Spencer Griffin's New Music Mondays

 After two weeks of absence, I'm back! Six new songs for a brand new week. Here they are: "Exhausting Lover" by Ben Folds: What's this? Is alt-pop's resident piano man, Ben Folds, suddenly turning to synths instead?! Well, in this song, he appears to be doing just that, at least initially until a bright brass section comes in towards the middle! This IS Ben Folds we're talking about, though, and many of his songs are snarky commentary, so him modernizing his sound might just be a subtle jab at contemporary pop culture, along with some of the lyrics of the song, particularly when he says, "Never gonna say YOLO no mo'." The song tells the tale of a girl who is quite possibly a spoof of recent female celebrities like Kim Kardashian meeting either an unnamed character in the song or possibly Ben himself, a self-described "nerd." As you might expect, things go south for the two rather quickly, and by the end of the song, things get incredibl...

 here they are: "Borrow Trouble" by Feist: Feist hasn't really made a splash since 2011, and her biggest hits are now over a decade old. That being said, I wondered if Feist would still hold up today if she released something new. The answer, it appears, is yes! She has reinvented her sound, too, adding strong influence from David Bowie's electro-rock classic, "Heroes," to her typical folk-pop atmosphere. Perhaps there are naysayers here who think that folk-rock and new wave can't be good bedfellows. Well, Feist sort of intended this song to have both a messy sound and messy lyrics, but somehow, it's ended up becoming a beautiful mess! "Psychos" by Jenny Lewis: The title of the song might sound off-putting and scary to some, but Jenny Lewis' latest tune, "Psychos," has a sound that's anything but psychotic. A laid-back folk-rocker that hearkens back to Jenny's days in indie-pop/rock group, Rilo Kiley, "Psychos...