4/6

i'm thankful for golden hour by kacey musgraves, which i have been listening to a lot after crissy her described as "lawful good taylor swift." i'm thankful for my favorite songs from the album, which are "golden hour" (melody like a cat yearning into the last rays of the day's sun), "wonder woman" (honeyed harmonies) and "velvet elvis" (palm muted limerence).

i'm thankful for "after the storm" by kali uchis (plus tyler and bootsy), which has grooves for days. i'm thankful for the new rocky song, which uses the most obvious possible moby samples, but in a way that feels audacious and pleasing, like a vintage leather jacket (i'm thankful that though he's not the best rapper in the world, he has always been a great beat picker, a fashion killer). i'm thankful for this junglepussy song, which has such a distinctive refrain

i'm thankful for "need a little time," the most recent single from courtney barnett. i'm thankful that it's interesting because it doesn't have the quirky lyrical flourishes of a lot of her other music, much simpler in terms of its sentiments, but that the music  and production heavies up to compensate for that, with thicc grungy riffs. i'm thankful for the way her voice bends around melody lines. 

i'm thankful for hinds, who i had never listened to before yesterday but who i am finding myself in love with and whose latest songs are, to me, perfect rock songs. i'm thankful for the specialness of their production, how most garage rock feels designed to be heard live or on speakers, but these songs take advantage of the artifice of stereo panning in really powerful ways that enhance rather than diminish their intensity when listening on headphones. i'm thankful always for gleeful distortion, for overlapping voices that dance in and out of scratchy unison, for strokes of trebly guitar. i'm thankful that when i went to get the links for the songs, i found that their new album is out today.

i'm thankful, in a different volume, for the headphone mastery of this song, whose frequencies are so carefully equalized to make my headphones pop and wobble, for the high resolution photoshop layers of sound. i'm thankful for this remix of rhye's "song for you"—i don't normally like electronic-y remixes of pretty songs, but the churning sequenced synths that's the backbone of this one takes it out of its soft chamber pop setting and down a churning, oceanic path that makes it new, alien, mysterious. 

i'm thankful to live in a time and to have a life where i can listen to whatever music i want on headphones whenever i want. i'm thankful to know that on the days where i don't feel as happy, one thing i sometimes notice is that i never turned on any music, or turned it off "to concentrate" and didn't turned it back on (too wrapped up in whatever fire i am fighting to have remembered), and to remember that playing music that i like in the background is one small thing i can do to help myself feel better.