Music People

playlist review: Blackbird Spyplane's SPYPLANE SUMMER SLAPPERS 2025

Summer is the season of playlists, where maximum leisure intersects with minimum desire to fuss with music requests and track curation. A good summer playlist can make or break your pool hang, barbecue, miscellaneous outdoor dissociation, or car ride home from the water park.

I was thrilled to see Blackbird Spyplane, one of my favorite newsletters (in their words, it "offers 'unbeatable recon' into style, travel and culture," and their idiosyncratic approach to verbiage, graphics, and overall URL/IRL connection is nigh unbeatable), offer up a summer playlist. And thought it deserved the I Enjoy Music Playlist Review treatment, which I last applied to a playlist for a Good Culture cottage cheese event I did not attend.

SPYPLANE SUMMER SLAPPERS doesn't force a false sense of fun onto the listener. Rather it seems to give one a bit of space to find their footing, to incorporate the vibes into one's life as one sees fit. There's a fast food place near me that offers "charbroiled" menu items, which is something I think hard about every time I pass by—interesting mouthfeel, the word "charbroiled"—and I would say this playlist is not charbroiled. It's lightly toasted. Nothing on it will hurt your mouth but there are different textures on offer and they're all quite tasty.

The overall highlight is the sequencing, which guides us from mellow / lofi indie rock to a cerebral but blood-pumping electronic moment, then to a brief but exciting hip hop chapter, and then into an eclectic closer of big and juicy showstoppers, before ending back at mellowness in the form of a Damien Jurado song from a little over a decade ago. Nothing is too jarring, everything makes sense.

Highlights with commentary:

"June Guitar" - Alex G
I don't have a license to blog but if I did, it would probably be revoked by the blog authorities if they found out that I haven't listened to much Alex G at all. For an artist with such influence in contemporary indie music, I should hop on the G wagon, but he hasn't really called to me yet. I like this song though, it kind of reminds me of...Counting Crows?? This is off his new album, his Major Label Debut, and I guess if you're widening the tent of your fandom, Alex G going Adam D mode (that's Adam Duritz, of course) will get more people crowding in under the tent quickly.

"Movement 6" - EMS Synthi 100 & Soulwax
I listen to so much Soulwax that it's kind of creepy—never forget I kicked off 2024 with a hyperfixation on "The Safety Dance," which the Soulwax/2manydjs brothers played at their delightful afters gig at LCD Soundsystem's New Year's Eve show in San Francisco—but I hadn't yet listened to this album of songs created with the EMS Synthi 100, a "huge and rare analogue synthesizer." "Movement 6" is pointillistic. It sounds like brainworms, but the good kind. I love that there are synths so large and cumbersome and stationary that you have to travel to them, spend time with them, really lock in for whatever you need to do. Am reminded of Robin Hatch's T.O.N.T.O. project...

"Roll the dice" - Smerz
The Smerz record, Big city life, was a highlight of my ambulatory album listening in June. This is simply Cool Music. Music For Cool People, By Cool People. It sounds like Knowing What's Up. Irreverent, cheeky, playful, main-character-but-not-making-a-big-deal-about-it music. Playing it makes me feel like I'm alive in 2025 (non-derogatory).

*Still-Life with Cherries, Strawberries and Gooseberries* by Louise Moillon, 1630

I should say I listened to the SPYPLANE SUMMER SLAPPERS playlist in the car, driving around L.A. running errands, but also making an ~1hr stop at an art museum, because I felt really zonked out and needed to put my brain in the washing machine. I went to the Norton Simon museum in Pasadena and looked at some European art, mostly from the 15th to 17th centuries. I love a good botanical still life ("eating FRESH FRUITS!" - Ludacris), and I like religious art, especially the kind that depicts normal people reacting to Jesus or Joseph or whomever doing something batshit insane.

And how's this for some alignment—when I left the museum, the playlist had reached the song "the vilage," a somewhat medieval instrumental song off the album digi-squires, which is a collaboration between experimental jazz saxophonist Sam Gendel and multi-instrumentalist Nate Mercereau. The album art:

That style is probably a bit pre-15th c. but still was oddly harmonious with the experience I had just exited. Definitely recommend this playlist, as well as a brain-cleansing summer visit to a museum (air conditioning! surly docents! something to look at that isn't phone!) or other place of cultural celebration.