Red eyes are a special kind of limbo, charging you across the transcontinental skies in partial reality. You only really come to as the roar of the wind breaks over the wing flaps on landing.
Although, waiting for the train as the sun comes up did kind of extend the nothingness of the morning.
Here comes the sun... it's alright.
But those long trips are good for one thing at least: listening to your new favorite tunes on repeat. So even though it’s not Friday, here’s a few Happy Friday tunes. (I’m sufficiently jet-lagged and vacation-tired to use the time warp excuse. Go with it.)
1. Good Grief – Lucius
The new album Lucius just dropped: Good Grief with particular amazing fan-girl euphoric stressing on track one: Madness. I’m utterly certain that every track's consistent lyrical resonance with my mental state of being lately has nothing to do with how obsessed I am over this album. It’s more the indie-chick tight vocals layered over electro/synth smorgasbord stolen straight out of the eighties. The bridge of Madness sounds like Questlove’s kiddie instrument treasure chest on The Tonight Show was raided and funneled through vocoders. The chill groove with an errant beat is just too good to pass up, the music matching the message without sounding erratic or lost. But but the best part of the whole song comes at 3:20 because #keychange #strings but with mind-blowing compounded effect because it’s just so unexpected. I mean, I love a good key change anywhere I find one, but when it SNEAKS IN LIKE A RED-HEADED NINJA WITH A PRECARIOUS EMOTIONAL STATE OF BEING, it’s jaw-dropping.
"Maybe I drive myself to madness spinning in circles, don’t have it figured out just yet."
Good Grief is particularly great at optimizing the similarities and then differences of Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig's vocals. Unison splits into multi-layered harmonies that sound something like it looks when you open a mirrored cabinet in a mirrored bathroom and all of a sudden there are a thousand permutations of yourself surrounding you - all the same and all a little different. Check out My Heart Got Caught on Your Sleeve if that description doesn’t make sense yet.
2. Suicide Squad – People I know, and people I have never heard of.
And now, for a change of pace. Suicide Squad is coming out next month. Yes, my name is Chesley and I enjoy subtitled foreign films, art-house cinematographic experiments, watching all the Oscar Noms (especially the ones that score Best Supporting nods, which no one has ever heard of), and also: Marvel manifestations on the big screen. DON’T JUDGE ME. All elitism should be cut with a little nerdy plebeian guilty pleasure. So yes. Suicide Squad. I don’t even care if it’s bad, I’m still going to love it. So I downloaded the music ahead of time. Heathens by twenty one pilots and Sucker for Pain by, like, everyone I never listen to and a couple bands I love: Lil Wayne, Wiz Kalifa, Imagine Dragons, X Ambassadors, Ty Dollar $ign, and Logic – I put these two on repeat while I’m riding the last 1.5 miles into town on 676, cruising at a smooth 5-miles-an-hour, stuck in ridiculous traffic in that crucial commute turning point when you realize you could get out and run home faster than you’ll actually be able to drive there. So listen, look them up. But not around small children. And for god’s sake turn it up loud. Also: do not expect lyrical genius. Just a hook that’ll carry you home and Imagine Dragons’ Dan Reynolds's sexy-ass gravel-voiced refrains that make me melt for some reason.
3. The Waitress - Original Cast Recording
Saw this on Broadway a week ago, and I laughed, and I cried, and I bought the soundtrack. It was easily the most entertaining Broadway show I’ve ever seen in my life. This could also be because I loved the movie and I girl-crush Sara Bareilles so hard it’s almost indecent. But also because the cast had an absolute revelatory performance and were – to a one – amazing.
Disclaimer: the soundtrack isn’t going to resonate as much if you don’t know the storyline. I might even go so far as to say that the soundtrack isn’t going to resonate as much if you haven’t seen the actual stage show. But it’s got all the Sara elements that float in that atmosphere of expression and emotion, translated into the grittier vocals of lead actress Jessie Meuller. Back to the lyrical genius – like many Bareilles songs, you have to listen hard to get the meanings, because she weaves metaphor into reality like nobody’s business and sometimes it’s difficult to discern her message if you’re not a slightly introspective adult female with a healthy balance of skepticism and hope.