grooving through: vol. 19

This week: Vince Guaraldi, Hall & Oates, The Hamilton Mixtape, Maya Hawke, and The Hold Steady.

I have 254 records. Some, I bought; some, Jake bought; others were hand-me-downs.

Every week (or so), I’m going to listen to 5 of them, A-Z, and tell you what I think. It’s music writing, but it’s also about memory, feeling, discovery, and looking back at what we love most. I’ll mostly dive into my favorite of the week and write a few sentences about the others — but anything goes, so who’s to say?

I’m not skipping a single LP: the mountain of Billy Joel records we got from my mom, the video game soundtrack, the used-bookstore impulse buys.

Let’s get spinning.

Vince Guaraldi — It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966/2018)

I am, through and through, a Snoopy girl. And it’s always a good time of year to get cozy, which is exactly what Vince Guaraldi’s soundtracks offer. I have a general soft spot for the Peanuts specials — Halloween most of all.

I don’t know how Guaraldi bottled so much joy into this theme, but he did it — the flutter of the flute, the restrained piano runs, the undercurrent of predictable melody. I keep meaning to make it out to an event with JIJI’s Jazz Club in LA (they’re always doing something Snoopy); I can really appreciate the way jazz fits into an animated world.

I’m Jewish, but I figure this is what the yule log and carols do for everyone else.

The tracks are whimsical without interrupting, bright without faking cheeriness, thoughtful and well-constructed. Even the smaller pieces are lovely.

That’s all I got!

How I got it: Nat bought it for me!

When I first listened to it: Technically, as a little kid

Hall & Oates — Abandoned Luncheonette (1973)

This record is, I must imagine, a mainstay in used record shops: It’s pretty moderate background music with its neat falsettos and even pacing — sort of the invention of “easy listening,” if you ask me.

A lot of Abandoned Luncheonette is so clean and earnest that it feels primed to provide a stark contrast to a very serious scene on TV (like “Crystal Blue Persuasion” in Breaking Bad). I also picked up on echoes of Jake’s favorite, our home’s ever-present Tommy James & the Shondells.

“She’s Gone” is the only song I recognize, and it’s evidently the album’s breakthrough track, leaning more into the deep, soulful rumble of the early ‘70s. Their voices slot neatly together; even in unison, they’re telling two different stories. The chorus opens cleanly as they trade and share lines; suspended notes offer yearning without depression, and the warm horns keep us embraced.

I also found the ballad “Laughing Boy” beautiful, with its piano and the mournful horn, the vocals caught in a chamber. What a tenderness toward a friend who’s pretending they’re not suffering. What wonderful vibrato on “pass the time alone.” It’s sort of Broadway, which I’ll almost always like.

How I got it: My mom’s copy

When I first listened to it: Honestly, probably now

The Hamilton Mixtape (2016)

Surprise, everyone — this record is not mine! The theater girl is not the culprit; Jake is the Hamilton man of the house. (I actually saw Hamilton for the first time last year.)

The mixtape’s conceit is that different singers and rappers perform songs from Hamilton (including some deleted tracks). That’s pretty much it. And we gotta say it: What a product of its time.

I liked hearing The Roots and Busta Rhymes on there: Their performance deepened the rap legitimacy of the musical’s perhaps most famous song, “My Shot.”

But a few pitfalls: Lin-Manuel Miranda couldn’t keep himself off the record. I’m sorry, guys, but this is my truth. Also: Usher sounds trapped in the aughts — somebody save him! And Jimmy Fallon singing just makes me violent.

The Hamilton Mixtape carries an indescribable Broadway pomp, even with its roster of contemporary artists, and because of that — and its heavy exposition — it can’t cross the threshold into being a rap record. If anything, some of these covers leach songs of their emotion (“Satisfied” loses all its punch).

But it’s not horrible, or anything. And there are some highlights.

The obvious “appeal to Caitlin” here is Regina Spektor on “Dear Theodosia” … and look, I know I’m so biased, but it’s the only song up to that point (track 7) where the performance feels fresh from the original. Maybe it’s helped by the nonspecificity of the lyrics, or maybe her unique clarity slots in neatly here. Ben Folds, a longtime collaborator, blends well, and the song’s piano is very much her piano. Chance the Rapper matches Spektor’s approach well on the reprise, his general voice-to-the-back presentation giving the song a reflective quality.

I think it’s an interesting enough project, but the musical stands substantially on its own; this is just a bonus, a side lark. It didn’t expand my experience or really recontextualize the soundtrack for me, which I would’ve really loved. If you’d told me it was created to raise money for a cause, that’s the explanation I would accept most.

But really, 2016 just wanted it.

How I got it: Jake bought it

When I first listened to it: I’ve heard it in the background before, but paid the most attention now

Maya Hawke — Moss (2022)

I reviewed Maya’s latest record for Pitchfork.

