This week at Glitch&Gold...
THE SUNDAY PORCH
WEEK ONE
A week of independent music, old songs and new discoveries.
Sunday.
A good day to slow things down a little and look back at what we heard this week.
At Glitch&Gold we spend a lot of time looking for music. Some of it arrives in our inbox. Some of it turns up while digging through new releases, old records and playlists. And sometimes a song or an artist stays with us a little longer than expected.
That was the thread running through our first week.
INDIE
We started with a word that gets used everywhere these days: indie.
At some point, indie became a genre. You can find it neatly labelled on Spotify, next to hundreds of other categories.
But the word started somewhere else.
It described independence. People making records outside the usual system. Small labels, small rooms, small communities. Artists finding their own way because that was simply the way they wanted to do it.
The music changed over time. The word changed with it.
For us, the idea behind it still matters.
We like artists who sound like themselves. Artists with their own reasons for making music. Sometimes that music fits neatly into a genre. Sometimes it doesn't.
KOHANNA
Kohanna was one of those artists this week.
Her story has taken her through quite a few places. Arizona, Virginia, Baltimore, Nashville, Colorado and eventually Austin.
Each place left something behind.
Nashville became an important part of her development as a songwriter. Colorado brought new influences, including the landscape and the sounds around it, which found their way into Colorado: Side A.
Then she stepped away from music for a while.
And eventually she came back.
That part of her story stayed with us.
Kohanna is now living in Austin, where she is building the next chapter of her music. Her songs move through indie folk, Americana, roots, folk and soul, while keeping a sense of her own identity.
The Waltzer, released in June, is part of that current chapter.
We don't know where the next one will take her.
That is part of the reason we are listening.
DOLLY
And then there was Dolly.
On Tuesday came the news of Dolly Parton's death at 80.
We wrote about her separately this week, trying to look past the size of her career and back toward the songs themselves.
That is where Dolly always seemed to make the most sense.
She wrote about poverty, family, work, heartbreak, faith, ambition, loss and hope.
Ordinary things.
People sitting at kitchen tables. People going to work. People leaving someone they love. People trying to make a life with whatever they have.
She had a way of making those lives feel important.
Perhaps that is why the songs travelled so far.
Country music was where she came from, but the stories belonged to everybody.
Dolly's voice is gone now.
The songs remain.
And so do the people who heard them, learned them, covered them and carried them somewhere else.
MALENA CADIZ
By Friday we were back to new music.
Our Release Spotlight this week went to Malena Cadiz and her split single, Fragile / Shoot the Moon.
Two songs that take their time.
Fragile came from Cadiz's experience of going to her first party after the COVID lockdowns. Being around people again felt strange. The distance we had all learned to keep had changed the way people moved around each other.
Shoot the Moon takes its title from the card game Hearts and turns the idea of taking a big risk into something more personal.
Love. Dreams. Failure. The possibility of losing something by going after what you want.
What caught our attention was the way Cadiz leaves room in both songs.
Her voice stays close.
The songs don't rush.
Sometimes that is all a song needs.
FOLK ROCK: ON THE ROAD
And today we arrive at something new for Glitch&Gold.
Our first Playlist Editorial.
Folk Rock: On the Road.
Some songs are made for the road.
You leave town, the buildings disappear in the mirrors and the road opens up. You put on a song and somehow it fits.
Folk rock has always had something to do with movement.
Guitars. Harmonies. Stories. Space.
There is room in the music for the world outside the window.
A song can become part of a drive. Years later, you hear it again and suddenly you remember the road, the weather, the person sitting beside you.
That was the idea behind this playlist.
There are 50 tracks.
Some are familiar. They give the playlist its roots.
Others are newer discoveries, artists and songs you may not have heard before.
That second part matters to us.
We want the familiar songs to open the door.
We want you to find something on the other side.
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