Max's Music Mondays with Sabrina Song and CIB
I'm back again!!!! Plus new tunes from Soft Streak, Rina Sawayama, St. Panther, and more!!
Welcome to Max’s Music Mondays. My ~music discovery newsletter~ where I get too excited about songs I love. I hope you love them too. If you do, follow along on spotify and please be sure to absolute smash that dang subscribe button! tysm :)
HELLO OK WOW WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON!!?!?!?!
I was in NY for 6 weeks and that is a really long time it turns out. The time away from home wore me out and also the humidity wore me out and also just life in general wore me tf out. Over the past almost-five years of writing Max’s Music Mondays, there have been plenty of weeks where I didn’t feel 100% and had to really dig deep to give these songs the love they deserve. But at multiple times over these past few weeks I’ve been pushed even further back, where “digging deep” just isn’t enough and also isn’t possible.
I’ve felt a little ~at sea~ if you will. 6 weeks is a long time to feel like a visitor. And it got to me. I missed LA so much, my home, my routine, my world, and with that much time away I felt like I was floating further and further out. Not just from those things but from myself. Goes without saying, it was such a blessing to spend so much time with people I love. Time I usually don’t get so much of. Moments of connection that are priceless and irreplaceable. But the moment I touched foot in my own room, everything shifted. Renewed and grounded again. Nice to remember this is where I’m meant to be right now in such a visceral way, and nice to finally feel the urge, the need, to write about some DANG SONGS.
So, my apologies for the lack of consistency, but let me make it up to you with some new music to love.
This Week’s Songs
Please please follow along here ^^ for this week’s and every week’s songs. They’re all really good I swear!!! <3 Please like and enjoy and send to someone you like and enjoy!!
Sabrina Song - Strawberry
Sabrina Song has such a great voice it really blows me away. And all she needs to prove it is two words. Three seconds of song, two words, seven syllables, and I’m gonna go ahead and give this one a Very Good Voice, Wow rating. Able to move so fluidly from note to note, tone to tone (a fun set of words to type consecutively). It’s really a thing of beauty. Keys and bass bouncing on this full drum groove to round out the picture. Something about that seven hours on the plane is (and please don’t hate me for saying this…) transportive. Having just experienced exactly that, and having experienced it plenty of times before now too, I know the feeling. It’s a lot of time, often isolated, even if amidst chaos. Time to think, to feel, for excitement to bubble up, for anxiety, for regret. But Song makes it clear, the thoughts are staying on someone they’ve just left (physically, certainly, and maybe more ways too). I love the structure of the first verse, it feels playful but through the lingering repetition, it lands so hard. We slide into this new section, chords from the keys extending out, the bass not cutting anything short. I love the lyric "you’re not allowed to haunt me, you’ll find someone else’s mind”. Beautiful, harrowing. As this moment comes to a close at 0:54 the drums rattle off a couple snares tossed way right. They feel new, almost another drummer, another world, another moment calling for us. And just like that we turn the page into a new scene. The bass still funky as we roll towards the next verse.
The imagery here is so well done. You can feel just how helpless Song felt to these emotions. The background vocals rolling in with “I couldn’t speak”, and it feels like a smile. Grinning, shrugging, appreciating just how powerless they were. “Loving can be easy, a dumb new fact to me”. Come on!!!! That rules so much, a gem of a lyric tucked neatly into the heart of this song. This thing just keeps getting better and better. Song getting at this gnarly tension between appreciating this newfound knowledge, and grieving all the time spent not knowing. The tambourine disappears, the kick drum rolling, some subtle synth/horns growing up off the horizon, and you can feel something bigger coming. It crescendos off some subtle echo, the wave cresting and vanishing (here, where wave = band), leaving Song front and center and sure of her desire in this moment. That this struggle just isn’t worth missing a beautiful sunset. Exploding into a big ‘ol shining scene. The golden hour sun she’s chosen, now pouring down all over this section. The songwriting continues to be fabulous - the words bending back on themselves, Song calling upon these ideas, seeming to ask of them exactly what they need too. Learn me, lecture hall… fill me, cavity. It’s poetic and delivered masterfully as the band continues soar.
