dub for dads

Plus the week's best from Romy, Tinashe, Zach Bryan, James Blake and Melenas

Hello from my couch, where the real best track of the week is the weird, huffy sleep of a newborn who finally lets you write as long as it’s before the sun comes up.

So much of early parenthood is feeling your brain re-wire itself in real time as you adjust to keeping a baby alive. Daily habits like sleep and showering become luxury items, and most importantly, time no longer has any fucking meaning.

Whether it’s suddenly being faced with staying awake from 3-6 in the morning to offer formula, or trying to make the most of the only 30 minutes you’ll have alone, time has become rubbery, unusual matter. Even the future, which was once a grey wall, now is like a constant appointment to be kept – I have to be alive in 2050? And ready to attend a graduation??? And most strangely, for me, that elastic sense of time has coincided with only wanting to listen to…dub reggae.

Yes, heavy dub edits and deep cuts. If I’m lost in space, it sort of makes sense that the only music that’s hit has also played with time and deconstructed space. Endless space echo, massive volumes of King Tubby, and so much spring reverb. An infuriating amount for my wife, who…has not shared my change of heart regarding dub reggae.

In many ways, it’s fun to realize your music taste isn’t really in your control – and surrendering to what feels right can lead you down strange new paths

Want to join me? I’ve loved on this compilation based on a 1977 Black Echoes article as a starting point, as well as classics like Return of the Super Ape, but also I’ve gone deep on YouTube, leading to this wild Flabba Holt interview outlining his biggest basslines, and a surpisingly compelling interview with the UK’s Prince Fatty on how colonialism and the UK market shaped dub releases.

ANYWAYS, as always, you can follow along on our playlists on Spotify and Apple Music, which update every Tuesday along with the newsletter. Enjoy.

Tinashe – Tightrope

Tinashe and Machinedrum? A Janet Jackson-esque vapor R&B track that’s part ballad, part banger? I’m already sold on Tinashe – I thought 2021’s 333 was very underrated – but regardless, this song checks all the boxes for me. Tinashe skips gently over Machinedrum’s beats, and they’re both smart enough to keep a delicate touch on the chorus, keeping the soft deft and lithe instead of trying to wring too much music out of this beautiful mood.

Romy – Weightless

I opined at length about my love for Oliver Sims’ debut solo album from last year, so I’ll attempted to be a bit more reserved about Mid Air, the debut from the XX’s Romy Madley Croft. If Sims’ Hideous Bastard was built around intentionally ugly sonics and weird angles, Mid Air is all aerodynamic 90’s synthpop – if anything, it defies expectations by making all the moves you’d expect. “The Sea" adroitly channels Everything But The Girl’s “Missing,” but “Weightless” lives up to the album’s title best, with the sharpest Fred Again collaboration that tastes like nostalgia cotton candy, evaporating in your mouth before you can get your lips around it.

Zach Bryan – Hey Driver

Zach Bryan notched another entry in the Year Of The Country #1, following Morgan Wallen, Jason Aldean, and that bearded guy from Twitter with a #1 for “I Remember Everything” with Kacey Musgraves. It’s not the best song on the album, so perhaps it’s the name recognition with Kacey pushing its streams hard enough to puncture the #1 slot. His S/T album – also debuting at #1 – has a bunch of tracks that are weirder and more memorable than “I Remember Everything,” especially “Hey Driver” which feels like it funnels an “ain’t it better in a small town” vibe through a woozy taxi ride – like “I Got Friends In Low Places” if Garth Brooks had Uber?

James Blake – Big Hammer

This is the most CMYK-esque track on James Blake’s “return to the dancefloor” record Playing Robots Into Heaven. The press headline may sound like a contrived return to form, but the record is a great hang – this is clearly where Blake is at as an artist right now, and the album is like spending time browsing through his recent ideas. The album may lack the compositional and sonic audacity from his earliest EPs and debut, where it felt like he was putting together new genres at will, but it’s still so much fun hearing an album that showcases his taste in sounds and synthesis more than his (still amazing) voice and pop chops.

Melenas – K2

I could listen to hypnotic kraut-tinged pop like this all day. Melenas’ upcoming LP Ahora won’t escape the Stereolab comparison, but songs like “K2” are so effortlessly cool it really doesn’t matter if their influences show through. No bridge, just a long-ass organ solo? Perfect.

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Roger Miller – The Last Word In Lonesome Is Me

This song is built around a perfectly stupid and obvious idea for a chorus that I fell in love with on first listen. At the tail of August, Roger Miller was on repeat most evenings, the perfect dishwashing music for closing out a day with a tiny little human.