Apr 2026 // Overseas
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Jump to the playlist on Apple Music here!
In April, my wife and I took a wonderful trip to Germany and Switzerland, and we made sure to bring a portable speaker to augment our hotel-room-rests with some great songs. Check out this month’s playlist below:
// FULL PLAYLIST
01: Bon Iver - “Wash.”
02: Amaria - “Back To Me”
03: Sade - “Kiss of Life”
04: Art School Girlfriend - “Lines”
05: Moses Yoofee Trio - “BOND”
06: Will Eason & Joe Hurworth - “Midnight (feat. Jamie Crowle)”
07: Teen Suicide - “Hypnotic poison”
08: Luna Shadows - “stay mad”
09: Allie X - “Girl Of The Year”
10: Major Lazer - “Aerosol Can (feat. Pharrell Williams)”
11: Bilmuri - “Honest”
12: Holding Absence - “Whisper of a Dream”
13: Loathe & NOWHERE2RUN - “Revenant”
14: thrown - “split”
15: Invent Animate - “Fall Like Rain”
16: Boundaries - “Death will follow me”
// SPOTLIGHTS
Bon Iver - “Wash.”
Me and ol’ Bon go way back—one of my and my wife’s first real dates was listening to the album 22, A Million on release night together—and Bon Iver, Bon Iver has been an album I have on a shortlist of albums that showcase various aspects of my music taste. “Wash.” has always been a personal favorite of mine, not only because I grew up and still currently live in the greatest state in the United States, but because the delicate and consistent piano allowing all of these other multi-instrumental elements to swirl around it is like a peaceful, stunning snowstorm on a lonely ski lift. Icy string parts, coldly delivered falsetto spinning in stereo space, tape delay elements adding just enough warmth… it’s a perfect song. A perfect song.
Moses Yoofee Trio - “BOND”
My jazz-drumming brother recommended the Moses Yoofee Trio to me about a year ago, but I hadn’t sat down and given the full album a listen until I was on a train from Munich to Zurich. In this particular cut, I love how the drums provide a consistent, nearly drum-n’-bass style chop for the piano and bass to play atop, while still maintaining so much identity in the fills and snare placement. It’s a short rhythmic idea that gets developed and redeveloped as the track continues; I particularly love the way the cymbals are used in the climax of the track, bending around the bass and piano major chord ministrations and ending in a fade-out that doesn’t make me feel like I’m missing another piece in the puzzle. Highly recommended!
Holding Absence - “Whisper of a Dream”
Holding Absence struck gold—brassy, corroded, dusty gold—in 2021 with The Greatest Mistake of my Life, an album that has absolutely zero skips and a consistent positive shoegazey melancholy, but lost me a bit on 2023’s The Noble Art of Self-Destruction, where it felt like some of the lessons that vocalist Lucas Woodland learned on TGMomL fell by the wayside (how did we go from “Celebration Song” back to “Head Prison Blues,” “A Crooked Melody,” “The Angel in the Marble,” etc?). But with “Whisper of a Dream” I feel like the band is heading back in the right direction—stunning melodies, powerful vocals, a washing sound that propels the track into halftime breakdowns, emotional screams, bass tone twang, and a more consistent emphasis on synthesizers and production quirks than any of Holding Absence’s previous albums. I’m very excited for their next album offering—watch this space!
