Echo Beach Radio 9

Songs for a World Gone Mad

I’ll be honest, year-end hasn’t been exactly fun. A lot of people I care about have gone from feeling “OK” to being “Not OK.” If that sounds like hyperbole, I’m just going to guess you don’t know hang around many immigrants, genuinely poor people, LGBT-folk or journalists.

But as my daughter reminds me a lot lately, Hope is a Verb. It’s not something you “have” it’s something you “do.” It’s something you make.

So what do I make in 2025 that makes a difference for the Not OK? I’m figuring it out, but I don’t think it’s selling toxic hot-sauce investments to people permanently addicted to financial spiciness. Not anymore. And I know for certain that music is going to be one of the things that gets me through, because it always is.

Here’s the music that got me through the last month or so. You can check the list out on Spotify or all at once as a YouTube playlist. Or you can read lots of thoughts along the way.

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“Distant” – Wafia

Wafia is new to me, but given the 100s of millions of plays, she’s a well known pop singer now from Australia, introduced to me (as so many new acts are) by Josiah Lambert’s weekly “Download 15” show on SiriusXM. I’m drawn to sparse production in general, and this song seems wildly different than her seemingly-nonstop-pop back catalog of hits. The restraint here is amazing, and the lyrics land particularly well for me.

“Song to the Siren” – 070 Shake, Courtney Love

One of my favorite songs from This Mortal Coil, (ok, originally Jeff Buckley, as performed on the Monkees, but the TMC version is what’s in my head all the time).

I absolutely love Courtney Love’s voice, and don’t think she gets enough credit honestly, and 070 Shake can really do no wrong since they dropped Black Dress a year or so ago.

It’s a weird mashup between all four artists (TMC, Buckley, and now Hole and 070 Shake), and it completely works.

“Losing” – Nada Surf

I’m not a huge Nada Surf fan and honestly they got so much over-airplay for Popular I basically wrote them off as a kind of a not-very-serious J. Giles Band for a modern era, with songs like “Song for Congress” and “Meow Meow Lullabye”.

“Losing” isn’t like that. It feels like a very real song for a very real time:

I have lost all there is
I have lost what never was
I am losing, losing time
I am losing what I could find
I am dreaming what could be
I am dreaming fool is me

“Southern Life (What It Must Be Like)” – Sharon Van Etten

Sharon Van Etten’s music has felt kind of all over the place, with Seventeen really putting her on the map for me, but then Porta dropped, which is much more synth heavy and less rock-vocal. Southern Life feels like a continuation of that by way of some 80’s Siouxie Sioux. I hope her next efforts take her even further afield. Maybe a duo with Kim Gordon?

“ROCKMAN” – Mk.gee

Mk.gee can do no wrong. On the one hand, he has a notable addiction to his vocal pedals, but nobody gave Brian May crap about always having the same guitar sound so I think he gets a pass. I love how he uses all his instruments with a lot of dynamics. It works, sort of, in live performances like he just did on SNL with a 3 piece, but give him 2 years more on tour and I suspect he’ll be a can’t miss act for more than just me.

“Champ” – girlpuppy

Girlpuppy (aka Becca Harvey) came out of the pandemic as “yet another singer songwriter” who I enjoyed but didn’t leave all that much of a mark. This new track from her is much less that and a WHOLE LOT more Breeders. This song rocks, and I want a whole album of this. It’s got its soft spots, but when the guitars kick in for the chorus, I for sure wanna be in the front row getting neck injuries.

“Back in the Hardcore Days” – The Rum Diary

FLASHBACK SURPRISE. My good friend Jon Fee was in The Rum Diary — a little known California band that I had actually heard of when I met Jon, years later in a completely unrelated business context. Having strolled through the catalog, this song jumped out at me as I was putting this month together. Something about the LoFi DIY ethic, the extremely good drum parts and restrained grunge-era dynamic range makes me indeed, nostalgic for the Hardcore Days.

“Blood” – Kassie Krut

And thinking back to those hardcore days, especially late 90’s clubbing with my proto-wife, it’s hard to avoid earworms from Nine Inch Nails, Machines of Loving Grace or Ministry. Kassie Krut is taking similar — albeit more dance and hyperpop adjacent — vibes, and I’m all in, even if I probably wont be thrashing to her live anytime soon. But the vibe feels right for a world of institutional decay.

“snowpool” – Emile Mosseri, Julianna Barwick

OK huge vibe shift… it doesn’t get much lighter than this little dreamscape. I had no idea who Emile Mosseri was until I googled him (he’s primarily a composer for screen), and I had also never heard of avant garde producer Julianna Barwick. Doesn’t matter, this dream has held on for weeks.

“light dark light” – Fred again.., Angie McMahon

More well known (and last year I was in the top 100 Fred Again listeners on Spotify, apparently), Fred again keeps exploring and his music keeps getting more interesting. This very simple tone poem shares the name with Angie McMahon’s 2023 album… which doesn’t actually feature this song, just to be confusing. I remembered her “hit” from 2023 off that album, “Letting Go,” but found her voice a bit hyper-vibrato for me. This song, though, is just full of hope, and echoes with certainty in uncertain times.

“As Soon As You Can” – Twin Shadow

Twin Shadow is another “not on my list” musician who makes, usually, 120bpm driving R&B adjacent Pop stuff with folks like HAIM. This, however, is a drenched-in-reverb ‘80s synth nostalgia croon that absolutely scratches all my emotional itches. Part of a definite trend towards Oberheim/Roland nostalgic synth walls and again, couldn’t be happier to let that just roll around in my head for the next 20 years or so.

“gossip” – Goat Girl

Deeper down even into the Nostalgia well, UK-based Goat Girl combines old school synth with some grit and lyricism and a little industrial rhythm. It’s a tense song that makes use of rhythm shifts and found-sounds really well. Stay for the build into the end.

“simple things” – runo plum

Two soft songs to send out into the world. Runo Plum is (apparently) a folk artist from Minnesota. On this song, she made a warm hug of a song that includes this lovely turn of phrase:

I've got a real bad case of "do-it-tomorrows"
I'm a dried out bouquet of falling flowers

I feel like now is not the time to stop drinking coffee
Maybe some other time, when it's not getting me by

I've been like a ragdoll laying lifeless
Needing reminders again of what the point of life is

And if I let myself enjoy the simple things
There'll be more to stay here for

And a conclusion to: “Winter Birds” – The Things of Youth

The Things of Youth is the “Family Band” of my friend Jon (see also, The Rum Diary above). “Winter Birds” is their seasonal offering, wistful, timeless, and full of old sounds that feel new.

When this arrived in my inbox, it reminded me that the point of music isn’t to be passive and experience, it’s to be moved. That movement can be literal, dancing in the kitchen to old favorite, or it can be figurative. Great music not only moves us internally, it spurs us into *action*.

Sometimes that action is, like Winter Birds, simply the act of creating more music.

Sometimes that action is to tell someone we love them.

Sometimes that action is to simply stand up, brush ourselves off, and get to work.