Waking up over coffee today I came to the realization that I am coming up on five years of Sonic Postcards. When starting the newsletter, I originally had hopes I could turn it into something bigger. Maybe even big enough to bring in some income (this was during the peak of the Substack boom after all).

Those ambitions have softened with time and now I am just happy to have a channel to share my favorite music with family and friends. Appreciate all of you that have listened over the years and will continue listening into the future!

Now on to the playlist. Highlights on this week’s playlist for me:

• The Stroke’s inspired tracks from Lime Garden and Been Stellar (thanks for the rec Joey).

• “only, if only” from Have Mercy. Phenomenal opening guitar riff, rest of the song is okay but I live for that riff.

Happy listening.

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This week’s issue pulls in a decidedly alt-country direction. My favorite off is a new release from Kurt Vile called “Chance to Bleed.” It’s a meandering alt-country ear worm.

Coming in #2 for me is “Til My Heart Stops” from The Beths. It comes off of their 2025 album Straight Line Was a Lie. This album has slowly been working on my sub conscious the past few months and I think it is going to emerge as a favorite. There are not any absolute hits, but taken as a whole it is a wonderfully consistent and enjoyable listen. It is a similar experience to what I had with Alvvays 2014 self-titled album.

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This week’s playlist takes a decidedly poppier turn. It has been a good one to run to.

The issue kicks off and closes with Fred again… He is the artist I continue to return to for hope against the backdrop of our world right now. The way the dude carries himself and the love he brings is such a ray of light.Take some of that with you.

Happy listening.

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As a software engineer I have had to get comfortable with AI re-inventing how I work every couple of weeks. The release of the Codex 5.3 and Opus 4.6 models this month have been the biggest change to date. It’s gone from these things are useful to holy sh*t this is pretty much as good as what I would write.

It leaves me in a messy headspace, oscillating between guilt around the environmental impact and excitement about the types of things that are now possible to build. It invalidates parts of the business model for my own business Lost Creek Designs while opening the door to build so many of the side projects I haven’t had the time to build.

A real tangible positive impact is that it freed up my time enough to catch a show this past Tuesday in Portland. I got to tagalong with my buddy Joey to see his brother’s band Prize Horse play along with Graham Hunt and Glitterer. They all ripped!

What also rips is this issue’s closer “I Watched All My Friends Fade Out” from Good Hangs. By far my most listened to song this month.

Happy listening.

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I am writing this balancing conflicting feelings of dread and hope. Dread and disgust over the evil of this present moment and hope thanks to the people of Minneapolis. Hope wins out.

It is amazing to see the courage of the Twin Cities communities as they support each other and give the rest of us a fighting chance.

Just like there are a whole lot of good people out there, there are a whole lot of good songs too. I hope these bring you a smile and moment to regain composure. Let’s keep looking out for each other. It will win the day.

Happy listening.

Ben

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I did not intend to do a year end list but I wandered back through this year’s issues this morning. As a result it is easy enough to put some of my favorite releases and moments down on paper.

While I am choosing to write about my favorites, the playlist is not a recap list. I wanted to keep the standard format and share what I have been listening to in the present moment.

Happy reading and listening.

Favorite Albums

My top three albums ended up coming at the tail end of this year. Lux from Rosalía continues to become one of my favorite albums of all time, giving Frank Ocean’s Blonde a run for the top spot.

Here are my favorite releases from this year.

1. Lux from Rosalía

2. Wisher from Ben Quad

3. USB from Fred again…

4. Getting Killed from Geese

5. If You Asked for a Picture from Blondshell

6. Let God Sort Em Out from Clipse

7. Never Enough from Turnstile

8. Bloodless from Samia

9. SABLE, fABLE from Bon Iver

10. The Good The Bad The Dollar Menu from Ray Vaughn

Favorite Moments

My favorite music moment of the year has to be everything around Fred again’s release and tour of USB. The content that is coming out of it is unreal! You can so clearly see that Fred is doing exactly what he was put on this earth to do. His love and gratitude for it are infectious. This one take recording of Beto’s Horns is great example of it (and the same energy his collaborators share).

