Sep 19

Sep 19 Weekly Track Roundup 9/19/22: Stuff from Summer '22

Summer 2022 was here; now it isn’t. In its absence, we welcomed a slew of new people to the Aural Wes team and they all have songs that stuck with them over the summer. This Weekly Track Roundup is about those songs. Enjoy!

black midi - “The Race is About to Begin”

This song was part of Black Midi’s new album and it helped me get through work over the summer. No matter how mundane the task, Tristan Bongo was there to hype me up.

-Terry

Elliott Smith - “The White Lady Loves You More”

I had that song honeymoon phase with it for what felt like the longest of most songs that I'd listened to by the end of last school year, and it just was continuously a song that I loved listening to. It is so beautiful and sad and with each listen I felt like I gained a greater and greater understanding of the themes of the song being drug abuse and helplessness. Overall just really wonderful and heartbreaking

-Shanti

Jovanotti - “Piove”

This song is literally about rain, and it has the exact feel of a beautiful summer downpour, with some light coming through the clouds. It was a perfect refuge from the heat we had this summer. I would imagine (and wish) that the thunderstorm sounds were real. Very fun to try and sing along to if you don’t know Italian!

-Beatrix Briggs

CunninLynguists - “Beautiful Girl”

First of all, I think this has one of the best intros to a hip hop song I’ve ever heard. The way the horns slow down and then explode into the song feels like I’m being lowered down into a cannon and then shot into the song. Then the beat drops into just perfect production that is full of energy but somehow also kind mellow, with everything from the sample to the way the horns stack up on the bass. The lyrics are great too. The song uses the "Beautiful Girl" Jane as a metaphor for weed and while this is nothing new, it is definitely one of the most creative weed songs ive heard in hip hop.

-Oliver Sahlman

Inner Wave - “Fever”

This song can constantly be repeated in your mind or on your playlist. An infinite trance of hope and despair with languid vocal delivery as well as delicious psychedelic licks. If any song were to be 'the song', this is it. An absolute delight you only wish were longer somehow. Needless to say, I listened to it at least 40 times over the summer.

-Alexandra Taylor

Stereolab - “Tempter”

spent a lot of the summer in parks drawing and sitting on picnic blankets with friends and stereolab was our go to soundtrack. also iirc kim wexler listened to this song in a previous season of better call saul so i’m in good company

-casey epstein-gross

Zelooperz - “Paranormal Snaptivity” (feat. RXNephew, Quadie Diesel)

ITS SO GOOD the beat is amazing I love the vocal chops. The rapping is super high tempo and it’s a song I can loop a bunch of times and never get tired of. Plus it has an RXKNephew feature who’s one of the best rappers out rn

-Lily Lazar

Ulrich Schnauss - “Goodbye”

I had a lonely summer for Reasons, but I spent a lot of my time plucking from the discount used CD shelves of every record store in the San Fernando Valley (hi Freakbeat! love ya). Goodbye was part of that - the album art and the title were Cool and Mysterious. When I put it on, though, I was floored by the album's massive melancholy soundscapes & its themes of failure, moving on, leaving something for good, etc. - the album is literally dedicated to "everyone who helped us leaving Deutschland" ...

The title track hits especially hard now, because I'm in a time of transition in the personalphysicalwhatever space and this feels like a soundtrack to that. It's like riding an Amtrak above the clouds at dusk

-Max Levin

Paris Texas - “cyanide” (feat. cryogeyser)

A super vibrant and energetic track with amazing production that really compliments the lyrics, as well as a fantastic feature from cryogeyser which really adds a lot to the song.

-Lukas Shvetsov

Ethel Cain - “American Teenager”

Though I'm still a teenager, I felt like this last summer before college in a way was my last teenage summer. For me, this song perfectly captured the feelings of contained freedom (as redundant as that sounds), exaltation, and sadness that I felt all summer long.

-Maisie Wrubel

Jane Remover - “Cage Girl”

Coming out of the semester into a long and sleepy summer break, I was accompanied by Jane Remover's sudden change in artist name and pivot to a much more rock influenced sound. The focus of that switch was the six minute opus "Royal Blue Walls," but hanging in the background was the streaming release of "Cage Girl," an unassuming slowcore cut exclusively released on Soundcloud prior. The groggy but elegant feel of the track feels emblematic of my time on summer break, defined by waiting until the late hours of the evening to spend time with my friends (who all took jobs that got off around 9:30PM), learning the mechanisms of the American healthcare system the hard way as I tried to finally book HRT appointments after years of fighting with my family over it (and considering Jane's name change comes as a solidifier of her transition, it does work on that level too). It was a transitional period, and a transitional track, and without the context of what was to come after, it may have felt unnecessary, but I don't regret it all the same.

-Cassandra

Ryan Beatty - “Haircut”

Haircut is about accepting change and moving forward. Though Ryan Beatty’s change is different from mine (graduating high school, dealing with the anxieties of looming adulthood, starting college, etc), the message hits home. It was a comfort song throughout the summer.

-Tasmiah Akter

Cafuné - “Tek It” (Sped Up)

One of my best friends introduced me to this song via tiktok, and it always reminds me of the carefree feeling of summer, falling in love, and overall bliss.

-Emmett Favreau

Steve Lacy - “Sunshine” (feat. Fousheé)

Gemini Rights was my summer soundtrack! Sunshine in particular is such a vibe

-Nicole Motherway

Instupendo - “Sunny”

It's been a hot minute since the Soundcloud era of my life but back when I was learning to love music on there, Instupendo was one of the beatmakers I really admired. Aside from his more recent, vocal-centric, hyperpop-adjacent work, his compositions are trademarked by detuned soft synths, simplistic melodies, and subtle evocations of nostalgia. There's no one who sounds quite like him and I always love when someone can achieve that. With this track he honed in on picturing brightness: to me "Sunny" really does feel like soft sunlight on the skin, getting goosebumps in the chill air of the morning, dappled shadows cast by trees.

-Nathan Hausspiegel