| 1 | Erik Ekholm | "Furia" | Rebellion | My math at work claims Erik Ekholm is my most-played artist since I started streaming, and the intro track on his new album is called the same thing as my website, but sure, the universe is just dust and tiny meaingless explosions. |
| 2 | Visions of Atlantis | "The Deep & the Dark" | The Deep & the Dark | But ah, what dust. |
| 3 | Thaurorod | "Feed the Flame" | Coast of Gold | Most earthly troubles come down to people and their beliefs, but things are amazing, how would we not believe in them? |
| 4 | Angra | "Light of Transcendence" | ØMNI | The days these songs were brand new, I was listening to rain on metal roofs in the Judean desert, and calls to prayer in Jerusalem, and what sounded a lot like somebody dragging a metal trashcan down two flights of cement stairs at 4am in an apartment building in Tel Aviv, |
| 5 | Heavatar | "Into Doom" | Opus II: The Annihilation | which is only the most prefatory beginning of a glossary of transcendence and collapse. |
| 6 | Defecto | "Endlessly Falling" | Nemesis | It's easy enough to lapse into thinking that the world has been flattened, and nowhere is very far from anywhere else. |
| 7 | Winterfylleth | "Elder Mother" | single | I ate an adobo bowl with vegan cheese one night in modern Jerusalem in a restaurant that was more Brooklyn than anywhere I've actually eaten in Brooklyn, |
| 8 | Harakiri for the Sky | "The Graves We've Dug" | Arson | but then spent a couple days in the old part of Jerusalem where, among various numbered and innumerable things, people are still holding active grudges over things that happened in 691AD. |
| 9 | Mist of Misery | "Hymn to Silence" | Fields of Isolation | I have been in some famous churches, but then you walk into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and realize that when other churches say "church", this is what they mean. |
| 10 | Anicon | "Fall from Earth" | Aphasia 3 | I know the Stations of the Cross as metaphor for ritual. In Jerusalem the stations are better-marked than the actual streets. |
| 11 | Horizon Ablaze | "Delusions of Grandeur" | The Weight of a Thousand Suns | I've never spent as much of a trip looking curiously at a thing, and then slowly reaching for my phone to look up a short summary of how 6000 years of history and warring faiths coil themselves inside of a hat |
| 12 | Sisters of Suffocation | "I Swear" | Anthology of Curiosities | that everybody agrees is a hat even though nobody ever exactly believed that. |
| 13 | Varathron | "Ouroboros Dweller (The Dweller of Barathrum)" | single | A sentry with a machine-gun demanded to know my religion, but when I said "I have none", she just shrugged and waved me past onto Temple Mount, where the axis of monotheistic human belief emerges from the Earth. |
| 14 | Preoccupations | "Antidote" | single | Jerusalem is one of the world capitals of intractable disagreement, but at the same time, a living demonstration of the idea that you can opt out of a doctrinal dispute just by wanting to. |
| 15 | Ought | "Disaffectation" | Room Inside the World | None of the sides insist that you take a side, and all of them make better hummus than you've ever had. |
| 16 | Superchunk | "Break the Glass" | What a Time to Be Alive | The Dead Sea isn't just salty, it's lined with salt. If you step in it without water shoes, it will shred your feet. You cannot get any more literal about "salt in your wounds" than wounds literally caused by stepping on jagged crystals of salt. |
| 17 | Lucy Dacus | "Next of Kin" | single | I flew in a German plane to the Jewish homeland, walked from the Dead Sea Scrolls to Ai Weiwei's sunflowers, caught an "African" Pokemon when my bus stopped at a light in a city that so clearly is not in Africa. |
| 18 | Luna Shadows | "Youth (Quiet)" | single | Back home in Boston it snowed, and then was 70. How does this planet even work? |
| 19 | Brett | "Roman Candle" | single | But then again, why does a grudge from 691 seem so amazing to me when I still instinctively love new songs that sound like songs from 1984 when "new wave" was new? |
| 20 | Nightly | "Miss You Like Hell" | single | The world is round, but the past is flat. |
| 21 | Kitten | "I Did It!" | single | I would have loved this song in 1984, too, I feel certain. |
| 22 | Marsheaux | "Dream of a Discoteque V1" | Our Girls on Films | New songs are new for an infinitesimal instant, and then part of us like blood and everything else. |
| 23 | Mainland | "Hometown" | single | We pulse, and songs are how it echoes. |
| 24 | Moose Blood | "Have I Told You Enough" | single | We were only half-formed until guitars. |
| 25 | Hot Mulligan | "The Soundtrack To Missing A Slam Dunk" | single | It's downright amazing what you can evoke with just rueful despair. |
| 26 | Pianos Become The Teeth | "Fake Lighting" | Wait For Love | I can feel it fake coming back again. |
| 27 | SayWeCanFly | "I Fall Apart" | single | But "fake" is entirely a question of perspective. |
