This is a September playlist
And some modest life updates
Good morning.
At the start of September, I came back from traveling in the Northeast and in Europe, where I was lucky to have perfect weather wherever I went, and stepped right back into temperatures in the high 90s here in Austin.
Instead of getting that melancholy end of summer sensation, it feels like no time has passed at all since the beginning of May. The hot Texas summer, it seems, is a perpetual state of being. Kind of like the dragging New York winter.
I’m still getting used to the cycles of the seasons down here. It’s obviously different from the Northeast. The seasons don’t change much, but there are nuances and I’m only starting to understand and notice them.
After a break from driving for about a month, getting back to having that as part of my weekly routine has been an adjustment, but I feel better about driving here than I did a year ago.
My fiancee and I also have a wedding date now, which we’re happy about.
Work continues on, the world continues on, life continues on. I wrote two posts this month that people seemed to like.
And I put a playlist together. Take a listen if you like that kind of thing. Or take a listen to what was on last year’s September playlist and see if I accidentally repeated anything.
See you next time.
“P.F. Sloan” by Jimmy Webb
My college roommate gave me a vinyl copy of Jimmy Webb’s 1969 album Words and Music several years ago for my birthday. That was the first time I heard “P.F. Sloan” and I admit I hadn’t thought about it for some time until I put the vinyl on recently. The solemnity and melancholy of the end of summer don’t hit as hard here in Austin as they did in New York, but this song is a “changing of the seasons” song if I’ve ever heard one. I have no clue what this song is actually about but I like the way it’s written. The first line is “I have been seeking P.F. Sloan / but no one knows where has gone.” It’s like one of those stories where the narrator is focused on the main or titular character: The Great Gatsby, Austerlitz, The Grand Budapest Hotel, All The Kings Men. Plus there is a wonderful lyric that goes, “the last time I saw P.F. Sloan / he was summer burned, he was winter blown” and there is one part where Webb sings woefully out of tune and forces his voice and he sounds all too human. It’s perfect.
“A.M. 180” by Grandaddy
The same roommate who gave me the Jimmy Webb record used to play this song on repeat during the fall of our freshman year in 2003. I haven’t listened to it at least a decade. But it brings me back to that singular September in my life.
“Living Without You” by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band
“Living Without You” is a top-tier Randy Newman song that Harry Nilsson perfected on Nilsson Sings Newman (1970). However, I was reading Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train (1975) and, in his section on Randy Newman, he cites this cover as the definitive version of the song. I don’t know what the hell Greil was thinkin’ back then. This is a cool cover, but it doesn’t touch the Newman original or Nilsson’s divine rendition.
“My Love, My Love” by Beachwood Sparks
Beechwood Sparks are the type of band that always loom large from the page: their albums read like the best music ever—or music that has everything I love in it—but nothing about them has ever really stuck. They have a new album out and I thought this was a good song.
“Snowqueen Of Texas” by The Mamas & The Papas
The Mamas and The Papas, like Simon & Garfunkel, have a confusing and disjointed discography. They maybe have 1.5 good albums. But they have lots of great scattered songs. Doesn’t get much better than “I Saw Her Again Last Night” in my book. This one is really a John Phillips song that would’ve fit on his self-titled solo album John Phillips (The Wolf King of L.A.) which is an all-time record for me despite the fact that Phillips is an all-time awful human being. He had a clear point of view as a songwriter and composer and “Snowqueen of Texas” is a perfect distillation of his unique sound and cadence. This track finds the cut and lays in it. This is the kind of song you dream of walking into a bar and hearing right before having about four good regular beers and maybe playing one game of pool.
“Parker’s Band” by Steely Dan
Is Pretzel Logic (1974) peak Steely Dan? Hard to say. This song feels like they are in full control of their early-period powers. This one gets going and doesn’t stop.
“Magic” by General Lee
I’ll tell you, I have no idea who General Lee is. (I mean, I know who General Lee is, just not this General Lee.) And, I’ve got to say, I don’t remember where the hell I heard this one. But it is atmospheric and the groove is incessant.
“If The Sun Never Rises Again” by Johnny Blue Skies
How is everyone feeling about Sturgill Simpson these days? I still think he’s great and feel like there’s not too many people making contemporary rock or country rock or Americana or whatever you want to call it who are on his wavelength. This latest record, released under the name Johnny Blue Skies, is great. The production sounds great, his voice sounds great, it's just a good album. I love the main riff on this song—I can picture walking down 2nd Avenue in the East Village a cooling September night whenever I hear it.
“Clams Casino” by Cassandra Jenkins
I like all of Cassandra Jenkins’s records. Her first album, Play Till You Win (2017), is definitely more straight ahead roots rock and that’s probably my favorite record. But An Overview of Phenomenal Nature (her last album from 2021) and My Light, My Destroyer (her most recent record from earlier this year) are both fantastic and feel kind of like twin releases. There’s an overlay of Ditch Trilogy-era Neil Young and Berlin Trilogy-era David Bowie to what she does. This song is more of the latter and sounds kind of like a missing track from Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born (2004).
