The Tracks section is where we put what we have actually been listening to while writing the rest of the edition. No algorithmic recommendations. No engagement-tested deep cuts. Just five songs the editors agreed on, with a short note on why each one keeps coming back around.
"A good mix is not a discovery exercise. It is an argument about what a particular week is supposed to feel like."
The list this week leans quiet. That is, we suspect, a function of late May. Ask us again in August.
If you want to listen along, the streaming links are above. Otherwise, the names are above. The point of this section is not to make you click. It is to give you five songs to know about for the next time the question comes up.
- 01
Avalon Roxy Music
The reference for what early-eighties production was supposed to sound like, and almost nobody has matched it since.
- 02
Saturday Sun Nick Drake
Three minutes that have been quietly underwriting half of indie folk for fifty years.
- 03
Africa D'Angelo
Voodoo at twenty-five is, somehow, still the most forward-sounding R&B record in print.
- 04
Pyramid Song Radiohead
The most quietly experimental thing on a record full of experiments.
- 05
These Days Nico
Jackson Browne wrote it at sixteen. Nico made it the thing it is.