Spring’s Best, 2025

I’m picturing six months ago, the springtime; never-in-my-life-have-I-had-the-chance-to-be-so nomadic, with time in New York, Osaka, Nagoya, the Japanese countryside, Yokohama, Tokyo, Brussels, Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Charleston. It was important for me that each place had defining music. I’ll present a rough chronology. Also, I use Apple Music now; past me would jeer at current me for that decision. The audio quality is that much better, but yes, indeed, the user experience is that much worse. Quite honestly, my brain was (and continues to be) swollen from what my 5 senses took in this year, a bit like a used book store getting a truckload of titles from an estate sale.

Smerz, Okey (2016)

I have a light tradition; every time I fly, right before I can tell we’re about to take off, I pick a ‘takeoff’ song. It’s a very tough dimensionality reduction task, having to condense present feelings, aspirations for the trip, relationships, weather, that glass of Prosecco, and so on into a singular representative track. Plus, I often try to align the chorus or whatever I think the climax of the song is with the actual wheels-off-the-ground ascent.

I remember You See? being the track that played on takeoff to Japan in April, mostly because I was a bit flabberghasted that I was actually about to fly across the Pacific alone. The whole album, but especially Because, recalls Osaka.

Bladee, Icedancer (2018)

After a fantastic feature on Charli XCX’s Rewind, Bladee finally sold me on his warm synths and periodically egregious autotune. I’ve gone through a few of the albums, but none enticed (with a different cut each time) like 2018’s Icedancer. Side by Side, Special Place, and Mallwhore Freestyle call to mind Tennoji Park and the train to Kyoto. (Legendary Member.)

PinkPantheress, Tonight (2025)

When Tonight came out, I was more excited for the track that would end up being Illegal, sampling Underworld’s Dark & Long. The same thing happened with Addison Rae’s Diet Pepsi and Aquamarine; in both instances, the artist posted a short instrumental clip of the latter at the very start of the musical “era” (anyone else remember AR walking along the bottom of a pool in heels?).

So, I’d say initial disappointment, but Tonight was impeccable and had insane replay value. I remember playing this and Stateside almost every morning in Yokohama, as I walked the hugely long tunnel between our Chinatown hotel and the Minatomorai line. I remember listening it in the rain for the last-mile walk to our hotel in Kariya. And many other places and times. That synth bass that begins to thump at 2:14, PinkPantheress beginning to write of bated breath instead of her customary wistfulness, the French Rococo sleepover art direction; it’s all great.

2hollis, star (2025)

star is the last few hours of my stay in Osaka, where I meandered through the parks in the rain, met up with a fellow traveler for a quick cozy cafe date of coffee and sweets, and then headed to Kyoto. flash, you, sidekick, and girl were all in orbit throughout the rest of the trip.

Lady Gaga, Born This Way (2011)

I was expecting more of Lady Gaga’s Mayhem to be like Abracadabra, and so I decided to listen to the one remaining LG album I hadn’t heard in full on the Shinkansen bullet train from Kyoto to Nagoya. Now, having read through the time-of-release reviews of the album, I’m silly for taking so long to listen to it. I was also getting a kick out of imagining what my fellow passengers would have thought if my AirPods were to cut out and Government Hooker rang out.

Lasgo, Something (2011)

First, Something was driving through the greenest grass I’ve ever seen, on the way to a full-day tour of an automotive manufacturing plant outside of Nagoya (thank you to EUSEXUA INCARNATE with Eartheater, Ep. 4 (DJ Mix), which I was listening to on-and-off the whole morning.) Now, it reminds me more of Brussels, where it was in heavy rotation (funnily enough, I see that Lasgo is a Belgian act).

PinkPantheress, Stateside (2025)

Stateside is arriving to Yokohama near dusk; it’s sprinkling outside on a walk through Yamashita park along the waterfront, and I’m going to get a box of macarons at a Japanese McDonald’s. (And, for more, the Zara Laarson remix that just dropped on Fancy Some More? is the best track on the project.)

