March 2023 in Music
I’m making a concession to reality – something I greatly struggle with. I can’t stand admitting that time is limited, and that I’m simply not going to do everything I planned in the way I planned in the time I planned – but sometimes it’s impossible to maintain the illusion. So, I’m going to post my playlists for each month, but I’m only going to comment on the songs I feel like saying something about, and only briefly – I’m not going to attempt to conjure up whole paragraphs about each, because I simply don’t have that much to say, and because trying to do so has delayed these posts to a ridiculous degree.
Having said that, here’s some of the music I enjoyed in March:
The first thing I noticed, revisiting this several months after making the list, was that between Sum 41 and Reliant K I appear to have been nostalgically revisiting high school, which is not a bad thing to do when it comes to music. When you’re young it can be easier to accept openly emotional music without trying to critique it through the filter of sophisticated taste. Sum 41 in particular reminds me of the time when punk Naruto music videos on primordial youtube were the height of sentimentality.
And let’s be honest, sentiment or aesthetic sensation is, at the end of the day, the whole explanation for the inclusion of any song. Sometimes it cuts through regardless of what a song is actually about. Rocky Mountain High is a beautiful hymn to the beauty of nature, even if I’m deeply opposed to the idea that bringing more people to a place is a bad thing. Can a song be misanthropic and also beautiful? I suppose it can.
Everything CHVRCHES puts out reliably serves to help me cut through the mental fog of a tired Monday morning, Just Like Honey is yet another example of an end-of-century warm fuzzy mass of sound that I like, and Humbert Humbert continue to do variations on the same musical themes and emotions. Personally, their music makes me feel they are gardeners gently tending to a tiny, delicate crocus (I am the crocus). And Saho Terao’s music slipped into my feed and was immediately slotted into my ever-expanding collection of teary Japanese music.
Carter Burwell’s True Grit score is a rousing yet understated accompaniment to what might be the Coens’ finest work. And yes, in 2023 I finally discovered Jamiroquai, thanks to memes. The next couple of tracks showed up on the excellent soundtrack for Licorice Pizza, and sparked a minor obsession where I would play them every morning while I commuted for about a week or two.
After that come three excellent pieces from film scores, another hopeful work from Hitsujibungaku, an admission that yes I do like bagpipes, and a Takagi which reminds me of the time I was a child staying at a motel in Australia, and through the evening humidity and the symphony of cicadas came the flashes of distant lightning, and the approach of a glorious summer storm.
