This week on the playlist for the first time I’ve included a song that I believe is AI, although the artist in question Fenix Flexin, denies it. I am surprised and a bit uneasy to find that I actually like the song. You can read more below, but it sounds like a sort of soggy and crumpled version of the Pet Shop Boys, which seems like an unusual choice for a LA rapper. Artists can re-invent themselves of course, but give the track a listen and let me know what you think. . .

Recently , who writes a very good newsletter about AI and silicon valley culture, spoke at the Substack Media Forum and this quote (directed at writers) stuck out for me:

But your audience wants to feel connected to you. They want to know that you are the person generating the text. There’s a reason why behind-the-scenes videos go really viral now. People don’t just want to see the final presentation; they want to see all the proof of work behind it. . . It allows people to make a connection between a living being and the words on the page, showing that the point of view comes from somewhere. That stuff is going to be scarce. It’s going to be irreplaceable.

I thought about this again when trying to work out how I feel about the Fenix Flexin track. So many comments I read were calling for him to perform the track live (no lip-syncing) or release footage of himself recording it, and the uproar felt more about people not knowing if the track is AI than anything else. The idea of artists sharing process used to feel like a generous one, a little glimpse into a mind you admire. This version, the one Sun speaks about above, feels more suspicious than generous. More show me how you made this, not because I am interested in your process, but because I need to know if you actually made it. It makes for suspicious listening - proof of humanity certainly isn’t something I’m used to looking for in music.

There is, of course, plenty of very human music on the playlist this week too: re-imaginings of French composer Fauré, haunted songs, perfect pop and a song that will make you fear for your life.

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

APPLE MUSIC PLAYLIST

Elanor Moss grew up in a very religious household and was home schooled for most of her youth. I feel like this is a prime childhood for either becoming a musician or a serial killer. . . Elanor’s debut album The Knife, is set to be released in August and she’s touring loads in (mostly) the UK this summer, so if you’re UK based go watch a show!

It is powerful to start an album off with the lyrics: “When I penetrated that man I felt just like a dog/ Getting fucked is the season of the world, my life springs forth/ Into the jewel of creation, the arched back of the imagination.” Go Ruth Garbus. If that’s piqued your interest, take a listen to the whole album which is out now. This more lyrically gentle number is my favorite, and, along with Nocturne, it’s one of the two translations of French composer, Gabriel Fauré compositions on the album. (Also going to use this as an opportunity to push Fauré’s requiem on you because it is exquisite and makes grown men (my friend Alex) cry.)

So this is not the voice I was expecting to come out of this man based on the tracks picture, which makes him look like he writes metal songs about natures decay? The song totally took me by surprise too, it’s really beautiful and fragile with lush gospel vocal arrangements.

I really love this bands consistent creeping, floorboard creaking, haunted sound. Lead singer, Clari Freeman-Taylor, sings like she’s been possessed by a forlorn Victorian child.

When two people are credited with “tambourine” on a song you know you’re looking at one thing and one thing alone: Jangle Pop!

Kelsey Lu’s album, So Help Me God, is out now, to much praise. A warning! It’s not the sort of album you can just put on in the background, it’s the sort of album that is a little tricky to hear unless you put a bit of effort into it. That being said, it’s scattered with pop leaning numbers that feel easy to give yourself over to, and this huge, heady anthemic track is one of them.

People are CHATTING about this one! Some background if you’re out of the loop: Fenix Flexin is one half of the L.A. duo Shoreline Mafia. They make music that sounds exactly like what you think a duo called Shoreline Mafia makes. Fenix, a rapper from LA, does not generally make music that sounds like an old British man in a crumpled jacket standing in the rain. It is all very suspicious. People are of course shouting AI, which he’s denying, but my feeling is that this is definitely AI. Sure artists change styles, this seems like a very far fetched version of that though, and there is so much about this song — the lyrics, the pacing of the vocals — that gives powerful AI energy. More interestingly it is the first AI song I actually like, that I am actually listening to. This feels like a big moment, and not one I feel that comfortable with. So far it’s been very easy to laugh off a lot of AI generated music, but to find one that I actually want to listen to feels a bit unnerving. . .

This album is out now and I love it. I have had this song stuck in my head for 2 days and I’m not even mad about it. So much of good pop writing is about giving in: to letting chords and melodies go exactly where you expect them to go, and then finding something that catches you by surprise, and this album is full of songs that do exactly that. On this one we’ve got the beautifully predictable repetitive melodies and a big shouty bridge that I wasn’t expecting at all. Perfection.