Bjork & Arca, Utopia (2017)

On the last day or two in Yokohama, I knew I was about go hiking in the countryside with Anna, and so I wanted to listen to music that felt like nature. While the Earth Sleeps (one of my favorites which I’ve already written about) was on rotation. And, Bjork was on rotation; after all, this is the artist with an entire album called Biophilia containing cuts like Moon, Crystalline, and Hollow. The Bjork album I never got in to, Utopia, ended up having some wonderful cuts, including Arisen My Senses, Losss, Claimstaker, and Future Forever.

Fleetwood Mac, Tango in the Night (1987)

The spot Anna chose for us to go hiking, a little village called Mitake in the Ome region west of Tokyo, was idyllic. In Japan, even this little village was connected to a JR Rail line that ran 4-car trains every 20 minutes or so. It was remote, though; the nearest convenience store (7-Eleven) was three stops away by train. Our AirBnb was precious, and in the evening, we queued up one of our favorite albums, Tango in the Night. Seven Wonders, Big Love, Little Lies, and Isn’t It Midnight, especially; they picked the singles right for this album.

PinkPantheress, Fancy That (2025)

Stars is observing how bright the stars were out in the Japanese countryside of Ome*. Girl Like Me was Anna’s favorite off the EP, so Girl Like Me was playing in our later Shinjuku hotel room before we partook of their unprecedented daily open-bar happy hour. Noises is returning from behind the hidden door in the Harajuku Ramen shop and saying, “What the fuck was that?”. The singles are, of course, all great.

*aside: later on, an awarded bartender in the Nihonbashi neighborhood of Tokyo asked why on Earth we’d gone hiking there, comparing it to Texas.

Lynks, ABOMINATION (2024)

This is Elliot’s album, someone we met on a night out in Harajuku bookended by dress-up nuns and watching a huge vintage synthesizer be wired up in a loft adorned with stools and floor cushions. It’s really quite good; dancey and dire and introspective, and it extends my trend of being enamored by the electronic music coming out of the United Kingdom. SMALLTALK, NEW BOYFRIEND, and ABOMINATION are some highlights.

Allison Goldfrapp, Reverberotic (2025)

The height of on-repeat listening for Reverberotic was in Amsterdam, the day I ended up in a Barbie-themed cabana, stopped at Adira’s recommended cocktail bar, Flying Dutchman, and… lost my passport. A good samaritan managed to find my Instagram and say they’d found it on a park bench, but I was already at the U.S. Consulate. I’ve now a purple temporary U.S. passport as a memento of that incident. Anyways, this is a great song, and Allison Goldfrapp is pretty underrated outside of her output with Goldfrapp in the first two decades of the 2000s.

Smerz, Big city life (2025)

This album does such a good job of recalling Amsterdam that AMS is functionally an ex. Amsterdam & Antwerp were my first solo trips ever, and Big city life’s themes of ephermeral encounters, solitary strolls on stark streets, and emotional peaks were apt. The whole album feels like public solace. Feeling deeply but wearing a poker face on the ferry across the canal between Centraal and Noord; that type of stuff. A thousand lies, Big dreams, and You got time and I got money are highlights, but the whole album is great.

Orbital, Satan (1991)

Orbital has a cool practice of introducing their 8 counts with super interesting spoken-word recordings. I love songs like this, a la Ultramarine’s Discovery. Berlioz is another artist that does this.

“What does regret mean? Well son, a funny thing about regret is, that it is better to regret something you have done. Than to regret something you haven’t done. And by the way, if you see your mom this weekend be sure to tell her… {TITLE}”. Satan feels like taking the ferry from Centraal to Noord at 5AM*, walking back to my hostel from Garage Noord with fog and daylight in my eyes, and the pleasure of finding a deep cut that, to you, beats out some of the artist’s best-known work.

*The very same ferry as mentioned above. Unlike NYC, AMS runs some ferries 24/7. Do better, NYC Ferry.

Addison Rae, Addison (2025)

Epitomizing the June 1 return to “Newwwwwwwwwwww, Yooooooooooork” (the first 5 seconds of Addison). The whole album sounded amazing at Electric Lady Studios, and a gift Addison Rae pillow currently rests on the couch in my new apartment in Brooklyn.

Bonus: songs picked up in the wild.