Introduction

OK—end of the year, time to account for the last twelve months of spins. And since I recently spent a few months “between jobs,” and consequently am still on the Lyndon Johnson lunchtime diet (depicted below), I’m gonna try to keep it short this time. We’ll see how that turns out.

Still, it shouldn’t be too difficult—see, mercifully, this year was easier than the last one in a few ways:

No bar exams, at least. Less hair-pulling, less cross-country driving, no major house fires, and no Capitol riot sequel. Still no hope for national redemption either, but I’m assuming we’ll just be taking what we can get from now until we all burn to death anyway.

I spent most of the year working in Salinas, where I’d moved last October. Then I switched jobs and moved out of Salinas, but still found time for a winding road trip through the NorCal mountains, up and down the Lost Coast, and back to the Bay by Halloween. For now, I’m working in Santa Cruz, crashing in the South Bay.

And sure, this year had some of the obvious downs that (honestly) characterize most years—friendships strained, family health problems, the fucking midterm elections, and all that enduring ambient socio-existential uncertainty.

Predictably, music sustained me. It usually does. Things are better now, so this seems like a good time to pour a supersized-for-seventy-five-cents-more cup of Dad’s special “brown apple juice” from that one cupboard, dim the lights, light one up, and listen to a playlist devoid of genre consistency, uniform vibe, and intended order. Any way you threw ‘em together, these were fifty songs that stuck with me throughout the year.

THE RULES:

1. No newness mandate
2. No rankings

January

1. Youth Brigade  – Sink with California

GENRE	Punk, Pop-Punk, Hardcore, Skate
YEAR	1994 (Compilation)
RIYL	Campfire songs played on plugged-in guitars by wasted camp counselors

This is a fun place to start. Youth Brigade was technically the first band I ever saw play a full set. Yeah, think about that. I didn’t start going to shows until I was 15, and even then, I (stupidly) leapfrogged over DIY spots and straight into the Oakland Fox Theater. 

It was a cold night in November. I walked in for the end of the first opener’s set (a band whose name I don’t remember), and then I got knocked flat on my sonic ass by Youth Brigade, one of skate punk’s all time great bands, who played faster than I even thought bands were allowed—shit, were physically capable—of playing. And more than any other song, I was stoked on “Sink with California,” which they played after a not-so-subtle roast of the local tech scene. I especially loved the roast.

I know exactly what brought the song back into my galaxy this year. Honestly, the chorus popped into my head one day while I was driving over the Dumbarton Bridge. When you make a point of taking as many road trips and driving through as much of California as I do, you frequently find yourself adjacent to some body of water or another. For me, it was bridges for a good chunk of the year. After that, it was lakes and rivers and bits of coast. Through it all, the sense of impending apocalypse was tempered by this song’s triumphant thesis: At least we’ll sink together when we fall into the sea.

2. Stephen Marley, Damian Marley – The Traffic Jam

GENRE	Reggae, Hip-Hop, Dancehall Rap
YEAR	2007
RIYL	Toasting, hotboxing your beat-to-shit sedan

    This is the most playfully understated “fuck the police, smoke weed every day” song I’ve ever heard, with a hilariously unhinged sound-effect chorus and a Rube Goldberg machine of a beat. This song has it all, if “it all” means every conceivably beat-boxable sound you might hear in a bumper-to-bumper clusterfuck, except everyone’s ride has a gargantuan stereo, and the whole thing’s a dance party—so nobody minds not getting anywhere. Also, everyone’s totally blazed. The hook is the only part of this song without lyrics, and it’s just utterly joyous and contagiously onomatopoeic. The verses are lyrically bouncy and melodically airborne. It conveys an adventure and a groove even while it’s bouncing off the walls, and it absolutely works, even if you haven’t moved in an hour with no end in sight. Pick a lane, asshole.

