1 |
Hannah Diamond |
"Perfect Picture" |
Perfect Picture +2 |
It's not that different |
2 |
Melissa Ferrick |
"Black Dress" |
single |
when you knowingly choose to go to the least-different different places, |
3 |
Voice of Baceprot |
"What's The Holy (Nobel) Today?" |
RETAS |
but the next English city or the next sidewalk block |
4 |
Tamar Berk |
"sunday driving" |
tiny injuries |
or the next song |
5 |
Giggs |
"Grow Up (feat. Jadakiss)" |
single |
are still steps taken |
6 |
Dead Pony |
"COBRA" |
COBRA +2 |
together with different feet. |
7 |
Celebs |
"Ég sé rautt" |
single |
Eat the same ice cream with different tourists. |
8 |
Taylor Acorn |
"Coma" |
single |
See familiar flags hanging idle over their own streets. |
9 |
Leah Kate |
"Get In Loser" |
Get In Loser/Bored - A Super Over Double Feature 2 |
Get on the bus, go upstairs. Today we contemplate Empire. |
10 |
LIZ |
"Ain't Backing Down (Azur Lane Soundtrack)" |
single |
Spurn the same chains tolerated by the differently curious. |
11 |
Faulieu. |
"Merry-go-round" |
single |
What do the kids play dangerously on in these parks? |
12 |
siraph |
"almost over" |
UTOPIA 5 |
What happens to these streets at the end of the night, |
13 |
PEDRO |
"飛んでゆけ" |
飛んでゆけ +1 |
or the end of the world? |
14 |
AViVA |
"About Me" |
single |
Would you walk 3269 miles to fall down in the doorway of another Whole Foods? |
15 |
Pamputtae |
"Boss of Me" |
Boss of Me +1 |
The pilgrimage from New England to Old is different each time I do it, |
16 |
Tabeta Cshae |
"CONFESSION" |
single |
and will be different for the 16-year-old when they are 32 or 64 or 128. |
17 |
Sheebah |
"Tosobola" |
Tosobola 5 |
My first London was a constellation of record stores |
18 |
LLUVA |
"Lagos De Cristal" |
single |
set spinning around the Rosetta Stone and the casts of the Trajan column. |
19 |
Tanxugueiras |
"Més fort" |
single |
My latest London is a park full of softball games |
20 |
Dizzy |
"Jaws" |
Dizzy |
and a food court made of Lego-stacked shipping containers |
21 |
Nicole Sabouné |
"Where Did You Go?" |
single |
and a street full of baristas and grocers and buskers. |
22 |
Francisca Valenzuela |
"Continente" |
Adentro |
110a Piccadilly is still nowhere, |
23 |
LÉON |
"Pretty Boy" |
single |
but 221b Baker Street has been renumbered into convenient existence. |
24 |
Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness |
"New Friends" |
New Friends 5 |
Sometimes the nostalgia you share is better than the nostalgia you feel. |
25 |
Madsen |
"Das Beste von mir" |
Hollywood |
We nod solemnly at the hour-long line for selfies at a staged Platform 9¾ |
26 |
Cloud House |
"Still Here" |
single |
and walk the reclaimed tow path of the Regent's Canal back past the Serafina Pekkala. |
27 |
Autoheart |
"Juggernaut" |
single |
It's in the wrong city, but no more than us. |
28 |
Twin Tides |
"Magic" |
single |
The record stores I first came for are mostly gone, |
29 |
Årabrot |
"Horrors of the Past" |
Horrors of the Past +2 |
and the ones that remain are another species of wax museum I don't need. |
30 |
The XCERTS |
"Car Crash Culture" |
Learning How To Live And Let Go |
We've stopped using paper for money |
31 |
Awesome &roid |
"DEAR DIARY" |
single |
but haven't quite given up on it for wrapping abberant burritos |
32 |
The Iron Roses |
"Old Guard" |
Old Guard +1 |
or telling stories. |
33 |
The Menzingers |
"Hope is a Dangerous Little Thing" |
Hope is a Dangerous Little Thing +1 |
I have come prepared with a disciplined rule to leave a bookstore with no more than one book, |
34 |
Pure Bathing Culture |
"The Memento" |
single |
but seem to have neglected any about how many bookstores. |
35 |
Shamir |
"Without You" |
Homo Anxietatem |
At one I buy a story about doing nothing, |
36 |
wishlane |
"27 degrees" |
single |