My fave, the thinking persons pop star, Sofie Royer, is back with another single from her upcoming album. A lot of what she’s doing atm reminds me a bit of French band Phoenix. Just having a song called Sesquicentennial is in fact high Phoenix. I can hear Thomas Mars singing this word as I type!

The thing about this song is that if you just imagine that you are afraid for your life, I think you will really be able to get into it. I absolutely terrified myself driving around at night listening to this. The vocals sometimes sound a bit like they locked Kim Gordon up in a basement and then recorded her with a mic that was dropped in cement.

Rather than write about this, I’m going to share a long excerpt from an interview with Fader magazine here, because I think it’s really interesting and I love this analogy with the building and her experience:

“It’s the story of my dad and I driving around in Germany to get my hormone therapy when I was a kid. He used to show me buildings along the way and teach me about architecture. There was this particular brutalist post office that we were obsessed with. It was something we could bond over. We came back to the city every few months or so to get psychological assessments of how [the treatment is] going. I’m from a really small town so we used to have to drive to a big city, which in that case was Hamburg in Germany. [One day we noticed] they knocked [the post office] down and built an apartment building that was a classic modern apartment building. We were like, “Ugh, they ruined the city,” you know?

In recent years, there’s been so much talk about … honestly from the beginning of my transition when I talked about [my transition in the German media]. I was 12 talking about it, which I kind of regret because privacy was really blurred, [but] I was really unashamed of talking about it because I was a kid and I was like, “This is the way it is.” Now that I’m in America, there’s so much shame around sex, sexual education is such a taboo, and it’s such a weird climate right now especially about trans kids in particular. They’re the enemy right now. In this political climate I’m happy I can stand for [the idea that] trans kids can transition and then be a grown up and happy and make [those] choices. I made the right choices that I’m proud of to this day.

But [at the same time] I have people saying I ruined my body and I ruined my life. They don’t know me at all. They don’t know my history, that I went to so many psychologists and so many doctors and that it was a real thing that had an assessment and [they gave me] an answer [about] why I got to [get hormone treatment]. It saved my life and then there’s people who are like, “This saved your life, but you ruined everything,”

I felt like my dad and I were guilty [of that with the apartment]. There’s people living in this modern apartment building now probably like, “We love it here,” and we’re like, “Nah, it’s basic and y’all ruined it.” I thought it was interesting to compare the two. What does it mean if something’s ruined but other people love it and it’s subjective. People are saying that you fucked it all up. That relates so much, too, to [how I’m] getting away from the pop formula.”

Made my annual winter (it is winter where I am) announcement that “this summer I am going to go so hard,” this Sunday after listening to this song and drinking 2 white wine spritzers. But I am.

Daisy* is the rebranding of electronic adventurer, BABII. She says, “Daisy* is what’s left when I strip things back to their bare essentials. Pure, aerodynamic, and breathable. The lawn is being mowed, the hedges are being trimmed, and sprinklers are being installed.” Her frantic new single punch leads the way!

FULL PLAYLISTS WITH ALL OF LAST WEEKS NEW RELEASES (ON MY RADAR) BELOW

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1. Which fictional character would you love to make you a playlist?

Probably Gandalf from The Lord Of The Rings. I can imagine him being deep into jazz or folk.

2. You’re having people over, what album do you put on?

A Love Supreme by John Coltrane

3. You decide to send someone you are longing to impress with your exceptional taste a song/album. What is it?

Azimuth 85 by Azimuth.

4. A movie with a perfect soundtrack

Spirited Away.

5. A musician whose wardrobe you’d love to own?

Probably someone who wears loads of designer clothes haha. I do love the style of people like Felicia Atkinson, she’s French and very cool.

6. A song or album that makes you feel smarter when you listen?

“Ocean” by Julia Holter. And “Time As a Symptom” by Joanna Newsom.

7. You can choose the song your greatest enemy will have stuck in their head for the next week. What is it?

“The Three Ravens: II. The Three Ravens” by John Harle. It’s a phenomenal ear-worm.

8. What’s the name of your most used playlist?

“Dolphin”.

9. What’s something you do that has to have music accompanying it?

Disco dancing in my mum’s kitchen with my sister.

10. A song/album with the power to make you more stylish?

Every known song by Hildegard Von Bingen.

11. Which artist, dead or alive, would you most like to write a song about you?

Madonna.