The horns carry on over an undeniable chord progression, Song and friends reaching out with ooh’s and ahh’s that just feel so good. And after all of this we return right back to the plane, the conversations in our heads not quite ready to end yet, the moments replaying on and on. It’s a brilliant end, and one that tugs on my heart strings just a little bit more too. What a great tune, ugh, can’t get enough.
CIB - Fanfiction
Scanning a dream for the perfect frequency, we’re swaying left and right hoping to find that spot that’s juuuuuust right. And boy oh boy do we ever. Guitar chugging, that slight fuzz hanging in there too. CIB stepping to the mic, confident as she gets rolling. There’s something in her tone that just has me enthralled, it just has an edge to it. But also the way the vocals are mixed/processed here gives it this slightly unreal feel. Where CIB punctuates the K’s of talk and walk with precision, the computer offers its own approach through can’t say don’t got time. Cutting words short, filling the tiniest moments with just as much space as they’ll take. It’s little choices like those, which break songs free of familiarity and into worlds of their own. A world I’m thrilled to be walking into. And look who else is here? A damn drummer!! ok!! A tiny glass being dinged (that is absolutely the official verb, you can trust me) on the beat, spicing up and brightening the moment. Soon after a pianist joins too, rolling this beautiful melody out ahead of us, the song’s persistent momentum ripe for a little flowing friend. But just as we mellow into the waviness, CIB lands this heater of a lyric.
I got smile lines / from all the frowning I did when I was nine / summer camp US Open 2000 / I’m no good at tennis
This harsh memory still rearing its head all these years down the line. These things we all think/learn about ourselves at ages where we’re really too young to know any better, too young to know the truth. But we take it as true anyways. Then the years and work it takes to shake them loose and move on. It’s delivered simply, but it has my heart broken and my ears thrilled. Coming at the end of this first verse, one spent feeling lonely and disappointed, you can feel CIB shouldering the blame for something that hasn’t worked out, even though they don’t need to. They can feel the let down - like they can see something in this person’s eyes shift, as they become real and not some idea of someone. It hurts but it feels familiar to them, and the chorus erupts out, CIB sure of themselves, asserting how they really feel. Musically, it rules too, the whole thing a big fun warm chorus. What’s not to love?! The second verse comes back, off-kilter from the first moment. The glass is dinging again, which I adore, of course, but also it brings this slightly off sound, one I want to call a “runoff guitar sound” but I know that can’t be right so I will just trust you hear it and know what I’m talking about. But the discomfort is a nice reminder of where we’ve been in this song. Things even out quick, an acoustic guitar adding even more texture and shine to this verse. The song refuses to slow, sprinting back to the pre-chorus and chorus right after. Beyond it, an instrumental break that sees birds chirping and circuitry twisting and turning. The two sounding adjacent even if they represent polar opposites. Over CIB’s questioning it bubbles up again, one last big chorus to savor. What a dang treat.
Here’s what else I’ve been listening to.
(click this ^^ for the full playlist lol)
Soft Streak - Hangover
Lovely acoustic rolling in, setting us up for a gentle and heartwarming song. And then the first lyric hits and resets all expectations. Soft Streak is back with another gem. The vocals swirl so effortlessly, the guitar a perfect partner. The writing gives me chills everything, regretting not buying a flight to see someone, immediately followed by “I couldn’t have mattered to you all that much”, just crushing.
