5 Song Friday - 3/13/26

This week, I've been thinking a lot about self-interest. In any system containing entities with distinct, personalized needs or drive, an inherent tension arises between the efficiency of the overall system and the needs of each individual within it.

Traffic is a great example: every person in every car needs to get somewhere, but if everyone drove as fast as they can, ignoring stop signs and red lights, there would be mass carnage. There is always an optimal balance between cooperation and self-interest, but only in extremes can we find the need to course-correct.

Anyway, here's five songs! Playlists are at the bottom!

726 - Goose

This week, DC saw a burst of beautiful late spring. Weather in the high 70s, beautiful sunlight, just in time for Daylight Savings giving us a fresh hour after work.

Goose is a jam band, but they're a jam band who walk the line between songwriting and improvisation in a way that makes them more accessible to rubes like me who don't have the capacity for appreciating Phish. The solos layered through Goose's studio albums can touch something sublime, and the guitar solo in this track is one of my favorites. It feels like sunlight on lake water on a Saturday in August.

velvet - sace6 & jxdn

There's something intoxicating about this sort of pop-punk. It's whiny, but in such a fun way that I can't help but nod my head. No idea who these guys are, it just popped up in my recommendations. Moving on!

Ingrid - Jack Van Cleaf ft. Vivien Vaucher

Van Cleaf did a song last year with Zach Bryan, but this track goes back to 2022. The mandolin, the whistling, and the strong vocals make it the perfect song for the start of spring. New shoots have started to rise from the earth again, and this track's perfect to enjoy on a walk through your local woods.

Ipsissimus - Blood Ceremony

I'm not a metalhead, but there's a certain sort of metalesque music that peeks its head into the Venn diagram of music I like, and this track does everything I'd ask from its genre. Crunchy guitar, cryptic lyrics, use of words like nepenthe (the plant that causes forgetfulness in the Odyssey). A flute riff? Woodcut album art? Please and thank you.

Steps Beach - Childish Gambino

Childish Gambino's final album, Bando Stone and the New World is certainly the most scattered of his works, but it plays with his strengths and new territory in fun ways. Steps Beach highlights his vocal talents in an echo of his EP Summer Pack and, writing from a frigid Friday, I'm ready to get back to warm weather where this sort of energy feels more appropo.