I Feel The Same

Junior League “Charm” – I swear to you that I’m not making this up, but maybe the third time that I heard this song, I was walking up the street and I saw a monarch butterfly slowly gliding through the air, its orange wings contrasted with a perfect, cloudless blue sky. Pretty, yeah? Prettier still because that’s exactly what this song is like — it’s just floating along with a natural beauty and grace that almost seems shocking and unreal. It fit just as well in the car yesterday, rolling through the mountains of Vermont, its seemingly infinite forests just beginning to turn red, orange, and yellow.

I listened to “Charm” several times over the weekend, each time trying to figure out what it was about this bluegrass pop tune that felt a bit off but also slightly familiar, and I think I found my answer while searching through their website: As it turns out, the singer Lissy Rosemont is a HUGE fan of Pearl Jam. Rosemont’s voice sounds nothing at all like Eddie Vedder, but her approach to singing the song reminds me quite a bit of early Pearl Jam (think “Breath” and “Yellow Ledbetter”), particularly in the way she fills the open space in the track with a free flowing melody that conveys the potent emotion of the piece more so than the lyrics, which mostly exist to guide her through the piece, and provide the listener with hints and cues. (Click here to buy it from Junior League.)

Pistol Pete “Make ‘Em Pop” – Pistol Pete’s tracks are increasingly frenetic, to the point that just hearing a few seconds of “Make ‘Em Pop” or his brilliant Clipse remix immediately triples my pulse and triggers movement. This cut is almost too much — it plays like a frantic, stylized chase scene, building up to a catchy but totally incoherent chorus of chopped-up hums and shouts. (Click here to buy it from Turntable Lab.)