WK: Catchy Alt Tracks #618
Thirty-two tracks from June 2018, when the alt-radio rotation finally caught up with what the friend group had been listening to for a year. The same songs that were on the standard June edition are on this one — Jack White, Sir Sly, Portugal. The Man — but the sequencing is different. The standard edition is the cross-genre survey, the catchy-alt variant is the deliberate commitment to the alt-rock peaks the year had been building toward.
Jack White “Over and Over and Over” opens because the song is exactly what an opener should be: distorted guitar, propulsive rhythm, a vocal that sounds like the singer can’t quite contain himself. White’s solo catalog is uneven but the moments when it clicks are the moments when nothing else in the year quite measures up, and the lead single from “Boarding House Reach” is one of those.
Sir Sly “&Run” sits in the front quarter as the moody-alt-pop anchor of the rotation. The trio’s catalog had been on heavy rotation in the group chat for about six months by then, ever since one of the friends had sent a link to the album with the message “this is the one.” She was right. The album lives between alt-pop, indie-rock, and electronic in a way that doesn’t quite resolve into any of them, which is the thing that makes it work.
Portugal. The Man “Live In The Moment” is the singalong anchor. The band had crossover-success the previous year with “Feel It Still” and the follow-up singles were the slightly-quieter cuts that the radio kept playing without quite breaking through to the same level. “Live In The Moment” specifically is the one that worked. The chorus is built around a single line that you keep singing for ten minutes after the song ends.
Joywave “Destruction” is the darker-alt-pop pull. The Rochester band has a catalog that the indie-rotation has been criminally undervaluing for years. The track is built around a percussive bassline that the band’s catalog tends to lean on, and the placement after the Portugal. The Man singalong is doing the work of pivoting the rotation toward the moodier back half.
Sir Sly “High” follows mid-rotation as the second cut from the same album. The deliberate two-track sequencing of the same artist is the rotation’s small acknowledgment that the band’s catalog rewards the cumulative listen rather than the single-track sample. “High” specifically is the cut that the standard radio rotation didn’t quite know what to do with — it’s not a hook-and-chorus song, it’s a slow-build, and the back half of the track is where the album as a whole reveals itself.
Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats “You Worry Me” carries the soul-revival side of the rotation. Rateliff’s first album with the Night Sweats was the soul-revival breakthrough of 2015 and the follow-up landed in 2018 with less fanfare but better songwriting. “You Worry Me” is the cut where the band stops trying to be a soul-revival act and just commits to being a great band with a horn section.
lovelytheband “broken” was the streaming-discovery breakout of the year. The duo’s catalog is uneven but the lead single hit at exactly the right cultural moment, when the alt-pop rotation was hungry for songs about the specific kind of anxiety that the late-2010s social-media context had created. Glass Animals “Black Mambo” closes the front-half block — a band whose entire catalog was about to crossover but hadn’t quite yet, and whose presence on the June 2018 rotation predicted the next two years of cultural absorption.
Thirty-two tracks lands at about two hours. The right length for a porch-evening rotation in June when the daylight runs past nine and the music has to fill the gap between dinner and the moment when everyone admits it’s time to go inside. The catchy-alt variant is for the friends who wanted the alt-rock peaks committed to. The standard edition is for the friends who wanted the cross-genre survey. Both versions made it into the group chat. Both got played. The friend who specifically requested the catchy-alt cut texted me a photo of his porch at 11 p.m. with the playlist still running. That’s the metric.
The catchy-alt variant was the cousin to the standard June Kickoff — same songs, slightly different sequencing, more commitment to the alt-rock side of the year. The standard edition is the cross-genre survey; the variant is the rotation’s small piece of advocacy for the alt-rock catalog that the friend group had been deep in for months.
