Here's your monthly dose of twelve songs, for those who want to come to PoYB for some music recommendations but don't wanna read all those pesky WORDS.
September 2025
1. "Go Go Juice" by Sabrina Carpenter — How rare, to be able to personally and knowledgeably comment on the newest big pop album, knowing context from having listened to and enjoyed the previous effort, and having the ability to compare. Doesn't happen too often for me! I am happy to report the following: Man's Best Friend is even better than Short n' Sweet. That is all for now.
2. "A Tuxedo Sewn for Two" by Jens Lekman — 80 minutes of new Jens Lekman is a lot, unless you are a big fan of Jens Lekman and have been waiting eight and a half years for new Jens Lekman music. There are some catchy, lighthearted songs on here, there are some soft (probably too soft) love ballads on here, there is at least one song on here that took my breath away and honestly has a good chance of being named my favorite song of the year. Let's go with the first category though. It's the Monthly Mixtape, we don't need to get too deep.
3. "Moma Yendodo" by Ata Kak — Waak Waak Djungi made me appreciative of the classic story of "found random-ass album that is rereleased and met with wide appreciation," and I'm always on the lookout for similar stories now. Apparently the guy who runs the indie label Awesome Tapes from Africa found an awesome tape from Africa, and became obsessed, and spread the word, and flew to Africa to find the guy who made it. Ata Kak had a failing well-digging business and had no fucking clue that the tape he made 30 years prior and distributed 800 copies of was blowing up in the U.S. Apparently he's releasing new music in 2025. I fucking love it.
4. "Roundabout" by the Beths — Already reviewed the album, so you already know I love this shit. Here's a song that didn't get a shoutout in said review. To the Beths: I loved you then, and I love you now.
5. "Change the Channel" by clipping. — Probably took me too long to fulfill the promise of the bit of "guy from Hamilton is originally from an experimental rap group" by listening to clipping., but now here I am. Pretty good. It's no "What'd I Miss?" but it'll do for now.
6. "Warm Heart of Africa" by the Very Best ft. Ezra Koenig — I've loved this song since college, but it's taken me close to two decades to check out the rest of the album. Good album, but this song looms too large for me to say that any other song on the album is usurping it.
7. "Lump" by the Presidents of the United States of America — Same blurb as above, except: I've loved "Lump" even longer (it was included in the intro CD for Windows 95, bizarrely); the rest of the self-titled album it's found on is fine but is of a similar quasi-humor quality to, say, They Might Be Giants, which is very much not my thing.
8. "Fine, Let's Get Married" by the Beaches — There was really no wrong answer from this album for this mixtape. I am wondering now if I'm liking the Beaches so much more this time around because YouTube finally gave up on trying to recommend all 47 versions of "Blame Brett" on me every second of the day.
9. "AT&T" by Liquid Mike — A good way to describe Liquid Mike is that they are trying to make pop punk from mid-'00s teen comedy soundtracks but for adults this time. The faux-ironic DJ scratches on this song might prove my point.
10. "You Can't Talk to the Dude" by Jonathan Richman — Gloria recommended this album via MMM a while ago, and Brian co-signed it at the bar a few weeks ago. I was familiar with the Modern Lovers, and had no idea Richman is the same guy. Pretty good album! I will probably have more to say about the song "Velvet Underground" at a later point (not that I have a lot to say about it, but I have just enough that it might warrant its own blog post).
11. "A Song That Sings About You" by This Is Lorelei — I'm trying to get better at listening to big albums that I missed in recent years. I feel like, up until now, 99% of my focus is usually albums from this current year and albums from like 40 years ago, with no in-between. This album is from 2024, and I think it should be okay to check it out for the first time in September 2025. I'm here with this particular band because I saw they are a side-project of a band who just released an album this year (Water from Your Eyes, maybe I'll check their album out by 2026), and remembered that Nate recommended this album like three times during YSC. So I figured, fuck it.
12. "other people's stories" by Oso Oso — A quick follow-up on a summertime claim I made about attending the post-summer Oso Oso concert, with $10 tickets: I did not attend the Oso Oso concert. I was finishing up work at 8 PM that day, my third twelve-hour shift in a row, and I just didn't have the energy. We'll get 'em next time! With this trump recession, Oso Oso might have to go on a $20 Tour next time, but oh well!
Thanks for listening!
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