The Playlist

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ROSALÍA has been the story of the week for me. I had never listened to her prior to picking up LUX. I do not quite have the words for it yet but the feeling of excitement I get for this album is similar to the feeling when I first listened to Takk… from Sigur Rós. Coincidently I started the week listening to a lot of Sigur Rós before coming across LUX. I think it put me in a good headspace to appreciate what ROSALÍA has put together here.

The soundscape of the album is massive. Describing the tracks as arrangements vs songs seems to better capture their ambition and the mastery involved here. It is unlike anything I have heard in a long long time.

My favorite moment on the album is a three song run from “Dios Es Un Stalker,” “La Yugular,” to “Sauvignon Blanc.” It is difficult to place these alongside any other songs so I going to limit the playlist to these three this week.

Enjoy!

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These days it feels like most projects I like happen to involve Brad Cook in some capacity (or is brother Phil Cook for that matter). Halloween ended up being a big release day for two of his projects with Snocaps (superstar collaboration between Katie Crutchfield, Allison Crutchfield, and MJ Lenderman) and Futurebirds releasing albums. Recommend giving both albums a listen in full!

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Joyce Manor has been releasing some new tracks ahead of their upcoming January album. These guys still have a knack for writing lyrics that sound like funny throwaways but somehow also land. Take the opening verse off of “Well, Whatever It Was” for example:

Had the worst day ever so far
Got run over by my dream car
Spent forever in the ER
Slowly going insane
Lost my job at Little Caesars
Drinking whiskey ‘cause my teeth hurt
My tuxedo was a t-shirt
But, you know what they say

A great example of how band simultaneously not taking themselves too seriously while putting out polished art.

Hoping to get back to a more regular cadence but you know it goes between family and work. Neither slow down.

Happy listening.

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Work and family have been ruling the day the past month hence the lack of issues. The podcasts have been flowing but the music not so much.

One of the better podcast episodes I listened to recently is “The Making of SET YOURSELF ON FIRE by Stars” in their own words. This album was incredibly influential for me in high school and I loved giving it a re-listen with the added context of how it all came together.

This week’s playlist covers a lot of ground but it starts and ends slow. My favorite off the playlist is “End of Summer” from Tame Impala. It is one of those tracks that is so layered you pick out something new on each listen (doesn’t hurt you have 7 minutes to do this either).

Happy listening.

P.S. thanks to Jamie for the rec on LaMP!

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I ended up catching a great show completely unexpectedly at a bachelor party in Steamboat Springs last weekend. We ended up at a bar called Schmiggity's where a band called Grits & Greens was playing. They ended up playing two sets of face melting guitar of which “So Much Fun” was my favorite. I had a similar experience at Schmiggity’s back in 2016 when I stumbled into the bar and caught Yer State Birds. They know how to book shows there!

What is my favorite track of the week though is “Island” from The Starting Line. I don’t know how I missed this song when it came out in 2007 but it has a chorus you can listen to over and over and over again. It is getting me hyped to go see The Goo Goo Dolls and Dashboard Confessional tomorrow night which started as a joke but now that I am re-listening to music from that era, am thinking could actually be kinda good.

Happy listening. Stay nostalgic.

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Our son has been on an absolute heater listening to “Too Sweet” form Hozier double digit times per day. In one of the instances where we didn’t have to an instant repeat, “Ribs” from Lorde came on next. I had completely forgotten about the song and it still holds up.

Who else still holds up is LCD Soundsystem. They were passing through town last week so I got to catch them along with TV On The Radio. I never listened much to LCD but had heard from enough people that if you ever get the chance to see them you have to. What those guys do…just absolute freaks on their respective instruments.

Rainbow Kitten Surprise (see Issues #115 and #60) and Medium Build (see Issue #40, #61, #92, and #108) were playing the next night and got to catch them as well. Medium Build ended up being everything I hoped he would be between his stage presence and the way his voice carried through live. Highly highly recommend catching them live.

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Welcome to Issue #141 of Sonic Postcards! The release I am most stoked on this week is the new album, Double Life, from Night Moves.

One of my most memorable concerts is still seeing them in a dorm basement at Grinnell in 2011. An absurdly loud wall of sound that sounded like MGMT with Americana twang came roaring out of nowhere when they opened with Headlights. It was so fucking good. The new album is missing some of that energy but plays through in such a beautiful and cohesive way.

