As previously shared, I had the pleasure and honor of being on the air at my alma mater college radio station last week. In part because I limited myself to music released between fall 1988 and spring 1993, and in part because I relied heavily on records that survived pruning from the station’s stacks, I got into a definite groove at times. There were a whole lot of thick guitars, punching drums, and lyrics shouted with slacker urgency. Square in the middle of the shift, amidst other online chatter, an old friend of mine posted the observation “I think we have discovered the core of Seeger-Rock.” And, your honors, I’m going to have stand and sigh, “Guilty as charged.”

I need not always cast my ears back a few decades to hear songs that have the sweet, tuneful clatter than I adore. Why, just this week the Philadelphia quarter Church Girls released a new single that I would have gladly slipped over a spindle and cast out in the airwaves back when my whole identity was embedded in my playlist. (That last part might still be the case, but let’s pretend I’ve existentially diversified since then.) The opening riff alone begs for a place in one of my bygone shifts, sharing time with the likes of Meat Puppets and Eleventh Dream Day. That doesn’t mean it’s retro. I’d say it’s timeless.