The PoYB Monthly Playlist: January 2025

It's been a couple months since PoYB dropped its monthly playlist (in conjunction with dropping the same playlist on Pam's Apple Music account). Christmas music and end-of-year list-making fucked me up good. But we're back!

In 2025, I'm going to be publishing it in the middle of the month instead of the end. We're also contending with a weekly playlist now, the Monday Morning Mixtape, but I'm hoping the two ideas are separate enough that it doesn't become convoluted. MMM is a group effort, putting a list of songs together based on an arbitrary premise. The PoYB Monthly Playlist is just a dozen songs that I personally have been listening to over the past month. The playlists today will cover a longer time period, but like I said, it's been a while.

January 2025

1. "Funky Stuff" by Lizzy Mercier Descloux — I'm trying something new in my musical discovery habits this year, and we'll see how long it lasts. After I review a Record Club album, I'm going to go back to RYM, look for a genre descriptor for that album that I'm not familiar with, and listen to one of the top-rated albums from that genre. Fear of Music was described as "mutant disco," so I checked out what were some good mutant disco albums, and Lizzy Mercier Descloux's Mambo Nassau popped up. If you listen to "Funky Stuff," you're gonna hear Talking Heads. This is a good thing.

2. "Crash" by the Primitives — The last two weeks of December and the first two or three weeks of January are usually set aside for clearing out the "older albums to check out" list on my phone. Basically because there is rarely any noteworthy new music coming out during that time. I must've heard "Crash" on XPN at some point in like September, and it sounded vaguely familiar, like I had heard it a bunch as a youth and hadn't heard it in the three decades since. The whole album, Lovely, is chock full of the jangliest jangle pop you've ever heard. I'm glad the winter break doldrums afforded me the space to check it out.

3. "Broken" by Pennywise — I don't hear my Warped Tour friends talk about Pennywise too often. I get the sense that they were a serviceable punk band who weren't necessarily breaking the mold. Doesn't mean I can't enjoy the music. I like skate punk. I dunno, maybe it was because none of my friends were skateboarders?

4. "Music Book" by Tatsuro Yamashita — Fuck! I meant to put this song on the "Fuck Yeah, Music!" mixtape. Maybe the Monthly Playlist is a good place to drop the forgotten songs like this, we'll see. I thought this chintzy Japanese yacht rock would've made for a good contrast to the other Occidental songs on the first MMM. And there are no songs on this album (For You) that feature the words "eagles," "birds," or "green," so you're gonna just have to discover this artist on today's playlist instead.

5. "Understanding in a Car Crash" by Thursday — I know what Pam likes and what she doesn't like, but I think it's healthy to test those limits every once in a while. I finally found my way to Thursday through my one elder emo friend, Dave, who lent me the book Sellout. I like this album a lot! I am finally ready for Thursday! But I didn't play it in the kitchen for Pam until our other elder emo friend was present too. Pam: "What are we listening to?" Joe: "Go ahead, Britt, what are we listening to?" Britt: "Thursday!" It's nice to know sometimes that I'm not crazy.

6. "Get Numb to It!" by Friko — I don't really do the "list of albums from other people's end-of-year lists that I've never heard of and want to listen to" thing anymore. It's like, I do the work throughout the year. I read about music. I take recommendations. I check out new albums and try to determine whether each one is "for me" or not. I don't need a cheat sheet at the end. But there was one day in mid-December when I saw Friko mentioned in like five different places online, and so I took it as a sign. The decision paid off. Great fucking band. Their 2024 album probably would've been on my Top Ten. How would I describe them? An attempt: "They are fifth-wave emo in the same way that Los Campesinos! are fourth-wave emo."

7. "That Much Further West" by Lucero — The recommendations from Yearlong Song Challenge are still trickling through my system (sidenote: I couldn't find a single way to illegally download that Ben Gibbard solo album, sorry!). I wanted to be a sponge in YSC, soak up any music that my friends told me about that sounded even half-interesting. That the was theory. In practice, it ended up just being me bumping a lot of Gilson-core music in 2024. Lucero seems to fall in that category.

8. "When You're Gone" by the Milk Carton Kids — This was also a recommendation, but from a friend outside of the blogosphere (so far). I told her that I take recommendations from friends seriously, so this album (I Only See the Moon) immediately went onto the iPod. I also warned her that sometimes the recommendations will sit there for a good long while before I finally check it out. But I will check it out. That just means that you get a text from Joe K*** like eight months later like "oh SHIT this album is fucking great, thanks for the rec!!!!"

9. "Unwind Yourself" by Marva Whitney — It should be evident at this point that I am open to suggestions from the universe on what music to listen to. Sometimes it's not even a person, sometimes it's a rabbit hole on the internet that leads me to something good. Here's how I got to Marva Whitney. I listened to Kool & the Gang for A Year of Blind Spots. The song "Hollywood Swinging" sounded familiar, and that's because the horn riff was sampled on DJ Kool's "Let Me Clear My Throat." But the sax riff on that song is sampled from another song. That would be "The 900 Number" by the 45 King. But that song sampled the bari-sax riff from "Unwind Yourself" by Marva Whitney. And so I listened to Marva Whitney's funk/soul album It's My Thing. Pretty fucking great! Check out the James Brown duet if you have a chance!

10. "80-37" by Mineral — I'm always looking for that pure, uncut Midwest emo. I don't know how to describe "Midwest emo," of course, but I know it when I hear it, and Mineral's got that sound. Yes, I found the album The Power of Failing on a list of best Midwest emo albums of all time. So what? Sometimes the journeys are all the same, so we focus on the destination.

11. "Postcards" by Downtown Struts — Speaking of Gilson recommendations, Victoria! came at the very end of YSC but was probably my favorite (non-Kid Chameleon) rec I got all year. The perfect mix of Menzingers and Against Me!, and the perfect album to go out on. I will most likely try to work a song or two from this album into MMM at some point, and will have more interesting things to say then, but for now—"oh SHIT this album is fucking great, thanks for the rec!!!!"

12. "The Tortured Poets Department" by Taylor Swift — So do we think Bridget ever listened to that Blue Nile song, or nah?