3. Hank Wood and the Hammerheads – Love is a Cold White Tile

GENRE	Post-hardcore blues
YEAR	2017
RIYL	Barn burners, The Jim Jones Revue

    I’ve reviewed this before, but I’m still listening. Hank & the boys raze the minefield routinely, spewing toxic garage-blues on an overdose of Jimmy Neutron’s Megalomanium injections. Somebody better call the EPA, because they’re gonna choke out the whole planet. This shit swings. It’s an unexpected insult-to-injury uppercut of a song, with death-defying vocal howls and guitar tone stolen from an Oregon Trail planet where dancing is forbidden, somewhere way beyond our solar system. It burns like a branding iron shoved into the cerebellum. It wasted-careens, leaping across the booze-slicked surfaces of every shitty little excuse for a table in the joint. And it amps me up to the point where I’m channeling all of Hank’s chaotic frontman bravado into a faux-persona self-portrait, and that demented confidence makes me hyperbolic, and when I’m being hyperbolic, I say shit like, “Name any animal frontman ever—Hank could respectably hold his own against most of the bunch.” Whether it’s true or not, the music makes you wanna at least think about other people who did this great. And that’s impressive—Hank’s whole performance identity might be a thinly veiled trope, but it doesn’t matter—it’s a damn good performance of a classic. The rage and heartbreak are palpable as fuck—it’s Iggy singing “Dirt,” forced by the zookeepers to copulate with, like, a manic goth cowgirl, or something? Every instrument wails in tightly packaged, bluesy, baddest dude in the room blasts. It’s cannonfire—no, it’s an absolute firebombing. It’s an expertly calculated battle plan guaranteed to smoking-ruin the town all night long.

4. Ramsay Midwood – Monster Truck

GENRE	Self-aware country-rock
YEAR	2000
RIYL	Hayes Carll, late-2010s indie country revival

I always love a good nihilistic country-fried pre-9/11 satire of American patriotism. “[K]iss my ass, ‘cause I drive a monster truck.” So much of this song relies on that one line, the punchline of the otherwise mopey first half, the key to unlocking the song’s potential as a big-ass swingin’ country-rock party jam. It’s like an old car that takes a little extra time to heat up, but once it does, it ignites. It’s got the warmth of a packed house show on a cold winter night, where the band’s keyboardist decides, fuck it, let’s mic up the old upright piano. Everyone in the living room screams that they drive a monster truck, and the political ennui seems to evaporate for a few minutes. I really need that energy these days.

5. Dan the Automator – One Night Left (from Booksmart)

GENRE	Throwback hip-hop instrumental film score
YEAR	2019
RIYL	Early Gorillaz, DJ Shadow, early Avalanches

    I guess there was some sort of semi-manufactured drama surrounding Olivia Wilde making a stupid movie this year? I didn’t notice—In fact, I’m not sure I even read a single article. Just saw the pictures and memes. See, I was too busy listening to the soundtrack from her actually-great film Booksmart, produced by Dan the Automator (one of NorCal’s all-time greats—Octagon, Deltron, Gorillaz, JSBX, Galactic, 2K7…c’mon, you oughta know). Boisterous, playful, and laced with character dialogue samples, this 90s alternative-style hip-hop instrumental proudly cool-uncool struts down the halls of its over-achieving South SF Bay Area public high school, hot off a makeover montage and a coming-of-age experience with some shrooms in the city. It bumps, grooves, whatever—pick your favorite descriptor for the sum of these carnival horns, toms, pink panther piano parts and record scratches—and it easily induces a playful smirk from everyone in earshot of my speakers. 

6. VaVa – 現実 (Feelin’ On My Mind)

GENRE	Bedroom Pop-Trap
YEAR	2019
RIYL	Chiptunes, horn samples, inarticulable moodiness

Don’t understand a word of these lyrics (ugly American, should’ve issued a disclaimer), but the song’s lovesick Gameboy Color aesthetic is really making me feel something here. Throw in a triumphant brass-blast flip and glue the whole thing to an ol’ reliable workhorse trap beat, and for some reason, it’ll stick with you for months.

7. The Shangri-Las – Give Him a Great Big Kiss

GENRE	60s pop girl group
YEAR	1965
RIYL	The Ronettes, The Angels, Nancy & Lee, perfect pop songs

When Ronnie Spector died this year, I plummeted into a yearlong classic girl group binge. I’ve always loved the Ronettes, and this year, that love grew to encompass any number of bands of harmonizing hotties from the 60s. This style syncs up with my melody-obsession, my preference for short and dynamic song structures (hello again, punk rock), and my huge crush on Nancy Sinatra as she appeared in video performances of “Boots.” 

