12 August 2025 - Snail Mail - Valentine

The title song from Snail Mail's second full length album, this is probably the closest thing to a hit she/they have.  The stage name of Lindsey Jordan, this project has been met with wide critical acclaim - and with good reason. Jordan writes indie pop with a heart unlike any other artist today. 

Personally, I think this is the best modern example of the quiet-loud-quiet structure of music.  It opens quiet, and goes to a rockin' chorus.  The video is very much a violent Bridgerton homage. 

Also, you should be listening to Snail Mail, and now, you have an opportunity. 

Of course, Lindsey and her band perform this song an awful lot, and I could have highlighted several performances.  

I chose this one for The Current in 2021 because it was the most audible.  Also, she sounds amazing and that guitar is very large for her.   

But also, this performance from last month, four years after the one above, shows how much Lindsay has matured in those years as an artist.... and also, the guitar doesn't dwarf her anymore. 

11 August 2025 - The Chemical Brothers - Galvanize | Najat Aatabou - Hadi Kedba Bayna

On Saturday night I was watching Storage Wars and a Michelin commercial came on. I'm not sure if this was the commercial - but this was the song. 

    

It made me remember how absolutely amazing The Chemical Brothers were for a few minutes.  Featuring vocals by co-writer Q-Tip and making heavy use of a song by Morrocan singer Najat Aatabou, the song clearly endures more than 20 years after its initial November 2004 release.  It also won a Best Dance Recording Grammy in 2006.

The song is a great pump-up and an absolute banger. 

Lest you think they made up that beat and did not sample it, here is the Najat Aatabou song. 

Also kind of a banger. 

I was concerned that I would not be able to find live performances of this song that is so clearly electronica.

I was wrong.

But this version from the 2019 Glastonbury music festival is.... strange and not really cohesive, although the beat is clearly there. 

I did, however, find great footage of Najat Aatabou performing her song live.  

Still a little strange. 

8 August 2025 - Adi - Rain Girl / Kishore Kumar - Ek Ladki Bheegi Bhaagi Si

Sometimes, we have a lot to say about a song.  

This is not one of those times.  This is a short 2-minutes song by Mumbai-based Adi - a fusion of EDM, hip hop and Bollywood.  This is a cool little song, and a very cool self-made video (that he clearly made in California, not Mumbai)....

.... that looked very familiar to old-time Bollywood fans, as Adi was playing the part of Kishore Kumar, an artist he sampled for this song..... and this is the scene from the Bollywood movie - Chalta Ka Naam Gaadi, a 1958 film - where Kumar appeared.  Should look familiar, no?

7 August 2025 - Run DMC - Rock Box

What, indeed, is rap music?  

No one really knew when Run DMC hit the scene, but they had a couple of big hits when they hit the studio for their next recording - but they had to wait, since they were not well-established, for rock band Riot to finish recording.  Inspired by their rock sound, they recorded a song with heavy rock guitar over their beats...

... and hated it.  

So they chose to release a version without guitar.

However, both versions got released, and it was the guitar version that was a huge hit.... and ultimately won the group over. 

Because of course it did.  This song is a classic.  

Run DMC first said a DJ could be a band, according to Public Enemy.  This is the song they said that in, by the way..

I mention this now because this live performance with Jam Master Jay on the turntables really illustrates the power of the DJ.

 

So Jay passed in 2002.  This ended Run DMC as a group - they were no more without their band.   That doesn't mean that they stopped performing.  Here is DMC in 2011, paying tribute to what he called the first rock-rap song.... and he may very well have been right.  

Fast forward to 2021, and they did reform for occasional performances..

They're still spittin' mad rhymes. 

OK, I get it.  They didn't sound terrific in 2021.

You know when they did?  2023.

6 Aug 2025 - PJ Harvey - Dress

I am listening to 1000 albums in a year and I'm going so quickly I'm going to be done in six months.   

Album #331 was Dry, the debut album by Polly Jean Harvey.   And, as I looked back through my drafts, I saw that this, her debut single (although the 2nd one I heard, as it got a rerelease after the success of "Sheela-Na-Gig", which I realize is ALSO in my drafts) was in my drafts.   

The song tells a story of a woman who puts on a dress that is clearly uncomfortable to impress a man.  He was not impressed. Famed DJ John Peel lauded the "urgency" of the song, and yeah, I hear it. 

There was a 2nd video that clearly shows PJ Harvey (the band, not just Polly Jean) playing the song live. I have seen PJ Harvey live, in 1995.  It was one of the most disappointing shows I have ever seen, and part of the reason is that I found it passionless - and she didn't perform this song, and she certainly didn't perform with this much energy. 

This is fantastic. 

But here's the thing.  

This was a week later.  On the same tour.

THIS was fantastic.  

Remembering that this single was released more than 30 years ago, it is incredible to see PJ Harvey - the person, not the band - still performing this song, as she did at the Glastonbury festival last year.  

This is also fantastic.  

5 August 2025 - Wednesday Week - Why

I have to be honest - before about a month ago, I had not thought about Wednesday Week in decades.  Then, strangely, because I was looking at other artists and other music - specifically, Don Dixon.  Don Dixon, you see, was a great producer, probably best known for his work with R.E.M. and The Smithereens. 

He also produced the Wednesday Week debut album, What We Had.  And he wrote this song.  Wednesday Week was a band that went through a lot of iterations and names before they got to this particular one, but the core of the Los Angeles band was the Callan sister - Kelly and Kristi.  They made a couple of albums before breaking up - and becoming another band, called Lucky. 

The band's name comes from an Undertones song, and this song, which was also featured in the movie Slumber Party Massacre 2, is their best known. 

The band did break up in 1990, but they got back together in 1998 and STILL occasionally perform.  This is from a reunion show in 2014.  

Also, I kinda hope they get together again.  I really enjoyed my trip down memory lane. 

1 August 2025 - The Sugarcubes - Birthday / Sykurmolarnir - Ammæli

Most people didn't know the members of The Sugarcubes outside of Iceland.

However, for most of these musicians, this wasn't their first band.   It was, for most of them, at least their third, and some of their past projects had some renown in Iceland.  They were, by most measures, a supergroup.

This was their first English-language single that got some pretty heavy rotation on worldwide alternative radio.  It all started when renowned British DJ John Peel heard it and played the HELL out of it. Written by Einar Örn Benediktsson and Sigtryggur Baldursson, it literally was the catalyst that propelled Björk Guðmundsdóttir into such a superstar status that she could drop the Guðmundsdóttir. 

Also, the song is really cool and full of weird horns.  And some really odd lyrics.

But guys.  

They were Icelandic, not English.

The band was actually called Sykermolarnir. And this song was called "Ammæli".  

In a lot of ways, the song sounds more natural in Icelandic.  Probably because it was written in Icelandic and the English version is absolutely a direct translation.  Yep, that's right.  Those lyrics were there all along. That five year old girl was always threading worms on a string and keeping spiders in her pocket.

 

So, the Sugarcubes broke up in 1992, but they reunited for one night only in 2006, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of "Ammæli"! And yeah, Björk's voice and Einar's horns were just as fresh as they were 20 years prior. 

But yes, during their initial run, they did perform the song in English, and it sounded so amazing, too. It speaks to the talent of these musicians that they could so effortlessly perform in two languages.