because instead of doing nothing somebody made piles of it on a table by the door. |
37 |
Magnolia Park |
"Blud Luv" |
SoulEater 5 |
At the next one I buy Thomas Dolby's memoir, |
38 |
Giggs |
"Incredible Sauce (feat. Dave)" |
single |
ostensibly because this is where it starts, |
39 |
Professor Green |
"Nothing Before It's Time" |
Nothing Before It's Time +2 |
and only because I read it while we're still there do I discover that the video for "She Blinded Me With Science", |
40 |
Drippin So Pretty |
"Ghost In My Room" |
single |
which is certainly the most important music video in my life, for one of the most catalytic songs, |
41 |
I'm Geist |
"cut through" |
single |
was shot in a building in Regent's Park |
42 |
PEZZHEAD |
"Sef" |
single |
that you can't really see, but for £250 million could own. |
43 |
Ryan Oakes |
"STILL NUMB" |
single |
Bob Marley lived briefly on a cleanly untropical London street that leads, |
44 |
NateWantsToBattle |
"Forgotten" |
single |
like half of them, down to the river. |
45 |
ACME |
"黄昏" |
single |
I understand cities built along waterways, |
46 |
Sano ibuki |
"少年讃歌" |
single |
or maybe more accurately I understand that the emotional resonance of bridges |
47 |
Piko |
"人間賛歌" |
single |
would be different if we just built them between arbitrary points on level ground. |
48 |
BABYMETAL |
"METALI!! - feat. Tom Morello" |
single |
The iron footbridge that sneaks us from our Airbnb into Camden Market's East Yard is my new favorite. |
49 |
fripSide |
"Red Liberation" |
single |
The Golden Jubilee bridge we use to confirm that there's still a froyo stand in a bus shell earns an honorable mention for practical service. |
50 |
Lezel |
"後の祭り ~After Party~" |
Plot |
One of the most famous bridges is beautiful, the other beyond pedestrian. |
51 |
Awkmiu |
"Mr.Crier" |
single |
Regent's Park is full of runners in the mornings. |
52 |
Mitsuki |
"Realize" |
single |
I assume I run like an American, but even among people who must mostly not be, it's not obvious to me how. |
53 |
Ayasa |
"Dualism" |
single |
When I let the paths and parks fling me out of their guarded orbits |
54 |
Artax |
"The Hand That Feeds" |
single |
onto high streets I feel at least a little more conspicuous, |
55 |
Metalite |
"Blazing Skies" |
Blazing Skies 4 |
but that's just as true at home. |
56 |
Within Temptation |
"Bleed Out" |
Bleed Out |
Errands and exploration and rituals co-occur. |
57 |
SinHeresY |
"The Calling" |
single |
I dodge different commuters and different tourists here, |
58 |
Death Dealer Union |
"The Integument" |
The Integument +1 |
trying to concentrate on remembering to check for traffic in reverse. |
59 |
Divided Island |
"Layering" |
single |
I've been here when it was only United, and then Unioned, and now is only what's left. |
60 |
Svalbard |
"How To Swim Down" |
How To Swim Down +2 |
You only ever pretend to be free, |
61 |
SKÁLD |
"Grótti" |
Tides of Destiny 4 |
and only ever pretend that your freedom is lightness. |
62 |
The Unity |
"Saints And Sinners" |
single |
We come and stay and go without ever weighing a pound. |
63 |
Ronnie Romero |
"Chased By Shadows" |
single |
I wave my phone at things. Invisible banks arbitrage the nominal currencies. |
64 |
Leander Kills |
"Véres kardot hoztam (István, a király)" |
single |
It's hard to walk around London as an American and feel like Europe is somewhere else. |
65 |
Spirit Adrift |
"Give Her to the River" |
Ghost At The Gallows |
It's hard to listen to music as a human and understand why we're afraid of other people. |
66 |
Andromida |
"These Memories" |
single |
We have the same French gelato, the same British Italian cafes, the same Israeli cauliflower. |
67 |
Horrendous |
"The Death Knell Ringeth" |
Ontological Mysterium |