| 28 | Summer Wars | "Something to Call My Own" | Borrowed Time 6 | We have tools to make a simple song sound like a detonation, and once you have that power, you want to use it on everything, |
| 29 | Shamir | "Room" | single | and then even when you don't, you are creatures of explosion. |
| 30 | Julia Sheer | "Call It What You Want" | single | So you learn to make them move in slow motion, |
| 31 | Erik Ekholm | "Rebellion" | Rebellion | in frozen dissidence. |
| 32 | Epic Score | "Eternal Memories" | Epic Emotion: Triumph of Spirit | Do you have the courage to want aloud what everybody wants silently? |
| 33 | NateWantsToBattle | "History Maker" | single | If you don't, |
| 34 | Dima Lancaster | "Ref:rain" | single | somebody else will. |
| 35 | Gothic Storm Music | "Cyber Death Punch" | Dark Tech Thrillers | Is that what you want? |
| 36 | Phil Rey | "The Gift of Love" | single | Honestly, you don't really have a choice. |
| 37 | Dan Bull | "Monster Hunter World" | Monster Hunter World +1 | The monsters will find you. |
| 38 | Secrets | "Strangers" | single | How will you receive them? |
| 39 | Eyes Set To Kill | "Survive" | Eyes Set To Kill | We can draw negotiated lines and teach 18-year-olds to guard them, or we can summon the Valkyries and hope for the best. |
| 40 | Twenty One Two | "My My My!" | single | But then the Valkyries don't come, and we're stuck with checkpoints and compromises and rules that only ever make half-sense to the people who wrote the versions of them nobody saw. |
| 41 | Nightshade | "Save It for the Depths" | 1426 | Middle Age grudges dream of collecting enough candy to evolve into galloping cyborgs. |
| 42 | For The Fallen Dreams | "Unstoppable" | Six | The oldest of Old Cities will sell you gray-market bluetooth headphones and matte-finish track suits, |
| 43 | The Body | "Nothing Stirs" | single | and a near-incapacitating sense of your own tentative humanity. |
| 44 | Hashshashin | "Ascension" | nihsahshsaH | There was a time before jazz, and thus there must also have been a time before evil. |
| 45 | Shiraz Lane | "The Crown" | single | But who wants a paradise that has nothing bad for you? |
| 46 | Verikalpa | "Viimiseen Asti" | Taistelutahto | I guess, obviously, it isn't a rhetorical question, and there are at least three major religions based at least notionally on the promise of a paradise of purity. |
| 47 | Varien | "Blood Hunter" | single | But I stand there and watch people pressing their faces on a stone where they believe Jesus was laid, bleeding, and for a non-believer it is definitionally impossible to appreciate this as anything but a moment complete in itself. |
| 48 | 3LAU | "Touch" | Ultraviolet | The afterlife is elsewhere, or maybe nowhere. But we definitely have this street. Whatever did or didn't happen in these places, the places themselves are intransigently non-metaphorical. |
| 49 | Computer Magic | "Perfect Game" | single | Or maybe that isn't even what "metaphor" ultimately means. |
| 50 | Wolf Alice | "Formidable Cool - Edit" | single | Maybe all we ever really mean is "I am not currently you", |
| 51 | Ev0lution | "Fruit Salad" | single | and everything else devolves from the inherent combination of terror and relief that entails. |
| 52 | Petroglyphs | "Equilibrium" | single | You glance through an archway, in a city older than some of the gods, and there are two kids sitting on plastic chairs watching television. |
| 53 | Josh Abbott Band | "Deep in the Heart of Texas" | single | Even their plastic chairs are older than where I grew up. |
| 54 | Leah Daniels | "1st" | single | But isn't the reverse question harder? How do you figure out how to live in a place with no history? |
| 55 | Jordan Davis | "Leaving New Orleans" | single | Not how do you live amidst ruins, but how do you walk away from them? |
| 56 | BAND-MAID | "I can't live without you." | WORLD DOMINATION | Dystopia is any future you try to fight, |
| 57 | THE ORAL CIGARETTES | "ReI" | single | and there's nothing nobler about fighting the future than fighting the past. |
| 58 | Petra Marklund | "En tuff brud i lyxförpackning" | single | Eventually every sign will be written in every language. |
| 59 | Hanne Hukkelberg | "Figure Father" | single | What I mean, I guess, is that tolerance and possibility relentlessly converge, and we aren't yet to the point where they meet. |
| 60 | Hver gang vi møtes | "Tone (Butterflies)" | Tone Damlis dag (Sesong 7) 6 | There are still places on this planet that are worlds away from what you know, you think, |
| 61 | Frøkedal | "Believe" | single | and then you walk out the gates and turn right and realize there's been a shopping mall out here the whole time. |
| 62 | Rival Consoles | "Unfolding" | single | The stone walls mess with the GPS signals, but it turns out the baklava place you were looking for is just one block further. |
| 63 | Annalisa | "Dimenticherai" | Bye Bye | Even "block" is not a metaphor here. |
| 64 | Punkreas | "In equilibrio" | single | I know enough not to dance in these spaces, |