12. The music collaboration you dream of?

I don’t think collaborations tend to work very well, it’s a hard thing to navigate but I suppose if I think about it there are people from the past who could have explored different areas of music by working with composers or arrangers. So I suppose I’d like to have heard a singer like Mark Hollis make an album with a composer such as Gavin Bryars.* (I loved Beth Gibbons’ performance of Górecki’s Symphony No. 3, “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs” - so I think that’s what’s inspired this idea).

*note from me: I’ve added Gavin Bryar’s work The Sinking of the Titanic, to the playlist. It’s a meditation on the disaster, exploring the eerie concept of how the ship's band—who famously continued to play as the ship sank—would sound as their music reverberated through the freezing waters.

13. You wish you were this song, but the truth is you’re probably this song.

I’d like to be “Morning Colours” by Linda Perhacs but I’m probably “Mouthpiece 1” by Erin Gee.

LUCY GOOCH SAYS SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

LUCY GOOCH SAYS APPLE MUSIC PLAYLIST

Behind every newsletter you read, and ESPECIALLY ones that require actual research into something, rather than ones that are just like “I am rich, here’s what I did this weekend, (somehow I am cursed to always open these ones) there are hours of work: There is time missed with family and friends, books not read, films not watched, walks not taken, crisp and refreshing glasses of wine not drunk. It’s slightly obscene that so many of us have given ourselves poorly paid 2nd jobs, and mostly what makes it worth it, is knowing that people actually read what you write and getting nice responses, or hopefully feeling like you’re benefiting in some way from the hours you put in.

This week I spent basically a whole weekend listening to new music. I thought I’d show you what that looks like as part of my embarrassing pivot to video. The main thing is that listening like this looks extremely imperfect. It looks like doing many other things while also listening: cooking dinner, trying on dresses I just had altered, walking the dog, driving, red light!!! It is not a rapt state of attention, because a rapt state of attention on that many songs over a weekend is not an option, because I have a rich and busy life, although I am also a person who spent the whole weekend making time lapse videos of herself so perhaps I do not.

This is how I listen to my full playlist the first time around to work out what I actually want to spend a bit more time with. This “everything” playlist which is built out over the course of a week, is essentially a dumping ground for every new song or album I come across. It gets refined into a smaller selection, which then gets turned into this final playlist. Along the way I set full albums aside that get added to my list of best albums of the year, certain songs might get added to playlists I use for my actual job placing music, and ideally I end up with about 40 songs which get a closer listen, and 10-20 songs that I end up recommending.

It is not a perfect method, I’m sure things get missed along the way, but perfection is often the enemy of action! So instead this is 438 songs listened to humanly, with a life happening alongside them. I think it’s a good thing to remember: your listening doesn’t have to be some sacred thing, it can be a song that’s on while you drive, while you’re getting dressed, while you take a walk. I am not advocating for turning music into something background, but maybe for a little more allowance for imperfect listening in order to find the songs we really do want to listen to.

This week I’m sharing the full “everything” playlist for paid subscribers, which is something I will start doing every week so that you also have access to an enormous database of new releases to practice your very own imperfect listening on. My usual selection playlist is of course available for everyone, and I promise I will get back to adding the song write ups again soon!

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

APPLE MUSIC PLAYLIST

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I’m back from my little break, and have been struck down with absolutely disgusting flu, the payment for living like a tiny criminal for almost two weeks. I’ve also been sitting on a huge amount of music to wade through and. . . a huge mental block about listening to any it. Part of this is due to being sick, but I also just haven’t felt open to really …

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I’m headed to Amsterdam and London later this week and will be taking a break from the newsletter for a moment, so today’s playlist is a little longer and there’s an absolute wealth of info on most of the tracks below. While I’m at it, the following things caught my musical attention this week:

• The Sam Shepard aka Floating Points composed ballet, Mere …

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ARIES (March 21 – April 19)

Playlist World: Bold, Confident

It’s easy to spot an Aries: they are the ones strutting and striding around this earth with the sort of self-confidence you only find in small children and dogs. Some might

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I’ve been publishing new music roundups a little less frequently recently - more like every two weeks than weekly. The main reason for this is that I’ve been a bit underwhelmed by new releases this year (a sentiment I’ve mentioned before and that I’m seeing all over the place), but it’s also felt nice to give my listening (and maybe yours) a little brea…

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I’ve listened to a lot of people’s playlists over the last week, not something I always have time for, but something I find (even if I don’t enjoy the playlist) pretty interesting. What, I sometimes wonder, made them choose these …

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Sorry I have been so mysterious lately. Who knows when I will post new music! Not even I know, although the general plan is once a week. The truth is that this year I haven’t warmed to as much new music as usual, it’s felt a little more difficult to listen to a lot of things and really get excited, but I can feel things warming up and we have some amazi…

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Inspired by this amazing FT article about a midnight omlette feast for 30, I bought the reissued version of Martha Stewart’s “Entertaining,” which has been keeping me very good company while I’ve been stuck in bed with the flu. It is a very extravagant book and some of the food seems downright inedible, but what it inspires — which is a real sense of occasion — is wonderful, and if Martha suggests something called “Desserts for Forty: Soiree Dansante,” why not! I’m hosting 3 dinner parties in the next little while, perhaps my guests will be attending “A Hawaiian Luau for Twenty,” suckling pig included.