This Shangri-Las song has a cute, irreverent attitude, and it’s melodically perfect. Think Spice Girls doing Beach Boys vocal harmonies, wailing a hopeless crush teeny love song about some mopey bad boy. Punchy piano, hella bombastic horns, and a hook so relentlessly shout-along-able, you can practically mosh to it. The song’s got that same spirit of hyperbolic, melodramatic longing as its descendant, “Boyfriend” by Best Coast, but it’s profoundly more fucking danceable. And it’s short enough to spin zillions of times—miraculously, for me, it never gets old.

February

8. Van Halen – Jamie’s Cryin’

GENRE	Frat Rock
YEAR	1978
RIYL	Headbangin’ and crushin’ cans with yer forehead

    What have we here? Packin’ that manic strat attack for the boys in the back of the frat pack, it’s Van Halen—swingin’ around a few minutes of trashy, hypermasculine throwback guitar noise with crooning harmonies detailing a typically tragic one-night stand, and a real pop-rock sensibility underlying all the shred. This song is brilliantly stupid, but it’s also the perfect iteration of its own underlying hyper-rock concept. It works because it’s a snapshot of these rock’n’roll heavy-gunnin’ commando dudes, coming to the album hot off of boot camp and ready to lay waste to the whole island. Relentlessly boneheaded, bombastic, gargantuan, slicked out and sick as fuck.

9. Kosha Dillz – Cellular Phone

GENRE	Hip Hop, viral rap, indie rap
YEAR	2009
RIYL	Knocksteady Studios, MC Lars, beer commercials, Judaism

    Kosha Dillz is not necessarily the hero hip hop wants or needs, but he certainly is a nice young man who sets a strong example for the children of America with his positive attitude and fresh portrayals of Jewish life. As everyone knows, Jewish Americans historically—

    …OK, great. Now that the antisemites have skipped ahead, we can talk strategy. Here’s the plan: In step one, we grow Kosha Dillz in a laboratory, genetically engineering him to craft earworm hipster-hop for the masses. We plant him in New Jersey, he scores a Budweiser commercial licensing contract somewhere along the way, and coasts on viral success (due largely to genuine multilingual talent) thereafter. In step three, we all simultaneously conspire to ensnare the global economic system and mass media, and replace every Applebees with a Chinese place. You may ask, “What’s step two?” And I’ll tell you what step two is—as soon as I figure it out. I’m not sure where these conspiracy theories come from, or if I’m just not Jewish enough to get invited to those secret Hollywood mansion meetings. I’ve got friends in New York, though. Maybe I should ask them.

    Kosha Dillz dropped a topical Ye dis track this year, but that was after I rediscovered “Cellular Phone,” a favorite from high school. Bouncy, hooky, and horn-honkin’, it’s great as a bombastic introduction to a guy who cares about how his voice sounds while he raps, and not just the lyrics he’s delivering. Of course, I get hints that Kosha DIllz cares about substance too. He’s telling kids, “if you rap you still need to go to school,” even if it’s a little ironic in the context of his pivot back to “if I fall asleep, don’t judge me for my drool” and “tell your girl to go pay the bill of my cellular phone.” It’s a summer jam. It’s commercial pop-rap with an indie veneer. Digestible and unpretentious. Not exactly genius, but hey—sometimes you’ve just gotta eat a latke, ok? Just don’t think about your cholesterol.

Good. Now eat more. I can tell you haven’t been eating enough. And would you please put on the Hanukkah sweater Nana bought you? 