| 65 | La Municipàl | "Risvegli" | B side | or more accurately I don't know enough to know what dancing means here to these people, |
| 66 | Asenblut | "Heldenbürde - 2018 Version" | Legenden 5 | or even more accurately I don't know enough to know what they would think dancing here would mean to me. |
| 67 | Laura Pausini | "Fantástico (Haz lo que eres)" | single | The journey towards accuracy is a journey towards incoherence. |
| 68 | Wiley | "Been A While" | single | By comparision, the journey towards Akko is straightforward and well-marked. |
| 69 | Novelist | "No Weapons / See Me" | single | A grumpy man at a desk that exists for no other reason than to delight tourists explains that there are six great things to do here, and we're too late for four of them. |
| 70 | Shakka | "Man Down (feat. AlunaGeorge)" | single | "The tickets are good forever", he mutters, and it's clear he knows full well that we'll all be dead for most of forever, and thus it's a false economy. |
| 71 | Sharky Major | "Grime Original" | Grime Original +1 | So we watch a memorably if probably-unintentionally hilarious movie about the Turkish bathhouse that this tour of a representational Turkish bathhouse isn't any more, |
| 72 | Massendefekt | "Wo ich dich finde" | Pazifik | and then Templar tunnels empty us into the sea. |
| 73 | Varry Brava | "Las Noches Fugaces" | Furor | On the way back to where we parked the car because we couldn't figure out how to get to where we were supposed to park it, we belatedly realize that we did park it where we were supposed to. |
| 74 | Dinero | "Bajo cero (con Dani Martín)" | single | This is one of the secrets to enjoying travel, I think: learning to not dwell overmuch on your unintentional successes. |
| 75 | Pasajero | "Puntos de Tangencia" | Antídotos Fugaces | Also: picking a western wall to walk along at sunset; |
| 76 | The Crown | "Cobra Speed Venom" | single | eating all available breakfasts; |
| 77 | Huminoida | "Trying Times" | single | counting cats; |
| 78 | Angelical Tears | "Once Upon a Time" | single | comfortable shoes and uncomfortable flights; |
| 79 | Pop Evil | "Ex Machina" | Pop Evil | the power of adventure to swallow fear; |
| 80 | Low | "Let's Stay Together" | single | believing that any trip you go on together and return from together is part of your victory; |
| 81 | Oceans of Slumber | "No Color, No Light" | single | anticipation of the songs you will hear differently when you are done; |
| 82 | Quinn XCII | "Candle" | The Story of Us | anticipation of the songs you will hear exactly unchanged; |
| 83 | Olamide | "Sheevita Juice" | single | allowing every place you barely visit, barely understanding, to stand for all the places you'll never reach at all; |
| 84 | Sarkodie | "Tema" | single | the volition to leave your home. |
| 85 | Exit | "Drama" | single | What they call "cappucino", in Tel Aviv, is more like what we call "latte" in Boston. |
| 86 | Letzte Instanz | "Schwarz" | Morgenland | The bus costs 5.90 per person, so at least you have something to do with coins. |
| 87 | Megaherz | "Von Oben" | single | You don't have to sign for credit-card transactions, but this means that if you want to put your restaurant tip on the bill you have to tell them ahead of time, and they don't ask. |
| 88 | Sloan | "Spin Our Wheels" | single | Gas pumps take cards, but only local ones. Bring extra cash so you can also buy the little bags of nugget-shaped chocolate candies. I think the yellow packages are hazelnut. |
| 89 | Sharon Doorson | "Opinions" | single | No matter where you go, somebody on your Facebook page is going to be there next week. |
| 90 | PassCode | "Toxic" | single | You can get raincoats for hats. |
| 91 | Atrium Carceri | "Ur evighetens pipa" | Ur Djupan Dal | If you see zero ibexes, there may be no ibexes, but if you see one ibex, you're missing a lot of ibexes. |
| 92 | I AM THEY | "No Impossible with You" | single | There are a limited number of good things about getting stuck with tour-buses full of evangelical Holy-Site tourists from Mississippi in the nominal West Bank because your road got washed out, but one of them is that they wear badges so you can gesture to your badgelessness to establish that you aren't with them without having to say anything American-sounding. |
| 93 | David Hernandez | "Shield (Coat of Armor)" | single | You will suspect, looking at the panoply of tiny honey-based sweets, that they kind of taste more alike than different, and you will be largely right, but not right enough that you shouldn't try one of each. |
| 94 | ACTORS | "Bury Me" | single | You will take pictures of many picturesque and historic and holy things in Israel, and you will get home and discover that virtually all of them are also pictures of solar-powered rooftop water-heaters. |
| 95 | Carina Dahl | "Despacito" | single | It's easy enough to lapse into thinking that the world has been flattened, and nowhere is very far from anywhere else. |
| 96 | Shaka Ponk | "Smells Like Teen Spirit" | single | This is not a defeat, it is an invitation. |