A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn.
Summer ’16 Promo by Jesus Piece
Switched on Pop podcast Switched on Pop is great to put on in the car when I’m tired of actual pop radio. Musicologist Nate Sloan and composer Charlie Harding dissect songs in terms you can understand without knowing music theory, occasionally tracing their roots all the way back to medieval music (or just to Michael Jackson). My favorite episode deconstructs Robyn’s “Call Your Girlfriend”—apparently while I was sweating it out on the dance floor, she was manipulating my emotions with minor-key chords and text painting.
John Maus, A Collection of Rarities and Previously Unreleased Material This 2012 release is a treasure to me. It contains “Bennington,” a song I’d been searching for since I heard it the prior summer in an older dude’s car. Its lo-fi synth pop is dark but upbeat—it’s essentially disco for sad people, so beautiful and eerie that it could soundtrack a haunted house. I find Maus fascinating—so mysterious, so intelligent. His interviews are a treat—he almost always ends up on a philosophical tangent, catches himself, apologizes, gets back on topic, and then does it all over again.
