Music in February 2025

Highlights from my February playlist:

• Daniel Blumberg’s overture for The Brutalist is one of the best cases of musical magpiery and deconstruction, in this case of Gershwin on the centennial of Rhapsody in Blue, that I’ve ever heard.

• Doctor Eleven delivers precisely the sort of melancholy folk triumphalism that Dan Romer specializes in.

• Deb Talan continues her run of haunting all my listening, deservedly.

• KOURAKUEN has a wonderfully-specific background resonance that underscores ZOMBIE-CHANG’s mechanistic deadpan.

• Head Over Heels is the kind of big synthy ‘80s sound I never tire of.

• Rail Gaddi makes me want to dance an Irish jig on the roof of the Punjab Mail.

• Killing Time drops into what feels like a musical food processor at 2:40, which I always enjoy.

• Great Grandpa’s brand-new EP Ladybug has some of their most captivating work yet.  

• Something to Believe is one of the best tracks on Weyes Blood’s excellent Titanic Rising.

• Peter Gabriel is an oracle of the hidden soul.

• Bloodless actually is some of Andrew Bird’s “finest work yet,” but beyond the music, it is upsettingly momentous in its echo of the Spanish Civil War, the conflict that stalks our present discourse. And of course there is the implicit threat that it is only “bloodless for now.”