Planted and Enchanted: Vol. 21 - September '23

Planted and Enchanted
Written By Evan Hammonds
 
“It’s what I do
I wait for you”
— I Wait for You, alex g
 

You can enjoy the Planted and Enchanted: Vol. 21 playlist in its entirety on Spotify. Just click on the included Spotify plugin.

Playlist Highlight: I Wait for You, alex g

By the time you’re reading this, there’s a decent chance that the Spotify link to the song serving as the focal point for the essay is dead. Pushing up daisies. Kaput.

That’s because “I Wait for You” by alex g doesn’t really seem to appear on any album, e.p., or 7 inch, and thus has not been hoovered up by the long, green, Swedish Spotify tentacles in any official capacity. All sightings of the song are unsubstantiated. It’s the musical equivalent of a Chupacabra.

Even a Google search, the conduit of all documented human knowledge gets not one, but two things wrong. First, it lists the artist as capitalized “Alex G” which goes against his preferred lowercase aesthetic to the annoyance of most grammarians and anyone who has ever started a sentence with the words, “Well, actually…” 

Just as crucially, it erroneously tags the track as belonging to the extended play album “EASY” (in which all of the letters are capitalized. I know, it’s confusing.) However, if you click through this link in order to view the e.p.’s tracklist, “I Wait for You” is nowhere to be found.

So how did this song, which kinda doesn’t even exist, even find its way to me?

Details:

First, the Spotify piece. Anonymous individuals upload the song (from whereabouts unknown) to Spotify under a newly generated artist name.

The particular version in my (our?) playlist is from the band/shell company “alex_g_offline” (Apparently there was no time for spacing, it all had to be one word. Although to be fair, they nailed the appropriate capitalization.)

The album is entitled “1234”, so Big Bird can’t be ruled out as a suspect given his affinity for counting.

The album art appears to portray an ill-tempered bunny with an insatiable bloodlust, evoking vague similarities to Goya’s painting “Saturn Devouring his Son” (1823). Wouldn’t have been my first choice, but also wouldn’t have been my last.

Since Spotify - and this is just a guess - doesn’t have contractual rights to a song that hasn’t actually been published, I’m assuming it has to strike these down periodically. When it does, this cycle repeats itself - albeit under a different upload. I know this firsthand because a previous version vanished from all of my playlists. So, just in case that happens again, I’ve provided a YouTube link to serve as your backup.

With that out of the way, I’ll address my second point.

The primary way I discover new music at this moment in time is through snippets of songs accompanying TikTok videos.

Sophisticated? No.

Cool? Not really.

Effective? Yeppers.

TikTok is a platform built on short attention spans and trends, so the dominant pop tracks of the moment are at the forefront of the rotation but it’s common for “sped-up” edits of songs to gain regular play as well. Or, songs can go in the complete opposite direction and be slowed down while being scattered, smothered, and covered with reverb.

Then there’s a song like this one that gains a foothold. It isn’t new or poppy. It isn’t sped up or slowed down. It does however quietly capture a mood felt by a silent majority.

I’ll explain.

We live in an insincere era and have for a while now. It’s dominated by sarcasm and deliberate irony, from the television we consume to the way we dress. Sincere dialog is replaced with a meme or a gif. Onsight filming locations replaced with a green screen.

It’s not that styles don’t come back around, they always do. I mean I was there for tie-dye shirts and yoyos in the nineties. But the difference is now it's more of “Look how stupid this is, but I know it’s stupid so that means I’m in on the joke,” as opposed to being truly inspired by an earlier time. 

Consider the default “guy” look, it’s nothing but mustaches. Occasionally mullets.

In a way, this is just a parody of men who wore this style authentically just a few decades ago.

Don’t get me started on women wearing bucket hats.

This era has led to a sincerity deficit which has led to a thirst for songs like this one. The fuzzy, lo-fi homespun production feels more real than the more polished songs so common today.

The subject matter - a variety of characters involved in nonchalant drug dealings, domestic abuse, and shaky mental health - might seem bleak (because it is), but the thing is, it feels true. 

The way people’s lives are presented to us is often via a highlight reel displayed on social media, so these lyrical and musical “vibes” are as refreshing. 

It’s why you feel more alive sitting in the pouring rain than you do staring at a beautiful sunset that adorns the wallpaper of your work laptop.

So I hope this first-term Obama era, where-did-this-even-come-from song makes you feel real and alive, even if the link to its accompanying Spotify track dies.

What is Planted and Enchanted?

If you’re anything like me, you surely have a “junk drawer” somewhere in your home. It probably consists of an old flashlight with dead batteries in it, a handful of rubber bands alongside some pens running low on ink, enough loose keys for you to qualify as a middle school janitor, some birthday cards given to you years ago (how quickly can I throw these away without it being rude? Better wait another decade just to be safe.), the box to your old iPhone simply because it’s a pretty darn cool box, and a small library of service manuals for among other things: your refrigerator, hot water heater, and that Instant Pot you used just the one time.

I don’t consider my junk drawer “worthless” mind you, but rather see it a collection of delightful discoveries (Hey! I didn’t know I had a yo-yo!), and delightful rediscoveries (So that’s where my playing cards were!).

That’s my aim for this playlist series: Planted and Enchanted. A monthly track list consisting of songs that likely won’t fit perfectly together in a classic album sense, but are useful in planting the seeds of discovery of new genres, artists, and songs as well as the unearthing of music you loved but had long since forgotten about. Who knows, there may even be a hidden theme or two that the savvy listener can piece together. The best part about this playlist? If you don’t like it, that’s okay. We’re talking about junk after all.

If you have a specific song that you’ve recently discovered or come to love, we’d love to hear from you. Just email us at freshcutfinds@gmail.com. We’re planning to roll out more content and a new playlist series in the coming months. Stay tuned!

Each month, we put together a playlist of our favorite discoveries new & old. Each playlist will be about the length of a mix CD (80 mins) and will be sent around the 15th of each month. Subscribe with your email address to receive the monthly Planted and Enchanted playlist, plus other occasional speciaty playlists.

Evan Hammonds
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Planted and Enchanted: Vol. 22 - December '23
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Unearthed Vol. 17