“Thank You” by Clairo
Look, I think Clairo is pretty great! Her latest album Charm is a completely professional and well-produced album that would’ve really meant something maybe even 10 years ago. There’s gotta be a lot of Clairo fans out there right? Probably somewhere on the internet I’m not.
“Scenic Route” by Brijean
Read about this one on AllMusic.com. A slick bit of contemporary disco.
“It’s Not The End of the World?” by Super Furry Animals
When I first listened to Rings Around the World by the Super Furry Animals during my senior year of high school, it felt like an entire world opened up to me. At 17, I was in a moment of collecting all the contemporary bands that would have lasting meaning for me. I couldn’t believe how good the production on this song was, how ambitious it was, how much it sounded exactly like what the Beatles on Abbey Road would’ve sounded like if they’d manage to continue on. Gruff Rhys is one of the most underrated songwriters and composers we have. As a whole, his songwriting work can stand next to George Harrison’s. I fully believe that.
“Happy Ways” by Joe Walsh
When it comes to Joe Walsh, September is usually Barnstorm (1972) season for me, but this year I’ve been listening to The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get (1973). You can’t really go wrong with Joe Walsh from 1970-1980. During the September of my senior year of college, I lived in a wood-paneled studio apartment on Broadway in Saratoga Springs above a women’s clothing store. The back windows of my apartment opened onto a little roof. In the afternoons, I used to lay a sleeping bag out there, drag my speakers to the windows, lay down and listen to The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get. Let me tell you, listening to “Happy Ways” at 21 years old and laying in the sun on a sleeping bag on the roof of the first apartment you’ve rented by yourself is a feeling that everyone should have once.
“Giving It Up For Your Love” by Delbert McClinton
Heard this one on Sun Radio (that’s 100.1 if you ever find yourself down here and in need of a dial turn) when I was driving one day. I told my fiancee to Shazam it and she asked me why I was yelling.
“21st Century Rip Off” by The Soundtrack Of Our Lives
God, I loved discovering bands. The Soundtrack of Our Lives were a garage-rock revival band from Sweden that came up in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I read about their album Behind The Music (2001) in Rolling Stone in 2001 and downloaded the album. I loved it so much—I cherished it and the burnt CD I listened to in my 1992 Chevy Blazer. I was the only person on Long Island listening to Behind The Music by The Soundtrack of Our Lives in 2001 and 2002 and you can’t convince me otherwise.
I hadn’t thought about them in years until I saw a poster for a show they were playing when I was in Stockholm in August. This song is a straight Rolling Stones rip-off but I don’t fucking care. Songs like this will always sound good.
“Live Close By (Visit Often)” by The Mavericks and Nicole Atkins
This is another one I heard on Sun Radio. The Mavericks’s latest album, Moon & Stars is pretty good. I’ve collected a few songs off that one.
“Cum on Feel the Noize” by Slade
Heard the Twisted Sister version of this song in my training gym recently. Thought about how Dee Snider lived in my town growing up and the fact that I went to high school with his son. Then I thought about how much I love the original version by Slade. There is something slightly wistful about it that makes its dumb rocking that much more interesting. And this is dumb rock music at its very best. This song is triumphant, but by the end you feel slightly deflated for some reason. Maybe that’s just me.
“Happiness” by The Heavy Heavy
The Heavy Heavy have a new record out and this song has been in, no pun intended, heavy rotation on Sun Radio. I think it’s very good. AllMusic.com gave their new album four stars. That’s high praise.
“Cross My Heart” by Phil Ochs
This is a big playlist for my college roommate! He gave me Phil Ochs’s Pleasure of The Harbor (1967) on vinyl for my birthday maybe a decade ago at this point. This song is the first track on the album and what an opening song it is. Ochs’s voice is so distinct and the production is so perfectly 1967, which makes this song an absolute treasure. Google AI Overviews should generate a picture of the cover of Pleasures of The Harbor and start playing this song when you search “autumn.” If AI was any good, it would do stuff like that.
“And It Stoned Me” by Van Morrison
When I was in college, a friend of mine named Brian (who we called Chief—this was college after all) used to keep tapes in his car. By the fall of 2004, you could connect an iPod to your stereo, but Brian liked to play tapes. He had several albums that were facts of life in there and Moondance was one of them. I listened to Moondance so many times in that car.
And I picked up his idea of keeping tapes in the car the summer after I graduated from college when I taught at Brewster Academy in New Hampshire. I had Abbey Road, Purple Rain, Thriller, and some other albums on tape. I used to drive a mini bus full of students from Thailand around New England (to Boston, to Rockport, to Manchester, to Concord, to Portsmouth) and make them listen to the Abbey Road medley, “The Beautiful Ones” and “Darling Nikki,” and “Human Nature.” Part of my job was to prepare them for prep school and college in the United States. Pretty sure making them listen to sick albums with the bus windows open was part of my remit.
Anyway, I came out of the gym one day recently and heard this song on the radio and, driving back to my home on a slow-developing Sunday morning in Austin with people strolling on sidewalks before the heat of the day while bikers casually wheeled down quiet streets, I thought, “Dear God does this song sound good. Is this maybe the best song about water ever written?”