On This Track: Midweek Listening #12

Anne

12 minutes ago

6 min read

Five tracks about love, everyday frustrations, strange memories, surveillance and the hard part of letting go.

Some songs are about wanting to spend your life with someone. Others are about being fed up with just about everything, or finding yourself in a place that feels familiar and completely unreal at the same time. This week in On This Track: Midweek Listening 12, we've got five very different takes on those feelings. CAR287 bring a love song built for a room full of voices. CorMae turn everyday annoyances into punk. The Blue Aeroplanes take inspiration from a painting and end up somewhere between poetry and science fiction. Dummy make a song about surveillance that still gets your feet moving, while Sadurn sit with the painful uncertainty of a relationship coming apart. Five different records, five reasons to press play.

CAR287 - “End Of The Day”

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Five men lounge in a studio with open books mounted on the wall, on an orange couch and rug. — Photo by CAR287

Winnipeg rock band CAR287 have spent the past two years playing shows around their hometown, with a couple of bigger festival appearances thrown into the mix this summer. The five-piece headlined the Icelandic Festival of Gimli and opened for Smash Mouth and The Pumps/Orphan at Rockin' the Fields of Minnedosa. It's been a busy stretch for a band whose first release was a self-titled EP in 2022, followed by the 13-track album "Looking Through the Lens" in 2025. That album drew on classic rock, indie influences and stories inspired by life on the Canadian prairies. On “End Of The Day”, CAR287 turn their attention to something much more personal. The new single is a love song about finding the person you really want to be with, built around a catchy guitar hook, keyboards and a chorus the band say gets people singing along at shows. Recorded at CTRL Space Records in Winnipeg, it's the first track from their upcoming five-song EP. CAR287 describe the song as energetic and say it's been getting people dancing and smiling at their gigs. It's easy to see why a chorus like this would work in a live setting. The band have spent the last couple of years getting out in front of audiences, and “End Of The Day” gives them a new song to bring into the set as they move toward the next release. For now, there's just the single to go on. For now, “End Of The Day” is all we've heard from the upcoming EP, with four more tracks still to come.

🎧 Stream “End of the Day” by CAR287 on Apple Music

CorMae - ”Everything is SO GREAT!”

Four people pose against a dark backdrop, making playful punk faces; one wears a THEY/THEM pin, another flashes a rock hand sign. — Photo by CorMae

The title alone tells you that Austin punk band CorMae probably don't think everything is quite as great as it sounds. Their seven-track album "Everything is SO GREAT!" takes on life's frustrations, relationships and what the band call first-world problems, with a playful approach they describe as “riot grrrl egg punk.” The track list includes “Time Deleter”, “RUT”, “Credit Card? You Got It!”, and “Tired” - everyday annoyances that don't necessarily deserve a grand statement, but can still get under your skin. CorMae bring that feeling into their live shows, where audience participation and an inclusive atmosphere are part of the point. Their aim is for people to leave feeling better than when they arrived. The band are also heading out on their DIY “Sunny Side Tour” across the western United States from October 21 to November 12, following a summer that included dates supporting of Montreal.

🎧 Stream “Everything is SO GREAT!” by CorMae on Apple Music

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The Blue Aeroplanes - “Silver Lounge”

Eight people pose in front of a geometric concrete building and painted fence; one shirt reads Blue Aeroplanes, mood relaxed. — Photo credit: Bee Monelle

A painting by John Byrne provided the starting point for “Silver Lounge”, the title track from The Blue Aeroplanes' upcoming album "Tales From The Silver Lounge", due November 27 via ArtStar Records. The painting depicts a long-closed establishment on Paisley High Street and now hangs in the living room of frontman Gerard Langley, who came across Byrne's work while reading exhibition catalogs during long hospital stays. The song takes that real place somewhere much stranger: Langley imagines a disreputable bar on a 1950s-themed planet, with customers from different galaxies and eras. It's a fitting setting for a band whose art-rock has always made room for unusual literary images and spoken-sung vocals. At around two minutes, “Silver Lounge” keeps things brisk, with a rousing chorus and a punk edge. The new record will be the Bristol band's 14th album, another entry in a discography that has never been particularly interested in staying predictable.

🎧 Stream “Silver Lounge” by The Blue Aeroplanes on Apple Music

Dummy - “N of 1”

People climb a large pile of logs and dirt at dusk, beneath a pink sky and dark trees. — Dummy by Kyle Berger

Dummy's new single “N of 1” pairs glacial guitar drones with jungle-inspired drums and breakbeats. The Los Angeles band's sound is immediately rhythmic, but the subject is less comfortable: the normalization of surveillance and the way people have grown accustomed to being watched. Keyboardist Emma Maatman came up with the video's central idea using the zooming movement of Google Street View, matching the visuals to the song's rhythm. It's an everyday tool that takes on a different meaning in this context. The track is the final single from "do you love the color of the sky?", out October 16 via Polyvinyl. The album follows 2024's "Free Energy", but moves toward a more skeptical lyrical outlook while keeping the band's mix of drone, post-rock, and bright pop influences. Dummy will also bring their live show to the UK and Europe in early 2027, including a February 4 date at Kantine am Berghain in Berlin.

🎧 Stream “N of 1” by Dummy on Apple Music

Sadurn - “the weight”

Four casually dressed friends sit on a porch, posing by a boarded window with trees behind them, relaxed and serious. — Photo credit Juliette Boulay

Sadurn's “the weight” opens "The Underworld", the Philadelphia band's second album, out October 16 through Run For Cover Records. Songwriter G DeGroot describes it as a song about gay heartbreak and the difficult stretch when a relationship is falling apart but the feelings haven't gone away. You want to fix things, you keep going back over what happened, and the decision in front of you feels almost too heavy to make. The song features a guitar solo by Jon Cox that DeGroot has singled out as a favorite moment on the record. It was recorded live with the band, and they decided to keep that take. The album itself grew out of a difficult period for DeGroot, involving a breakup, chronic pain, and problems with their voice. After stepping away from music for a time, they eventually returned to finish the record. That experience informs "The Underworld", but “the weight” stays close to the uncertainty of its central moment: knowing something may be ending without being ready to accept it.

🎧 Stream “the weight” by Sadurn on Apple Music

A Few Things Music Still Gets Right

There's a lot of pressure to keep up, have an opinion, and move on quickly when something goes wrong. Music doesn't always work that way. A song can stay with an uncomfortable feeling for three minutes, give frustration somewhere to go, or turn an ordinary experience into something worth sharing. We don't have to agree on what a song means for it to matter to us. Sometimes it's enough to recognize a feeling and know someone else has been there, too.

Live Tip:

Clover Stieve in Berlin

Poster of Clove R. Stevie by a river, in a red dress under floral arch; text reads Born to Live and EU/UK Tour Fall 2026 — Tour Poster by Clover Stieve

US singer-songwriter Clover Stieve brings her debut album "Born to Live" to Berlin on October 17, 2026, opening for David Duchovny at Metropol. The 12-track album moves between energetic indie pop and intimate ballads, reflecting a personal journey through grief and toward finding hope again.