10. Butter 08 – Butter of ‘69

GENRE	Alternative Slacker Psych-Rock, or something
YEAR	1996
RIYL	Skating to the convenience store, mixing a handful of shrooms with sixty Millers

    One of the just-plain-weirdest rock tracks I couldn’t put down all year long. Rusell Simins’ stick-handlin’ is as dementedly brilliant as ever here, and once that creeping, swirling intro fades out, he holds the whole cutely spinning drugged-out summer vacation jam together with surprising efficiency, considering how loose it all sounds together—like the Hardy Boys’ pal Chet’s beat-to-shit jalopy clunking near-busted down the highway, popping and fizzing and rumbling and threatening to explode all over the right lane—but imagine that the Hardys are flying high off some entry-level hallucinogens in the back seat, hearing blues music for the first time. When the car does finally explode into hues of rose-pink, lemon-yellow and 90s Nick-Slime green, the results are sun-kissed falsetto wailing and swirling power chords pounded out over a creeping, shimmying bass line. Miho Hatori finally gets a chance to blare from the incinerating horn, enchanting any would-be dancers within earshot as bits of bumper and mirror rocket off across the horizon, shredding them to ribbons, propelled by the most fun gas-fire you’ve ever heard. The back-and-forth between the vocal parts, one droll and the other jubilant, creates some light cognitive dissonance—but it’s hard to mind when you’re whistling along. 

11. The Queers – Get a Life and Live It Loser

GENRE	Punk Rock
YEAR	2002
RIYL	Ramones, Having an unexpectedly strong work ethic

    I’ve known about the Queers since high school, but I found this song on a Smoking Popes internet radio station. And hear me out: I’m technically still under 30, at least if you count in terms of literal years, not just existential fatigue. I did high school. I nailed college. I was a pretty underwhelming grad student, but I finished. I have a solid job that pays the bills. But I still can’t help feeling the sting when the Queers sneer at me, “Loser! Get a life and live it, loser!” Musically, it’s pure classic punk rock schlock, with a super duper chewy tune and the sugar rush tempo to match—and the lyrics just ooze toxic spite. Art should be confrontational sometimes, and this song derisively shouts out to every misguided burnout in the crowd—hey, maybe even with a little self-awareness. All the great punks are at least a little self-loathing, right? And even if not, a good laugh at your own expense can be pretty good medicine for sanctimonious subcultural dogmatism. So—whoever you are, reading (or writing) this right now: “You fuckin’ jerk, you got your dick in your hand.” 

March

12. Cobra Man – Everybody Party Tonight

GENRE	Power disco
YEAR	2019
RIYL	Daft Punk, Carly Rae Jepsen, the ‘70s in music generally.

    Cobra Man gets down. Cobra Man fucks. Cobra Man is the coolest. It’s on-the-nose, self-aware alternative dance-pop with a profound vintage fetish high-glossing these duet vocals. Seems to share something inexplicable with acts like Daft Punk on a lot of Random Access Memories, or even Carly Rae Jepsen on Run Away With Me, instrumentally at least. They do call themselves a power disco band, after all. And sure, all of the above descriptions probably just go to show how close-to-nothing I know about electronic music, disco, and dance-pop generally. Sorry about that. 

But I like it. It makes me nostalgic for nights I never had, sweat-soaked and speeded-out, hopelessly trying to reclaim a lost love on some Jetsons-Futurama dance floor, cast adrift in existential romanticism but having at great time burying the hurt, a long time ago, in a galaxy hella far away. These feelings don’t exactly hit immediately when the song starts—fuck, it’s pretty quick, though. It’s that horn. It’s the way the beat smacks me in the face when the pre-chorus rolls around, and they suggest, sensitively, tenderly, tantalizingly, “Maybe we should go dancing.” And when we do get to the glittering digital rave, I’m left feeling almost paradoxically fucking triumphant. I don’t even know who I’m crying over when he says “It brings me back to you and me,” but whoever they are, I’m sorry for whatever I did. Please come dancing. It’s nice to meet you—I miss you, I think. I can feel it.

13. BO-PEEP – メランコリック (Melancholic)

GENRE	Riot Grrrl J-Rock
YEAR	2019
RIYL	Otoboke Beaver, Guitar Wolf, Post-punk/New Wave

Another toe-dip into BO-PEEP’s terrifyingly consistent, high-octane discography. This deep into the 2010s, almost 20 years removed from their first album, they hadn’t slowed down in the slightest. Military-march lead guitar, robotic vocals, and a drummer who refuses to even try and stop the runaway train.

