New Music Friday: 12/20/24

Here are the rules: I listen to all 100 tracks of Spotify's New Music Friday playlist, except for anything that rhymes the n-word with itself more than three times, any screamo or screamo-adjacent stuff, any CCM that reveals its true intentions in time for me to hit the skip button, and any egregiously corny modern country music, typically performed by a dude with two first names. Having sifted through this week's playlist, here's what I actively enjoyed:

"When He Comes Around," TOLEDO
These guys don't sound the slightest bit current or trendy, which leads me to question what in the hell they're doing on a New Music Friday playlist, especially way up in the playing order. But I'm not complaining — "When He Comes Around" isn't flashy, but it's solidly constructed, and even though the arrangement is fairly basic, it's also loaded up with lots of subtle touches. This is a slow pitch down the middle for me, and I'm swinging at it.

"Body Moves," the Weather Station
I'm sorry, Sarah McLachlan, but when you take ten years between (non-holiday) studio albums, you open yourself up to other artists swooping in to bite your shit in a fairly persuasive way. You have only yourself to blame.