Music Listeners

listening to Your Favorite Songs 2025, part 5

thanks for coming back. more songs for ya, coming right up.

part 1 here. part 2 here. part 3 here. part 4 here.

scroll to the bottom for youtube embeds of all the tunes!

"Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party" - Hayley Williams
from Michele (I Have That On Vinyl):
"It's catchy as hell, it's biting, it's Hayley at her best"

Ah the bachelorette party, one of the more abject gatherings of our modern age. There are a lot of ways a bachelorette party can go wrong, most notably with budgeting, i.e. spending way too much money to have way too little fun, but also with terrible venues (like Hayley's "racist country singer's bar"), with clashings of personal energies of a randomized assortment of women from different eras of a bride's life, bound together in a hard seltzer-soaked tangle of polyester sashes.

I'm lucky that the bachelorette parties I've been to have been some of the weirdest and most enjoyable occasions of my life, but I can't imagine I'm in the majority there. I will never forget the emcee at the rowdy daytime club we went to for my sister's bach in New Orleans, a sturdy blonde woman who hosted several twerking contests and at one point yelled "If you have insurance for your phone, put your hands up!" This song was reminding me of something and I couldn't put my finger on it, and now I realize the melody and production are super Linda Perry-esque, which is awesome. Very alt mid-'90s.

"Possum Dog" - Motocrossed
from Amber:
"admittedly this band is made of my dearest friends, but I maintain that their record would be my album of the year even if they were complete strangers. Possum Dog is a masterful southern rock opus full of charm, love, and yearning that matches every inch of its power with quiet reflection. Can't count the number of times I've cried to this song :)"

I have started using Duck Duck Go instead of Google and when I typed "possum dog motorcrossed" in their video search, it showed me a bunch of videos of possums and dogs being friends. This song goes hard as hell, kind of feels like a whole album in a song, if you know what I mean. By the time it builds to the all-out shred near the end and then pulls back up for just vocals and a little strumming...and then the beautiful harmonies get laid over pure guitar sludge...man, that's the stuff. Favorite lyric: "Am I a prize horse? / Am I the morning moon? / Am I just some stupid girl you let sleep in your spare room?" Motocrossed are a seven-piece band (heeellll yeeahhh lots of people, love it) from Charlotte, North Carolina; North Carolina might be to the 2020s what the Pacific Northwest was to the '90s, music-wise.

"Amber Waves" - Ethel Cain
from Avid music fan, audio plugin developer by trade, musician by hobby

Do you think Lana Del Rey is so pissed at Ethel Cain not because they're in a battle to be the most famous girl at the Waffle House, but because Ethel Cain can stretch her shit out this languidly and abjectly and the real heads dig it and ask for more and don't just want her to make "Venice Bitch" over and over again? Not that I mind when Lana makes "Venice Bitch" over and over again, but still. Lana—don't get mad, get WEIRD. Oh while we're here, you have to read Jacqueline Codiga on Perverts. Mandatory. Probably my favorite music writing of the year and it came out in freakin January.

Livin' Wrong - Tony Molina
from Jay Papandreas - acollectivefeeling.com/@expensive.dog on ig:
"Tony Molina's ability to combine the spirit of '60s radio folk songs with brevity of powerviolence make him America's greatest living songwriter. 2025's On This Day LP kicks off its b-side with "Livin' Wrong," a Byrds-esque track imbued with the spirit of Christ flipping over the moneylenders' tables in the temple. It's so rare that I can say "this folk song totally rips," and thankfully, 2025 is a year where I get to say that."

I just made myself chuckle way too sensibly at the idea of a Philadelphian saying "Go Byrds." Sandwiched between two sub-1-minute tracks on the album, "Livin' Wrong" has an instantly comforting feel, even though the lyrics themselves are a little inflammatory, a little spicy. I'm interested in the concept of "livin' wrong" on this song—there's a reference to a "self-appointed God / who's demanding love and grace for livin' wrong." That invocation of God has me thinking about the endless Christian cycle of sin and forgiveness, and the ease with which one might do wrong by others knowing that they're a few penance prayers away from getting right with the Lord again. I remember finding that concept a little dubious in Sunday School—you're telling me if I screw up, I just have to bow my head and seem real sorry and everything will be cool?—but like any kind of honesty policy, I guess it's there in the hope of being used, rather than abused. You gotta have faith-ah-faith-ah-faithaahh...

"The Smashing Machine" - Nala Sinephro
from Nathan T:
"The whole score is great, but this is the only track to prominently feature the drums. The rest of score is all slow synth washes (very appropriate for the movie!), but this track drives the fight scenes without losing the core appeal of the synth washes. It's queasy."

You can trust a Safdie brother to have expansive taste in film scores, huh? Nala Sinephro is an experimental jazz musician born in 1996, and The Smashing Machine is her first score for a movie, which is cool. I have not seen the movie yet, though I probably will tap in for VOD over Christmas, because Christmastime is all about getting together with family and watching very intense prestige movies about fighting (The Iron Claw last year; The Fighter back when I in college, shout out to Melissa Leo's "CONSIDER."). Queasy is right: four minutes in, the restless drums lock in with this distressingly bent synth note, which unfortunately reminds me of the THX Deep Note, whose titular adjective refers to how DEEPLY squidgy I feel when I hear the deep note.

doesn't this notation scare you a little bit?

"Doberman" - Deafheaven
from AJ Johnson:
"Deafheaven has returned from their brief sojourn as pop musicians!"

There comes a time in every band's life where they have to figure out which way to SWERVE. I have an ongoing bit that the "which way, western band" question for their fourth or fifth album is whether to add modular synths or pedal steel to the mix. In Deafheaven's case, the swerve was vocal. They stopped screaming for 2021's Infinite Granite, and now with this year's Lonely People With Power, they are screaming anew. This song to me has very Teetering On The Precipice vibes, right down to the steep slant of those imploring guitars...things aren't going well, things are going to have to change soon. "ALL HAIL NOW THE PANOPTICON," George Clarke screams, but it's not yr usual societal panopticon, rather a personal one: "See all around me / All of my failure."