The menacing interplay between guitar and drums in the song’s intro instantly conveys that timeless rock’n’roll sentiment of “Let’s fucking GO,” and when the chorus vocals (which I admittedly don’t catch a word of—ugly American, remember?) barrel in, I feel like I’m climbing into the fucking mecha-dude to square up with a pitifully generic alien army, and they don’t stand a goddamn chance. This is the song that plays while I level ‘em with laser sword and cannon, smirking cockily in the cockpit. Yeah, I’m the warmech pilot defender of the galaxy, and this song is absolutely fucking blaring from the robo stereo while I do lines off the dash. “You’ve switched off your targeting computer—is something wrong?” And I’ll answer, “Shut the fuck up and let me work, bro—you’re interrupting my jams.” And I’m warp-speed soaring into the great wide open, the final fuckin’ frontier, dude. All I can see is an ocean of stars. All I can hear is shred and thunder. All I feel is bad as hell and ready to rage. Guns.

14. Dazy – Perpetual Motion

GENRE	Fuzz-Pop, Power-Pop
YEAR	2021
RIYL	The Jesus & Mary Chain, Britpop, Sticking your head inside a speaker just to make sure it works and singing along at the top of your lungs.

    This is it. Favorite new artist discovery of the year. It’s Dazy. I feel as though I’ve been waiting for music like this for…shit, years. It’s fresh and classic at once. It’s happy-nostalgic and brokenhearted, fuzzy to an absolutely gratuitous fucking extent, pandemic-contagiously sing-alongable, and every song, including this platinum nugget, is short enough to spin into in-fuckin’-finity. I had to consciously try to cool it on Dazy this year. “Pressure Cooker” took off in March, and I’m into that one too. Objectively, Dazy’s sound has probably improved as he’s incorporated more dance- and hip hop-oriented beats into his programmed drum pattern arsenal. But these pristine pop-rockers on MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD and earlier releases are just so completely, immediately, sugar-coatedly buzzsaw satisfying that I can’t help myself. I wanna bombastically, soulfully, unashamedly wail these lovesick lyrics. It’s the same reason I love bands like Bully—the spectacular, white-hot collision of the noise, noise, noise, noise that the Grinch hates, and the gorgeously tender-eternal-spirited Beatles-esque melody that melts the Grinch’s frosty bastard heart in the end. It’s me, by the way. I’m the Grinch. I’m the power-pop, need-noise, wanna be melted someday Grinch. And I feel at home in this deliriously fun, sweet-as-a-sunrise-spent-in-her-arms song.

15. Blacktop – Tornado Love

GENRE	Garage rock
YEAR	2003
RIYL	Anything Mick Collins has ever done, and this kind of ardent fandom.

    Listen up, you uncultured indie-pop-rock mechanical dorks: Mick Collins is one of America’s greatest, most underrated rock superheroes. He’s a living titan walking the Earth, armed with an arsenal of Squier beater axes, whose mentored and inspired sub-rockers are too numerous to count. Who the fuck is Jack White, am I right? 

With Blacktop, Mick’s first post-Gories band, he swapped out that initial “let a second six-string shred, and no low-down four-string dunununununuh shenanigans” approach for a far bigger-ass “fuck it, here’s a bitchin’ bass-and-frontman-lead sound” mantra. Consequently “Tornado Love” hits heavy like a series of cheap hardware store hammers hurled with precision at the eggshell plaintiff’s pathetic skull. I’m not totally sure what makes Detroit rockers as a group so damn good at conveying desperate, hunka-hunka-burnin’ L-U-V sexuality. But the way Mick barrels from “Tornado love will spin you ’round” to “Surprise, I’ve come for you, and there ain’t nothin’ that you can do,” is a devastating plummet off the mountaintop, into the eye of the storm. Like, is this a love song, or a threat, or a dirty-disrespectful combination of the two? And in any case, why is it still so raucously, debaucherously, hypermanic heated? It’s like getting to third bass in a dive bar bathroom while some karaoke regular wails “Jamie’s Cryin’” (see elsewhere on this playlist) on the sweat-soaked pseudo-stage. And it’s gross, and you might get infected, but you’re gonna like it, baby.

