Spencer Griffin's New Music Mondays

 It's Groundhog Day...again. And it's the day for me to review some new releases! Here goes: "Against the Dying of the Light" by Jose Gonzalez:  Ever since I heard Jose's quiet but powerful "Heartbeats" almost 20 years ago, I've always loved his material! He goes right in line with Joni Mitchell, Nick Drake, and Iron & Wine as a musician who relies primarily on alternate tunings and acoustic guitar. It's been nearly a decade since he last released something, but it was worth the wait! Jose's advice in this solemn song is almost Zen-like, with such lyrical gems as "accept who you have become," "embrace who we could be," "disconnect from every algorithm," and "kill the codes that feed the hate." Some of this advice is timeless, but other parts mentioning things like algorithms and codes seem more like lyrics for today's generation than they would have been for millennials and Gen Z-ers who were ou...

 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...