kaia Wilson wailing their hearts out on “Your Hands My Pockets”; and Sleater-Kinney confronted middle age head-on with their examination of finding one’s footing, The Center Won’t Hold.
Italian guitar heroes Uzeda—who have been putting out proggy, riff-heavy music for three-plus decades—released their first record in 13 years, the blistering Quocumque jerceris stabit; Imperial Teen, led by Faith No More multi-instrumentalist Roddy Bottum, kept the weird hooks coming with Now We Are Timeless; and high-concept Californians That Dog capped off a year of reissues with Old LP, their first album since 1997. Juliana Hatfield continued the creative tear she’s been on this decade with two albums: Weird, a collection of hooky, twisty songs that tackle alienation with searing wit, and Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police, her tribute record to the dubby New Wave chart heroes (in the spirit of the salute to Olivia Newton-John she released in 2018). And our playlist finishes with Mary Timony, formerly of the gnarled rockers Helium and currently part of the power trio Ex Hex, paying tribute to her former Autoclave bandmate Christina Billotte via an Ex Hex take on “What Kind of Monster Are You?,” one of the signature songs by Billotte’s ’90s triple threat Slant 6.
