Elliott Smith – ‘Angeles’
This is the one I’d play first if I could only play one. It’s about something I care about a lot: the moment you start calculating, you ruin things. A hundred-dollar bill waved in your face and suddenly you can’t remember why you were doing any of it. I love that it protects the opposite — showing up for something for free, before anyone’s offered to pay you for it.
Jets to Brazil – ‘Sea Anemone’
I picked this one because it’s somebody choosing to be soft on purpose, which is harder than it sounds. There’s a tenderness in it that I’m a little embarrassed to need, and that’s exactly why I keep it. It lets me be careful with someone and not feel like I owe an apology for it.
Nirvana – ‘Territorial Pissings’
Two minutes of someone ripping the politeness off everything. I put it on when I need to remember that everything doesn’t have to be reasonable. Some days the honest answer is just a scream and this one hands it to me.
Inside Out – ‘No Spiritual Surrender’
The title is the whole thing, really. There’s a stubborn dignity in deciding that whatever else gets taken from you, they still don’t get the inside. I come back to it when I feel myself about to bend on something that should’ve held.
End It – ‘New Wage Slavery’
This is ‘Angeles’ again, but furious. Elliott mourns the thing quietly; this one points straight at what’s doing the grinding and spits. I love how unapologetic it is — it never asks permission to be angry, and some mornings that’s the only thing that gets me up.
My Bloody Valentine – ‘Sometimes’
Where I go when I want to dissolve for a bit. It floods you — everything goes soft at the edges and the feeling shows up without any words attached. It sounds the way longing actually feels: everywhere at once, warm and almost too much to hold.
The Stone Roses – ‘Made of Stone’
Straight nostalgia. Every time, it sends me backward. It’s got that swagger that believes the night could turn into anything, that you’re young enough to still be in the middle of the story. I love it for the version of me it remembers — the one who hadn’t decided yet that the future would be a small thing.
Quicksand – ‘Dine Alone’
This one’s about the strange strength of solitude, the kind you choose. It’s heavy and it grounds me. I keep it for when I need reminding that being alone with myself is somewhere I’m allowed to stand.
Title Fight – ‘Head in the Ceiling Fan’
This one opens me up every time and I let it. It starts as one thing and falls apart into something else, like sadness that finally stops trying to hold itself together. I love that it doesn’t try to fix anything. It lies down in it with you and waits it out.
Devendra Banhart – ‘Baby’
This is the heart of the whole thing. It was given to me — again, not long ago — by the favourite person of my life, the person of my whole life, and that’s why it can’t go anywhere but here. It’s about those moments when you actually meet love, when it walks in and clears the room, and there’s no space left for anything else. No noise, no doing-the-math, no compromise. Just that. Now when I play it I’m holding two things at once: the song, and the fact of who put it back in my hands. That’s the one I’d save before all the others.