We're reminded of this by shopping advice, which tends to send us to where we would shop if we were British versions of ourselves, |
68 |
Neorhythm |
"Никто не должен умирать" |
single |
rather than brief fugitives from our own vans and anthropologies. |
69 |
Hexis |
"Fallaciae" |
single |
We don't need power stations converted to soaring international malls, |
70 |
Nocte Obducta |
"Conamara Chaos" |
Karwoche - Die Sonne der Toten pulsiert |
we need denim remixers wedged into portobello gills |
71 |
Skálmöld |
"Ýdalir" |
Ýdalir |
or things there are only one of and the one of them is here, |
72 |
Bisa |
"Drawn With Blood" |
single |
or at least things there are only eight of and none of them are in our Chelsea or Brighton. |
73 |
Primordial |
"Victory Has 1000 Fathers, Defeat Is an Orphan" |
single |
We had a Waterstone's in Boston, once, but no more. |
74 |
Incantation |
"Invocation (Chthonic Merge) X" |
Invocation (Chthonic Merge) X +2 |
At another Waterstone's on another of the king's roads I find Jon Alexander's Citizens, |
75 |
Violet Cold |
"Multiverse" |
Multiverse |
which I wanted to see on a real-world shelf for reasons I will explain later, |
76 |
Wolves In The Throne Room |
"Twin Mouthed Spring" |
single |
but which uses paper to tell a story about all these dedicated roads of stolen empire, |
77 |
Déhà |
"Estival" |
Averses II |
and another story about the divided roads of suburbs and strip malls where I'm nominally from, |
78 |
zzzaam |
"빛나 shine" |
single |
and a third one about what we could all do together instead. |
79 |
julek ploski |
"Main theme, Pt I" |
single |
Only because I read it while we're there do I discover that it has a bit about the dreams and dysfunctions of the co-op grocery further up this block, |
80 |
Iskra Strings |
"Number Seven" |
single |
a few doors past the produce shop and across the street from the Whole Foods. |
81 |
Giggs |
"Starlets (feat. Dave East)" |
single |
The things we try to do together are more easily dissolved into insolvent individualism |
82 |
Playco RSA |
"Wa ngobatsa" |
single |
the more exceptional they are as solutions to begin with. |
83 |
Chongo De Flavour |
"Lesebo" |
single |
We make an enduringly better world not with decisive blasts of heroism, |
84 |
Mbuzeni |
"Ngelinye iLanga" |
AmaWololo |
but with a relentless and iteratively constructive insistence on holding every act to a humane standard. |
85 |
Mthandeni SK |
"eSandlwane" |
Amakhothangqoko |
We don't unionize to aggregate or counterpose self-interests, |
86 |
Saarkie |
"I'ts a Botha Thing" |
single |
but to manifest commonality. |
87 |
Ray Dylan |
"Rigtingnaald" |
single |
All these slightly unfamiliar places full of unmistakable humanity are opportunities to think about how to operate your own, |
88 |
Alana Springsteen |
"taylor did" |
TWENTY SOMETHING |
and how to recognize contribution instead of assigning blame. |
89 |
Tiger Hu |
"你若是風" |
是一場煙火 |
All these only barely unfamiliar songs from only barely not as far away as you can possibly go |
90 |
Voice of Baceprot |
"The Enemy of Earth is You" |
RETAS |
are invitations to a revolution. |
91 |
Haken |
"Canary Yellow (feat. Courtney Swain) - Acoustic Version" |
single |
Find a flag you don't know, flying over a street you've never walked down, |
92 |
PG Roxette |
"The Craziest Thing (Lost Boy Remix) - Official Song European Table Tennis Championship 2023" |
The Craziest Thing 2 |
and understand that this street does not compete with yours like wolves, but like kids, still just learning a game, |
93 |
First to Eleven |
"Where Is My Mind" |
single |
or, having mastered the game's obvious existing rules, starting to dream of how new ones can become also obvious through shared belief and shared play. |
94 |
CeLilly |
"Amaranth" |
single |
There's little you can do alone: not end the world, not save it. |