16. Blockhead – Slippery Slope (feat. Billy Woods, Open Mike Eagle, Breezly Brewin)

GENRE	Indie Rap
YEAR	2019
RIYL	Dan the Automator, East coast jazz rap, melancholy loops, abstract originals

    With a moody-but-lackadaisical beat, and at least two-outta-three rappers present near the top of their game (sorry, Breezly), “Slippery Slope” is a standout from iconic producer Blockhead’s Free Sweatpants album. It opens with a spacey, soulful vocal sample and a slew of ambient strings, but things really kick off the second Billy Woods crashes through the quiescence with an ambiguously philosophical scene-setting almost-threat: “I WATCH THE CATS WATCH THE MICE!” And Woods’ verse dominates this track. He shows up to the showdown cocky and condescending, hurling somehow-still-devastating schoolyard insults like “I invented being black, my skin was matte,” and something about how he coulda taken your bitch way back in the day, even wearing corduroys. “At six, afro pick with the black power fist.” They deliberately, ironically pseudo-censor the word “bitch” with an ad-lib from someone calling it “unnecessary,” but the implication almost hits harder as a result. Meanwhile, Michael Eagle pulls off some of my favorite one-liners from his career, with the crown jewel being “My son’s gonna feel free to be as weird as a white guy.” That’s beautiful. And that little blues-guitar sample flip before and after Breezly’s (fine, not spectacular) verse puts me right on a cloud. I “hit the weed ‘til both legs fall asleep,” and I drift away.

April

17. The Minus 5 – Pantagruelian Offenses & Encounters: Where Will You Go?

GENRE	Alternative rock, Americana
YEAR	2003
RIYL	Peter Buck, Crying to Being There

Scott McCaughey, aka R.E.M.’s auxiliary teddy bear, aka the stroke-survivin’, stoke-providin’, too-many-bands-to-Count-Dracula, aka The Minus 5. Picture some lonely-but-romantic sad sack, pen cap-chewing, meditating over a tear-stained legal pad by candlelight in some sympathetic (if confused) friend’s attic—and then commanding the mighty Wilco in a studio special ops mission to craft expertly potent sepia-toned, blood-dripping shirtsleeve alternative pop-rock. What is that, a xylophone? These pristine harmonies weep like a lonely teen stood up on prom night, and every time the riff comes back around, it rips my heart a new one. It’s got the genre staples: The self-loathing, “It’s so hard trying to be a little less like me,” and the concisely, brutally tender “I need to know you’ll be alright.” I could see how, on its surface, the song’s noisy closing breakdown might seem like too hard of a left turn—but the fucking composition of the thing, the way it swings and decays like a relationship that just doesn’t work anymore, collapses in on itself like a car long past the point of avoiding the crash, is as magical as the gut punch “I want my money back” in the chorus. It leaves me feeling indescribably nostalgic for nothing in particular. And I want to feel it again—I just want that riff to play forever.

18. Andre Williams – Only Black Man in South Dakota

GENRE	Garage-blues, psychedelic, spoken word
YEAR	1997 (compilation)
RIYL	Spaghetti Westerns, Blaxploitation, tripping in dangerous places

    Here’s just a damn good 20th-Century Western Blaxploitation action-adventure, delivered in gritty, distant, ghostly-echoing quatrains, and backed by frantic car-chase guitar fury. Andre’s “runnin’ from the law, across the border,” and I believe him because I feel like I’m right there with him, riding shotgun and dodging shots that shatter the back window. I’m shooting backward as fast as I can, and Andre revs the engine with a broken-toothed daredevil grin. For as little as these characters are described, they feel fully formed: Margo from Fargo, whose tendency to play with society’s matches got us into this mess; the hero’s bodyguard, down for whatever and mean as fuck; the cherry-red Cadillac with the V8 motor, our protagonist blues-master’s noble steed, best friend, and foil. “Badass” doesn’t begin to describe it. This is dangerous shit right here. It’s got an attitude of defiance that palpably grips me, the listener, by the throat, and throttles me with psych-shred. It oughta be empowering. I hope I’m not the only one who sees it that way. It’s like Run The Jewels said: “Fuck the law, they can eat my dick.” So, ready or not, you sick-hick fucks: Andre’s rolling through your town any day now. He’s gonna fuck your daughters and hit the road, and you’ll never catch him no matter how hard you try. Y’know them supposedly treacherous mountains, or plains, or whatever kinda bitch-ass almost-roads you got? Turns out they ain’t got shit on a guitarist who brings the Chicago heat. Burn it down, Williams. Get the girl and get out while you still can.

