New Music Friday: 7/19/24

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:

"Guitar Song," Rex Orange County
For a grown-up kid who came of age in the '80s, Rex is a perfectly Orange County name, albeit in a "rich asshole who wears Izod shirts and ties sweaters around his neck" sort of way rather than a "sensitive singer-songwriter who releases songs containing plaintive vocals and flutelike noises" sort of way. Just goes to show you that while the world seems to be in a hurry to go to shit on any number of levels, it's always improving in others, and now I guess we can add the Rexes of Orange County to the latter list.