One of my greatest pleasures in life is to host dinner parties. I am of the opinion that you can have a great dinner party pretty much anywhere, because the main thing you need is just a generous spirit and some lovely guests. A wonderful meal, good lighting, perfect music and a beautiful table setting are wonderful, but hosting people is mostly about being generous with your time and your space, about being delighted when someone decides it’s time to perform My Way at 1am, or being okay with someone spilling wine on your exquisite couch. (Don’t be weird about people spilling things. You shouldn’t own things that you love more than the people who might destroy them.) It’s about making the space you invite people into so welcoming that they almost don’t want to leave.

Martha Stewart of course has a lot to say about hosting, often utterly outlandish things, but she is very funny about music for dinner parties. She’s very “why not play some flute concertos or perhaps Simon & Garfunkel.” Very “why not hire a string quartet, a rock band, a pair of fiddlers or some Renaissance balladeers.” I have a simpler suggestion: Your dinner party does not need flutists, balladeers or a rented jukebox, but it does perhaps need 3 playlists. Dinner parties are shifting things, they start quietly and then take on a life of their own. You, the host, should be prepared for anything . . .

Below are the playlists (and the greatest martini recipe I have ever found, some perfect dinner party albums, my favorite Wedgwood plates and a fun suggestion).

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I am always hoping to read an engaging and beautifully written book that will change my life, that will gently shake me out of my ways and turn me into a well- rested and sufficiently hydrated charm machine, a thriving bundle of life who has more hours in the day than she knows what to do with. Recently I read Marion Milner’s A Life Of Ones Own, which, while it has not changed my life, has certainly gently swayed it.

For years Milner, a writer and psychoanalyst (this is not the stuff of self-help sections!) embarked on a project of discovering what brought her joy, and used her diaries to analyse the things in every day life that did so. She writes about walking, drawing, looking and listening; she pays attention to leisure and to pleasure. She chooses to be curious about her mind and life instead of trying to improve it and she suggests that the way to contentment is through greater familiarity with ourselves and our circumstances.

I particularly liked the drawing she included in the book, which is the picture at the top of this newsletter. It is Milner, seated before a stick figure orchestra, arms outstretched, trying to beam herself into the music. She writes:

The first hint that I really had the power to control the way I looked at things happened in connexion with music. Always before, my listening had been too much bothered by the haunting idea that there was far more in it than I was hearing; but occasionally I would find that I had slipped through this barrier to a delight that was enough in itself, in which I forgot my own inadequacy. . . Sometimes I seemed to put my awareness into the soles of my feet, sometimes to send something which was myself out into the hall, or to feel as if I were standing just beside the orchestra.

It’s not an easy thing to do, and I think there are pieces of music that lend themselves more to this approach than others, but I’ve had this little image of hers in mind when I’ve been listening to music lately , beaming myself into the music rather than distracting myself with it, or trying to come to a conclusion about it. There’s more to see and to hear if we can still the voice inside us that finds it hard to stop thinking about ourselves, or ourselves in relation to others, a widening of experience, a giving over to the wisdom of the ears, a slipping through the barrier to a delight that is enough in itself and perhaps even a gentle swaying in how you live your life.

Here are 10 new songs for you, the first two might be the best to practice this kind of listening on, but you can decide for yourself! Behind the paywall this week I’ve included a playlist with every song that was featured in this newsletter in 2025 as well as one for 2026 so far, which will provide you with absolute hours of music to beam yourself into!

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

APPLE MUSIC PLAYLIST

Recently my husband told that me he has started talking to the plants in our garden when he waters them to encourage them to grow. To beat him I have been singing to them. It’s truly spectacular to be out in a garden at dusk singing “I Have Confidence” from The Sound Of Music to a disheveled hydrangea. The point? This whole album sounds like music you might play to make a flower you are particularly fond of grow.