Outside of Night Moves, the track that is getting the most airtime this week is “You Found Me” from Waxahatchee and Kevin Morby. With each new release Katie Crutchfield cements herself further as my favorite artist.

Happy listening.

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It has been a challenge trying to figure out how to piece together what I have been listening to this week into a cohesive playlist. I have been cycling through:

• If You Asked For A Picture by Blondshell

• Virgin by Lorde

• Let God Sort Em Out by Clipse (thanks for encouraging me to give it a listen John)

While they are all pretty differently sonically, there is a common through line of reflecting on parental relationships. Funny how the Universe and chance can have you exploring things from disparate sources all to land on a common theme.

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I have been pulling the thread on some of the podcasts I recommended in last week’s issue and ending up in some great places.

The Tapes Notes podcast with Jamie xx inspired me to listening to one of the episodes with Fred again.. I came out of it with an even deeper appreciation for what that dude does. The sourcing of samples and number of iterations some of these producers go through to find the right texture is something else. There was a time where I would head to coffee shops on the weekend and fire up FruityLoops to make my own shitty beats. Fred again.. makes me want to grab a Logic license and take another crack at it.

Another thread I have been pulling on is from the CD Burners podcast. They recently put out an episode on the classic Bright Eyes album, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning where they recommended Life of the Record podcast. It has a simple premise - having the artists that made classic albums chronicle how they came together, no hosts and no interview questions. I have been listening to the episode on The Walkmen’s Bows and Arrows and loving it thus far.

It got me reflecting on how much good music was coming out as I grew up. Luckily, we are currently blessed with an equal amount of good albums coming out today. Happy listening.

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Some people would probably lose their shit about mislabeling it, but this past week has had me gripped by stuff of the more shoegaze and dreampop variety. The issue starts in that vein but then slides into some weepier Americana/indie/country twang cause that stuff has been damn good this week too.

In addition to the normal digging through tunes,I found myself scrolling through the charts for the Music category on Apple Podcasts Monday night. Found some gems!

• Music Person - Interview with Karly Hartzman of Wednesday Fame

  • Feels less like a podcast than a beautiful meandering conversation about music that you get to listen in on

• CD Burners - Interview with Chris Freeman of Hot Mulligan

  • You already know how I much I love these guys, but delivers more of the same funny riffing that Hot Mulligan usually brings

• Tape Notes - Jamie xx

  • If you love getting into the production details on how a record comes together

This weekend is the super bowl equivalent for the nerds and ultra-runners like myself with the Western States 100 on Saturday. While y’all are enjoying the tunes, I will be watching drone footage of people running (you read that right) and listening to 17 hours of commentary on it.

Happy listening.

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Our oldest is on his first summer break which winds back my own clock to being a kid again and having summers mean something. The music video for Jake Minch’s, “Fingers and Clothes” cements the feeling with it’s indie coming of age film vibes. Good song, good video.

In addition to Jake Minch (flashback to Issue #111), there are a couple of other repeat artists on this week’s issue - Mini Trees (Issue #86) and McKinley Dixon (Issue #90). All of them are not super well known but are showing they have some staying power. Of the three, McKinley Dixon’s “Magic, Alive!” takes the cake this week with its lyricism over jazz.

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Feels like it is getting harder and harder to consistently put together an issue these days. Since the last post I have been listening to a lot of the new Arm’s Length album, There’s a Whole World Out There. Accordingly, the issue kicks off with a double header from them. I have to be in the right headspace since they are so heavy but man do these guys bring it. If I was good enough to to put together a proper biking video segment, “Palinopsia” would headline it.

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The Good The Bad The Dollar Menu from Ray Vaughn has become one of my favorite albums of the year so far (right up there with SABLE, fABLE). One of those albums you can put on back to back to back, washing over you and seeping in a bit more on each listen.

I have also been loving Only Dust Remains from Backxwash. The production on “9th Heaven” is something else.

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My favorite off this week’s issue is “Move” from Seun Kuti, Egypt 80, and Kamasi Washington. It was the first track that came on during my drive to work today and it paired well with fresh morning light. Hope the weekend treats you all well and these tracks make it just a hint better.

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