Maya Hawke’s voice can be warm, full, and introspective, or it can veer gossamer-thin: easily lost, not fully tangible. I felt she recognized her strengths on 2026’s Maitreya Corso (see the link above), and in 2022’s Moss the discernment — her introspection on what songs are substantive enough to stick — is beginning to form.

On “Hiatus,” the riff at the end of lines, how she sings harmony, the sound of the guitar slide: They feel intimate and open instead of intimate and diluted.

Side 2 is where she really picks up.

On “South Elroy,” when Hawke pulls in the drums, that grounds her voice and provides momentum. There’s a series of satisfying slow-downs and speed-ups. The song itself is a good predicator of Maitreya’s strengths.

In “Thérèse,” she shows her capability for expansive world building — and when she nails it, that makes some of the other songs seem so inconsequential. The ebb and flow is watery, mystical.

I also love the little runs in “Sticky Little Words.” It’s a loving, lovely way to sing, like you’re walking up or down a ladder, that’s often used by her then-collaborator/now-husband Christian Lee Hutson (whose time in this newsletter is coming quite soon).

How I got it: Jake bought it at Songbyrd in DC — it’s orange

When I first listened to it: A few years ago

The Hold Steady — Boys and Girls in America (2006)

Careening downhill in a car. Bulleting through Midtown. Bobbing my head on the train. Jumping up and down to Craig Finn’s yell at Brooklyn Bowl until my purse strap broke.

Boys and Girls in America has shared so much of my life with me.

I said in the last newsletter that The Gaslight Anthem is my Springsteen. So is The Hold Steady. (Yes, I know both frontmen are touring solo work right now; yes, I’m excited; yes, the news popped up in my inbox as two sequential emails from one PR contact.)

Boys and Girls in America is obsessed with the cross-section of literature and partying in a way I think Hunter S. Thompson would absolutely agree with. This is most the case on opener “Stuck Between Stations,” where references to John Berryman and Sal Paradise impress themselves among hyper-casual language (“She was a real cool kisser”).

And these interests — the raging party and the self-awareness around storytelling’s limits in the effort to exert control — are both present in the first song, acting as theses: respectively, “He likes the warm feeling, but he’s tired of all the dehydration” and “She said, ‘You’re pretty good with words, but words wont save your life’/ And they didn’t, so he died.”

(Later, in “First Night,” he laments, “she said, ‘Words alone never could save us.’” Lots of smart women here who won’t let you rely on references to get through the conversation.)

To look at the writer, all he has are words; they’re not enough to pull anyone free from drugs, from ruin, even as the party loses its promise and euphoria.

At times, Finn’s viewing the scene from above, toppling the escapism with heavy self-awareness, akin to a protector or narrator; at others, he’s inside them, fully embracing the insanity.

We take a breath on the slow, open worlds of “First Night” and “Citrus.” “First Night” is an ode to flickering flames of lost souls, a heavy-hearted look from origins to present. But as Finn builds to reflection, repeating “boys and girls in America” in chorus, it crashes into a definitive, suddenly cruel outro: “Don’t bother talking to the guys/With their hot soft eyes/You know they’re already taken/Don’t even speak to all those sequencers and beats boys/When they kiss they spit white noise.”

I was trying to look up the lyric meaning and lost my mind when I came across this.

“Citrus” is weary and reflective — deceptively simple and deeply compelling. Deft, spare fingerpicking etches out a stale bar in the quiet hours, the comfort of a drink and solitude.

But those are our two moments of relative calm: The rest of the album is mired in the titular “Massive Nights,” the agelessness (the chaperone mentions?!) and disorientation of partying.

Nearly every song is trapped in the “party pit” — we’re dancing along through the demons, the highs, the lows, in a raucous smash of bodies. Finn’s voice juts in like a nail, a snarl, no matter how full of hi-hats or bright tones the songs are.

It’s driving rock, full of collisions, and when you get lost in the joy of instrumentation, guitar solos, and catchy choruses, suddenly you’re joining in on the mess, losing sight of the seriousness beneath (“it started recreational/then it got medical”) — a clear parallel to the revelers themselves.

Now, just some lyrics I love that I didn’t get to mention yet (some of his best are full verses; I’ll spare you those):

• “The scratches on my back, they formed into a choir/And belted out a chorus.”

• “She was a really cool kisser, and she wasn’t all that strict of a Christian/She was a damn good dancer, but she wasn’t all that great of a girlfriend.”

• “Hey citrus, hey liquor/I love it when you touch each other.”

• “Lost in fog and love and faithless fear/I’ve had kisses that make Judas seem sincere.”

• “We drink and we dry up, and now we crumble into dust/ We get wet and we corrode, and now we’re covered up in rust.”

How I got it: Jake got this for me as a gift — when he gave it to me, the record was out of press and harder to buy, and he nabbed it on Discogs from a U.K. (funny!) shop.

When I first listened to it: I’m guessing high school