#365songs (196 / 365)

Another song that I listened to like seven or eight times in a row in a car driven by a friend. Unlike the other one, this actually is one of its artist's best songs.

This one was at night, in Portland. I don't remember where we were going. My friend said he thought it was one of the best vocal performances of all time. I don't know that it would be near the top of such a list for me but I think it's a defensible opinion. I don't think my friend talked about this, but when I came around to Channel Orange on my own, I also was surely aware of the intrigue about Frank Ocean — formerly (and maybe still contemporaneously with "Bad Religion?") part of the famously edgelord-y OFWGKTA ("Odd Future" for short) collective alongside Tyler, the Creator — essentially coming out as bisexual via this song. Sure, I think he'd made a post on Tumblr or some shit before that. But "Bad Religion" feels a lot more real than a screenshot of a text file. It feels a lot more real than a lot of other songs, actually. Almost a cappella for much of its length, which feels right because even if you don't think it's one of the best vocal performances of all time you've got to admit it's a great one. That climb up on "if it brings me to my knees"... whew.

#365songs (195 / 365)

One of two songs that, while it's a fine song on its own merits, I mostly associate with being in a car whose driver put it on repeat for the entire duration of whatever journey we were undertaking.

I don't remember the circumstances that well, but I do remember who the driver was, and I remember: it was in Minnesota. It was summer, and it was hot. The drive was adjacent to a party of some kind. I think maybe we went out to get some supplies for the party or something? It wasn't that long of a drive but it was long enough to fit like six or eight listens of "Seven Nation Army." I remember that the White Stripes were pretty popular in my friend group and one friend in particular thought they were not a good band because they didn't have a bassist, and he felt vindicated by "Seven Nation Army" because their most popular song having Jack White's guitar pitched down to where it sounded like a bass proved him right.

Anyway, pretty good song. To me personally, not their best; just one that circumstances stamped into my mind in a very specific way.

#365songs (194 / 365)

Third song on the original release of Friend Opportunity. A lower-key track than the two that preceded it: still catchy and endearing but more of a chill, funky affair, at least until 2:20 where you get an instrumental breakdown that sounds like an actual breakdown: of a device, or a person, take your pick. Deerhoof is always good at curveballs in their songs and this is one of their best, and to me it's the capstone of this amazing three-song run that opens Friend Opportunity: a bit of tight and rigorous chaos that told me, this is a band that can and will do anything.

#365songs (193 / 365)

As promised or at least implied, after yesterday's post about the first song on Deerhoof's album Friend Opportunity, here's the second song on Friend Opportunity. Another banger! Also barely three minutes! After "The Perfect Me"'s controlled mayhem this is more of a straight-up rock song, but with the classic Deerhoof trick of coming up with an incredibly hot riff and then abandoning it in short order. A lesser band would build a whole song around what Deerhoof does for 10 seconds at 1:07 here, but then they do a similar thing at 2:15, and once again you say "Oh damn, hot riff," and then they bring the chorus in over it and maybe, or maybe not, you realize it's just the chorus riff and it sounds as good with no vocals over it as it does with them. And the little flourish of horns is just gilding the lily. It's fine! Gild that lily! I love a gilded lily! If I didn't fall in love with Deerhoof after "The Perfect Me," this surely would have sealed the deal. But wait, there's more...

(editor's note: on the version of Friend Opportunity that's on Bandcamp, they wedge the decent but momentum-killing "Choco Fight" between "The Perfect Me" and "+81." I don't like a super front-loaded album but this album has stuck with me mostly because of the incredible run of songs it opens with, so I have to say I don't approve of this change.)

#365songs (192 / 365)

I'm falling BEHIND again in #365songs so I'm going to burn through some tracks by writing about multi-song sequences that have stuck with me, mostly falling at the beginnings of albums.

I can't remember but I think maybe Friend Opportunity was my first Deerhoof album, and the first three songs blew me away. "The Perfect Me" is Deerhoof at their produced and maximalistic and it's a little prog opus in under three minutes. This is one of those songs where it's shocking that it's so short because there's so much packed into it. The little breakdown at 1:15, another example of this comment on the video for the last Deerhoof song I wrote about:

Who comes up with a riff as awesome as the one at just after the 3 minute mark and then discards it after less than 20 seconds? Deerhoof, that's who. They just effortlessly ooze brilliance.

