Moody and driving are apparently the sonic motifs this week. I must be mad at the recent extra dose of the GOP’s craven, smug, self-righteous indignation. (Though it’s hard to have a bad time when you’re listening to Holy Ghost! or Har Mar Superstar.) Enjoy!
The National - “Sea of Love”
SULK - “The Big Blue”
Mirage - “Let’s Kiss”
Har Mar Superstar - “Lady, You Shot Me”
The oOohh Baby Gimme Mores - “Beat Up Kidz”
ASTR - “Operate”
Fossil Collective - “Under My Arrest”
Holy Ghost! - “Dumb Disco Ideas”
There wasn’t anyway to cross and so they waited for the freight train to pass. Home was still a long way across the blurred line of steel and commerce.
Whether you’re in need of a celebratory banger or something mopey because [s]he won’t return your calls and you’re going to die alone and in the company of cats and years-old newspapers, there’s something for whatever you’re feeling this weekend.
FWY! - “Garden Grove”
Houndmouth - “On the Road”
Mariah Carey x Miguel - “#Beautiful”
Du Tonc - “Surging Memories”
Shad - “Peace”
MONEY - “Bluebell Fields”
Thundercat - “Oh Sheit It’s X”
London Grammar - “Wasting My Young Years”
Sebastien Tellier x Caroline Polachek - “In The Crew Of Tea Time”
The street was empty from Trinity Church to the East River. No suits spewing from the 1-2-3 and no sad-faced men chopping chicken and onions on street carts and no assault rifles dangling lazily from shoulders around the Stock Exchange. There was, as there had always been in some sense, only emptiness and the rustle of dollars in the wind as it funneled down the urban canyons.
He hasn’t left the house in days and even the pizza guy is starting to look at him warily, taking his tip slowly and with suspicion, backing away slowly and not turning his back until the door closes.
So the semester is finally over and the grading’s done and the fast food binge cycle is drawing to a close and I’m instituting a new, hopefully regular thing at Dohaha: the Weekend Playlist. Basically, it’s just a small collection of stuff that’s ready for the party or the drive or the dusk walkabout or whatever it is you’re up to this weekend.
This week’s playlist:
Buffalo Rodeo - “Treehouse”
Classixx - “All You’re Waiting For”
Pusha T - “Numbers on the Board”
Wild Nothing - “A Dancing Shell”
Camera Obscura - “Do It Again”
Annie - “Tube Stops and Lonely Hearts”
Deerhunter - “Monomania”
HAIM - “Falling (Duke Dumont Remix)”
Cass McCombs - “If You Loved Me Before …”
She thought back on the past couple years and when she envisioned it she saw one huge beach party, a desperate, endless expanse of cocktails and glowing bar tops and people in headphones spinning knobs for other semi-enthusiastic people in open shirts the color of boredom.
(It’s been a rough couple weeks and I’m heading to Muscat for the weekend. Back to regular posts on Sunday.)
He always imagined he’d be driving a vintage drop top as he sped away from the flames into the wilderness and humid night. A white 1998 Toyota Tercel were less romantic, perhaps, but the goal, in the end, was not to be caught. And no one suspected a man in a Turcel of anything more dangerous than an accidental, self-inflicted cut from a can of tuna.
“I want to exorcise you,” he said, getting up from the table and buttoning his jacket. “Think about it.”
They spent the day digging for desert roses, eyes focused on each of their own patches of the wind-beaten expanse. The sunlight encased each of them until everything but heat and sweat and thirst and the repetition of the task became forgotten, mere abstractions.
Also:
Det. O’Reilly gave one last, long look over the crime scene, the shattered glass on the pavement, the dried blood on the asphalt near the chalk outline. He didn’t envy the coroner on this one. Though, to be fair, one didn’t typically envy coroners in general.
Speeding down the highway with bad memories and dusk in the rearview mirror, he drove back toward the city that was just coming to life.
The family prayed, as they always did, in a rough half-circle around the face of the tombstone. They said the Lord’s Prayer together, though the boy always just mouthed the words. Even at ten years old, he didn’t really buy it, and anyhow, the sight of his remaining family chanting in unison struck him as fairly ludicrous, but then again, he knew there were a lot of things he didn’t understand about the world. That feeling never really left him.
The cabin vibrates as the engines kick and the plane hurdles forward and he tries not to think of the last person he saw before turning down the corridor to his gate. But one day it will be the last thing he ever thinks of as the heart monitor calls in the nurse staff.
“Who are you talking to?”
“My friend.”
“Where is he?”
“Right next to me. Duh.”
“I see. And what’s your friend’s name?”
“Mr. Patmore.”
“And what do you and, um, Mr. Patmore talk about?”
“Oh, this and that. The weather, the NIKKEI, grilling, the Clippers, whether or not this is a good time to set up an IRA or a Roth IRA. That sort of thing.”
“——”