An existential EP trilogy is so annoyingly up my alley, like let us drag this out, let us not be content to say in one hundred words, what we could potentially say in closer to one million. Trilogy creator, Anna Calvi, has one of those enviable careers, moving between scoring for film, collaborations with more “mainstream” artists, and of course EP trilogys, of which this new EP is the first part. On this track she collaborates with supreme being, Laurie Anderson, reworking Kraftwerk’s Computer Love around Anderson’s hypnotic vocal delivery and Calvi’s eerie choral arrangements.

Sooner or later all relationships move from love letters to grocery lists and this song (by ex black Midi member, Cameron Picton) is such a sweet acknowledgment of the intimacy in the mundane, a reminder of the great fortune to be found in having someone to soak beans for, to ask to pick up some onions on the way home, to do the excruciating dance of what’s for dinner tonight with.

Here’s the story of this song from Mei Semones. It’s about the day she was supposed to meet John Roseboro at his friends’ bookstore,

“I got off the train in Greenpoint and we happened to have been on the same train, and we ran into each other on the platform. He smiled and told me his tooth had just fallen out, and held out his hand to show me. So I was inspired to write a song about that and our friendship. Thanks to John for being down to join me on the song and always being a good friend and inspiration to me :) Musically, one of my favorite parts is the arpeggiated guitar chords, inspired by a Guinga tune I learned.”

Bookstores, tooth fairy’s, being good and kind friends - this whole EP just keeps being adorable.

I started listening to this full album as I picked up my niece and her friend, who let it get about 2 minutes in before being like “what is this.” Hahahaah they fell into my trap and I got to give them a small lecture on Sonic Youth, Kim Gordon, women in music and aging. This is my favorite track off the album, the most sultry without making any effort to be.

Drummer and singer Madeline BB is the force behind LA band Slippers and the writer of sassy lines like “ When I said that I wanted you, I meant out of my life” on this cute jangle pop song.

Perfect nostalgic soaring synths, raunchy drum fills, a frilly little solo - what a great song for all your frantic emotions! This whole album is out now and it is worth a listen. Standouts include: Jupiter and Mars and the v clearly Rostam produced, Earth Alive.

Classically trained cellist, Kelsey Lu, delivered a very good album in 2019’s, Blood, which draws far more on her classical background than this Jack Antonoff produced synth pop ballad. It’s the first single from what should be a stand out album this year. Get into her!

What April Haper Grey is so good at is turning loads of references (in this case I hear Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears) and sounds into something that feels totally modern and “now.” The songs on this album are like little lightning bolts exploding into your ears, slick and fuzzy, sharp and chaotic.

I think it’s interesting to have this song after underscores, because it’s really doing the opposite: it’s referencing hard, but not really trying to re-invent. Flo are great at revisiting the sleek R&B of the late '90s and early 2000’s and that’s fine with me! This song really makes the list because the lyrics and premise are very funny and it comes with a swish music video. If you’re nostalgic for the choreographed slick of yesteryear’s girl bands, this should scratch the itch.

All the best songs of last year in one playlist + this years so far. …

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I have, throughout my life, taken crushes very seriously. I have yearned to yearn. I have thrilled to the the potential of the other as I go about my quotidian tasks; I have delighted in becoming a person who is a little more in love with the world for knowing that the object of my desire is roaming around in it. Crushes have made me buy strange things…

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I’m keeping this opening short this week, as we are in the middle of an heatwave here in Cape Town, and I feel like I need to put my brain in a bucket of ice. (One of my working titles for this edition was short n’ sweat, but I’d prefer people to actually open this).

As always there are songs of all sorts on the playlist this week: a chamber …

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Some weeks these playlists take on their own shapes, leaning towards a certain genre or sound a bit more than usual. I love it when this happens, it always feels eye-opening, like the playlist is a reflection of something I didn’t realise I was feeling yet. This week, as I started listening to what I’d collected, I was…

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Apologies for not sending new music out last week, but there was a curse on my house called the flu. Between that and slowly turning my study into what looked a bit like a room where all my interests had decided to fight a very bloody battle, I couldn’t quite settle myself into the attention necessary to say a single thing about music.

Here we are thoug…

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I haven’t been as moved by an album as Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s recently released, Laughter in Summer, for a long time. Beverly Glenn-Copeland is a miracle really, a trans man who, for most of his life, made music that was never recognised. When Glenn was 71, a collector tracked him down and asked if he still had any copies of …

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Every time I go off any social media platform for a little while, I have the same reaction when I start using it again, which is just, “I can’t believe this still exists.” Take a moment away from these spaces and they start to feel quite strange and at odds with actually living. So after a month of being outside and seeing friends and havin…

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