Similarly awesome riff, similar lifespan. The weird laid-back last "verse" (??) in the midst of all the chaos, the last 10 seconds of bleep bloops in the outro, all of it. Just an effortless-sounding but bewildering tour of everything Deerhoof is capable of. Maybe the reason I still love them even though I haven't really been thrilled by their last several albums. Probably one of the best Deerhoof songs to hear as an intro to the band. Prove me wrong! Or don't! I'm right!

#365songs (191 / 365)

Weird Al notwithstanding, this was one of the earliest entries in my pattern of getting at incredibly well-known music via some peculiar back road or other. Would you believe that I heard this before I heard the original? Or, at least, before I really came to know the original. Can that be right? Do I believe that? I'm seeing that this was released in 2006 but I thought my brief Led Zep phase was in the early oughts. But I'm quite sure the first time I heard this it did not sound at all familiar to me.

In any case. Whether or not I heard this cover before the original, it was one of my earliest introductions to the notion that you can stretch a cover pretty far and really make it your own and still have it be faithful, in a way, or at least recognizable. Plus Rodrigo y Gabriela was probably one of the earlier instrumental albums I got into in any capacity whatsoever.

#365songs (190 / 365)

A gorgeous and tender song that always reminds me of my partner. The reassurance of "I know myself well when I'm in this hell: it's part of the process, it doesn't scare me" can be helpful when I feel like it's my job to help my partner feel better because I know she is self-aware enough to know this too. It's not my job and I'm never good at it when I feel like it is. But I do like to be there, when I can, for the other side of "Ordinary Talk" — "When the world has turned away I know I’m gonna need you."

#365songs (189 / 365)

A weird interlude on Deltron 3030, on which I do like actual songs too, "Meet Cleofis Randolph the Patriarch" is showoffy multisyllabic rhymer MC Paul Barman showing off his multisyllabic rhymes for 36 seconds in some kind of weird posh character voice. Based on the bizarreness of this I thought I would like Barman more than I actually did; turns out that in 2000, even for me, 36 seconds was just about the right amount of "nerdy, juvenile white Jewish rapper in love with his own cleverness."

In 2026, Barman has a couple more albums that I bought out of curiosity but haven't really gotten into yet, though cursory listens indicate they keep the over-cleverness but tone down the juvenilia. Perhaps worth a revisit? While I don't always love features on rap songs — after all, I'm not listening to artist X because I wanted to hear artist Y — sometimes it is a great way to find out about people you never would have otherwise.

#365songs (188 / 365)

Cerulean Salt was my first Waxahatchee album and I've been a fan ever since, all the way up to the quite different-sounding Tigers Blood. Back on her second album Katie Crutchfield was still very much in indie-rock mode, and following a trajectory I was familiar with from the Mountain Goats and Iron and Wine: a determinedly lo-fi acoustic-guitar first era (just one album in Waxahatchee and Iron and Wine's case) followed by very tentative exploration of other instrumentation in a studio, sooner or later going full-band and pretty much staying that way.

Cerulean Salt is from that tentative middle era of Waxahatchee and the clean-but-sparse sound leaves the emphasis on Crutchfield's lyrics, where it should be in a song like "Swan Dive," my favorite off Cerulean Salt. It's not a happy song but in some of its predictions of the future there's a bit of hopefulness to it that, insofar as it's autobiographical, was sort of borne out later ("I will grow out of all the empty bottles in my closet" prefiguring Crutchfield publicly getting sober in the Saint Cloud era). Mostly it's sad though, and simple as hell (four chords, three verses, wordless "oo-oo-oo" chorus) but extremely affecting. Live performances tend to slow it down and omit the constant tom roll but my favorite version is the studio one. Beautiful song, kind of a bummer. Kind of Phoebe Bridgers-esque, but 10 years before Phoebe Bridgers.

#365songs (187 / 365)

Another song that's notable to me mainly for the music video, though the song is solid too. These absolute sickos (complimentary) actually recorded a music video that's just the Eschaton scene from David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest (which novel blew me away when I read it as a 20-year-old). The song itself lightly references IJ in the lyric "In the year of the chewable Ambien tab" and otherwise doesn't lean into fan service, but the video is about as faithful a representation of the tennis-as-war-game set piece as you can get without embedding a child's head in a CRT monitor. Probably full of Easter eggs too, though the only one I noticed was Jenny Conlee wearing a classic DFW bandana. Directed by Michael Schur! One of like five directors whose names I recognize! What a miracle. I'm so glad this video exists.