19. Sunny War, Particle Kid – My Sweet Demise

GENRE	Heavy-Psychedelic Folk-Blues-Rock
YEAR	2018
RIYL	Either artist’s solo stuff, the heavier tracks from Steve Earle’s Jerusalem album, Buddy Guy, Blue Cheer

An acoustic-electric-thunderstorm of a song that creeps into your mind at night like a lithe, aged feline-of-the-block, then starts making a holy howling fucking racket right when you’re getting used to it. And it’s a good racket—thunderous guitar strums’n’licks, avalanche drum fills, hypnotically haunting vocal harmonies, and the ever-present overpowering blues energy that makes this a bona fucking fide rocker. Sunny War’s gentle, aching voice belies just how deep this track goes, like a nuclear submarine gone haywire, plummeting deeper into the ocean than any sailor can survive. The crew’s youngsters are freaking out—the old guys know it’s already over. They’re fish food, canned in a weapon of mass destruction that ultimately only destroyed them. They’re just praying it’s over quick. And the lead guitar is the sound of the emergency siren, and water is pouring inside, and I’m drowning in this song, and I don’t mind one stinkin’ bit. Fill my lungs while my life flashes before my eyes. It’s such a sweet demise.

20. The Linda Lindas – Oh!

GENRE	Viral pop-punk, power-pop, new wave, Riot Grrrl!
YEAR	2022
RIYL	The Go-Gos, Bikini Kill, Josie & the Pussycats

    Never really expected to actually see this band live when their viral original “Racist, Sexist Boy” crashed the Los Angeles Public Library last year. Let alone see them live twice, at two separate California music festivals. And you know what? They undeniably kick ass. They’ve got a classic new-wave-post-pop-punk-quick-ripper sound, and the youthful vibrancy, along with their lack of (at least musical) cynicism inherent to teenagers. Probably/definitely the coolest teens at their respective schools. I have no doubt that the Linda Lindas could beat me up, and I probably wouldn’t even mind. It’s unapologetically “We Got The Beat” meets any number of ass-kickin’ punk bands taking on douche-bros with a full-throttle sonic “burn your first real bra” bombing. And they do a pretty solid cover of “Rebel Girl.” Worth watching in the coming years, worth the unpretentious and playful (energetic but gentle) mosh pits in the meantime. Hopefully their tunes will grow with them. But if not, at least someday we’ll be able to say that they made an impact in the moment, and they did us the huge favor of influencing a lot of cool kids to pick up instruments and get into rock music. And it was a hell of a lot of fun while it lasted. But whatever happens to the Linda Lindas, I’m grateful for this jam.

21. Link Wray – Juke Box Mama

GENRE	Classic garage-blues, Americana
YEAR	1971
RIYL	Jamming with the boys on the front porch, starting fights with greasers in pop shops, ditching the high school dance to crush 40s in someone’s dad’s garage

    Hell yeah. We’ve got a punchy piano riff, shredded country-ass vocals, plenty of slang ‘n’ twang to go around, and a righteous falsetto hook for the ages. You gotta stomp when you listen to this song. It’s a rule. You’re not allowed to refrain from squinting, making a nasty face, and injuring your neck nodding intensely to the rockin’-ass, country-blues, beat-down-pickup crash of a groove. Wray’s soloing obviously kills, but it’s almost humbly understated in the density of the whole arrangement. Guitar sounds are coming from all directions. It’s absolutely the sound of just a buncha dudes jamming on the porch, old school. The smoke’s dense, the spitoon’s full up, and the bottles are empty. Someone’s wife is nagging, but you can’t hear her over the sound of the boys makin’ noise. Whole lotta shakin’, baby. 