The chorus takes off, “in my head, you’re like a dream” the song matching that feeling, the whole moment such a wonderful fantasy. I love the drums and percussion, helping ground the rest of the band. We return to reality, another great verse, now with some keys poking their head out and making a big impact. The bass starts to get more adventurous too, stretching into a really cool bass line, finding moments to run side-by-side with the melody. And before we get to another chorus, we hit my official This Lyric Hits Too Hard Lyric of the Week (TLHTHLOTW):
And when nothing happened, it was still enough
To just be around you, to wish for your love
You're not even mine to try to sing about
GOODNESS GRACIOUS COME ON!!!!!!!!! The band turns into an orchestra, a gorgeous instrumental outro. I love this song so much, I hope you give it a listen too.
Remi Wolf - Live at Electric Lady
Ugh. Remi Remi Remi, we’re so damn spoiled. A live six-song EP from Electric Lady, instantly vaulting into Maxies contention (probably for a really smart and good category like “best live ep recorded by one of my favorite artists within the state of NY” or something). Regardless I am in love and over the moon. The whole thing is full of life and love and new takes on my favs.
Woo! Opens with a cheeky bass running alongside an age old question, “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?”. From there, things stay playful, the song falling into a reggae/surfer feel, that shaker doing some HEAVY lifting while Remi delivers one hell of a performance my lord.
The song making the most waves is no surprise - her cover of Frank Ocean’s Pink + White. Delivered in her signature tone, not backing down from any challenge, sounding beautiful as ever. The band comes to play too, giving a great performance to live up to the moment. That little trumpet, the perfect bass, everything just works so well. Remi & Team continue to cook up the exact thing I want before I even want them.
Rina Sawayama - Hold The Girl
This one got buried for me when it dropped (maybe beyonce and maggie got in the way?) but it’s been growing on me with every day and every listen. Sawayama is an undeniable star & dance/pop sensation in my book (and so many others’ books), and this song is another tally in the “yea she really is the real deal” column. We open with the motorcycle purring, Sawayama belting out in what feels like a spotlighted-climax-of-an-opera moment, so massive, the audience on the edge of their seats. Slowly the drums roll in, and by 0:36 the song has transformed into a dance hit. Strings carry us past 0:50, and voila, another transformation. Sawayama thriving in every new shape this song takes. Moments that feel like Gaga, Charli, Beyoncé, and Evanescense all in one. Yet singularly Rina Sawayama, the beauty of her sound. The song grows and grows, quietly elevating from moment to moment, we get to a soaring bridge, tossing us to a stadium sized vocal stack with a key change to boot. Emotional and fun, what’s not to love.
Sylvan Esso - Moving
The new SE album is here, and I am loving it. So much more weird and wacky and dancey than I expected, and I’m having so much fun. It opens with Moving, flying by at devastatingly breakneck pace. It’s messy and fuzzy, breathing out deep breaths of reverb to close out lines. The vocals stand strong and smooth as always, our narrator pondering a simple question, How can I be moved, when everything is moving? I’ve been wondering the same lately, trying so hard to keep being moved when everything is moving in this unrelenting world, and this song gave me a little spark to do just that. So excited to see SE continue to grow and evolve, their music taking twists and turns but always made so well and with intention.
St. Panther - So Bad
Mhm St. Panther back and cool as ever, good god. This beat is beyond sick, the soul-sampled groove, the mesmerizing drum loop (doing its job even beneath that filter). It feels like more than sampling, the song really using, harnessing, the sounds, the lyrics, the mood, to further its own mission. St. Panther hops in with a great first lyric, their heart pouring out with a calming vocal layer holding us underneath. We’re into the chorus before we know it, I want you now, repeating over and over, the message feeling more genuine with every repetition. The piano and bass join in beautifully, the whole song still soft and loving. St. Panther’s voice is one of a kind and I love it so much. Beyond 1:35 her versatility is on full display, rapping this second verse, fitting in perfectly and giving the song a new life. The harmony/second vocal is so sick, the whole thing swirling together and I’m obsessed.
Whew, felt good to get that done. Please tell a friend???? That’d be sick as hell for real!!!! I mean it!!
Max