Seeking Ferret

The usual playlist for bookherd of my favorite new songs from 2020, or 2019 but I only discovered them in 2020 because I am not hip at all.

Download from my GDrive here


I didn't really listen to that much new music this year, and a lot of what was new to me was even older than that and thus not eligible, but here we go.

"The Last Great American Dynasty" by Taylor Swift has been hands down my favorite song of the year. It is just utterly brilliant storytelling about class and aspirations and growing into yourself, and it's also just hilariously petty and I love it so much. I also liked some other stuff on the two (2!) Swift albums we were gifted this year, especially "Exiles" and "No Body, No Crime", but "The Last Great American Dynasty" is a masterpiece.

"Keter Melucha" by Yishai Ribo is the best song I've listened to this year about coping with 2020. I already wrote a bit about it when I included it in a playlist for lannamichaels, so I'll just steal the writeup. "He wrote and released this song a few months ago [back in April/May], as a way to grapple with the pandemic. It used the annual cycle of Torah readings as a way to measure time at a moment when we many of us were overcome trying to reckon a new way of understanding time. It seems to say that even as we seem to stand suspended and frozen by the pandemic, God's universe marches forward, hard as that can be to live with."

"Someday (Work in Progress)" by Josh Ritter. Released as part of an election fundraiser, I obviously used this song in my MCU vid, and I think it also captures in a different way than Ribo the 2020 sense of helplessness but also seeing a way forward beyond the helplessness.

"Roanoke" by Lisa Stein. Actually the whole album "Sonic Salve" was my favorite top to bottom new album this year, full of soaring vocal harmonies and meditative rhythms. It's one of those albums you inhabit more than you just listen to, it seeps into you.

"Puppy for Hanukkah" by Daveed Diggs. The most delightful Chanukah song we've had in ages.



Also at some point in 2021 I will probably listen to that Fiona Apple album everyone was talking about in the spring, because I am not hip at all. I did finally start listening to Phoebe Bridgers last month.

For makamu, A Playlist with "narrative lyrics (for lack of a better word)"


"Estelle" by Dan Bern, just this amazing shaggy dog story of coping with depression and loss and figuring out how to find joy again

"Harrisburg" by Josh Ritter, the best railroad ballad written in the 21st century

"Jedi Drinking Test" by the Dust Rhinos, a little Star Wars fic in Irish musical guise

"Elevator Operator" by Courtney Barnett, full of rich details and surprising twists and clever language

"Bridges and Balloons" by Joanna Newsom, a narrative song about the magic of narrative to take us on journeys

"Hold On" by The Cottars, my favorite Tom Waits cover

"Railroad Bill" by Andy Breckman, the tale of the time the character fought back against his creator



Download here from my Gdrive

for lannamichaels, A playlist of "more of the type of Seder Ha'avodah"

(n.b. "Seder Ha'avodah" by Ishai Ribo is an Israeli song released last year before the chagim that uses an piece of the liturgy from the Yom Kippur Musaf prayer and works around it to tell this complicated and modern story about faith.)

So here's some more music that uses the language of Jewish liturgy and then adapts it into something different.


"Keter Melucha" by Ishai Ribo - Let's start with more by Ribo. He wrote and released this song a few months ago, as a way to grapple with the pandemic. It used the annual cycle of Torah readings as a way to measure time at a moment when we many of us were overcome trying to reckon a new way of understanding time. It seems to say that even as we seem to stand suspended and frozen by the pandemic, God's universe marches forward, hard as that can be to live with.

"Mi Ba'eish" by Shany Kedar, covering Leonard Cohen- Cohen translated and then adapted a passage from the medieval piyut Unetaneh Tokef, recited on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, in his song "Who By Fire". Kedar translates the whole thing back into Hebrew, both restoring the original parts that Cohen merely translated, and translating Cohen's new additions. It is a startlingly sly piece of musical reinterpretation.

"Genesis 30:3" by the Mountain Goats- off an album where each song is inspired by a Bible verse, John Darnielle looks at the story of Leah and Rachel and wonders how Rachel could give up her claim on the man she loved in favor of her sister, who she also loved. "I will do what you asked me to do/ Because of how I feel about you."

"Beresheet" by Idan Raichel - I don't think lannamichaels really needs me to be sharing Idan Raichel songs, but I don't care, I'm doing it anyway. It reads into the first Perek of Genesis a process that we can learn from in our lives. This is how Creation works, so this is how creation works: this is how you build a relationship, this is how you build anything you want to care about the way God cares about God's Creation.

"Mi'maakim" by Idan Raichel - Again Raichel does a similar thing, this time doing an exegesis on Psalm 130 (also commonly recited between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) to explore the idea of a failing relationship. Just as David is feeling far away from God and yearns to reconnect because of his belief that there is still something that links them, Raichel's narrator wants to bring his romance back to where it was.


Download the playlist from my GDrive