May

22. Honey Cone – Want Ads

GENRE	Classic girl group, soul, pop
YEAR	1971
RIYL	Writing boys’ names in your notebook and re-reading love letters you never sent

Who gives a shit if you first heard it sampled in an Avalanches song? “Want Ads” is a love song about the absence of love, and it gets at the heart of why we all want to be with somebody. 

This one probably falls into the same broad, candy-coated category of heartbroken girl-group songs as “Give Him A Great Big Kiss.” But whereas the Shangri-Las were already head-over-heels and had their guys pocketed, “Want Ads” conveys such a pure, desperate, sweet sonic agony that it feels…shit, realer. It’s got the genre staples. High lead vocals, powerful backing vocals, a bigass string section, and a funky-dancin’ good attitude that almost seems to cut against its narrator’s heartsick narrative. It’s a profoundly sad song, if you’re going by lyrics alone. He cheated on her and she’s in misery, lost with all this love to give and nobody who deserves to be on the receiving end of it more than herself. 

Think about it—maybe she doesn’t actually need a man. Right now it seems like she’s been relying on a sequence of self-absorbed dudes to validate her existence, in a way. Without someone faithful, without a “real,” externalized romance, she doesn’t even seem to want to rely on herself. On to the next dude, and who knows? Maybe she’s the type to pick up the first one she finds, out of insecurity. See? It’s a teenage romantic tragedy written with grown-up wit and wisdom. The very concept of placing your “seeking a boyfriend” personal ad in the papers is supposed to be kind of hilariously desperate, you know? And we can all be a little desperate sometimes—it’s love. Duh.

23. Billy Idol – Hot In The City

GENRE	Glam, Post-Punk
YEAR	1982
RIYL	Elvis (but with more leather and tattoos), The Bowie lineage, snarling vocals

I think this shit was essentially intended to be Billy Idol’s version of “Viva Las Vegas.” You could generously call it a fun tribute to a city this guy isn’t from, over a big-dick-swingin’, Sinatra-sized swaggering brass-and-backing-choir arrangement. Still, one wonders what Billy’s inspiration was here—because honestly, these lyrics are side-splittingly awful. Just profoundly generic descriptions of a night in “the City” with some hair metal-glam-punk booty call. A “long-legged lovely.” A stranger. It’s hot, she’s hot. Tonight. None of it is specific to New York City, or any other city on Earth. 

But that bridge kicks ass, and the details get better there—like when he snarls “I’m a chain ‘round an A-Bomb.” Suddenly you realize that the synth-bass combo slap is bitchin’, and why the fuck are you almost headbanging? Wait, what kind of fucked-up cowboy blues riff is this? What is happening here? Then he does the NEW YORK yell, and the chorus hits a shitload harder all of a sudden. It’s brazenly ballsy, like Frank, like Elvis, like everyone they stole from. Similarly, Billy’s a power-glam-pop-post-punk-swing-and-big-band shtick pirate on this one, and in that sense, it’s Billy at his best. It’s not always immediately obvious how he’s going to whisk all these genres and influences into a cohesive song until you’re already enchanted with just how catchy it is. I’ve said it before—I am a big fan of Billy Idol. 

24. The Jesus and Mary Chain – I Hate Rock N Roll

GENRE	Fuzz war, fuck you
YEAR	1994
RIYL	Burning rock ‘n’ roll in effigy, overloading lesser festival PA systems.

I saw this band overload a festival PA system at a headlining set in Oakland back in 2019.  Took me another few years to really dig back in. Nice fuzz, guys. You probably get that a lot. This is front-row, grip-the-stage, face-in-the-PA feedback-by-the-pound-core hornet’s hive guitar rock. Its attitude reeks like riding in the back of a garbage truck, speeding maniacally up the highway to the landfill on the county’s edge. The driver’s on amphetamines, the stereo volume’s maxed, and after a minute or two, even the shittiest of days gets blasted out the cracked windows. It’s got a factory belt beat, and the sounds of screaming machines to match. The vocals are taunting, like a schoolyard jump rope rhyme swiped from a South Park episode. And the rest is uncomplicated. It wails like “Helter Skelter.” It hurts pretty good.

To Be Continued…

That was the first half of the year. Stay tuned to this broadcast and watch how I carry it home.