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4/ Seeing them live made it click even more for me. There’s something in their funk, humor and complete disregard for categories that reminds me of Illya Kuryaki and the Valderramas—not imitation, just that same Argentine ability to absorb everything and make it weirdly their own.

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3/ That’s what makes the album fun to revisit. One listen you notice the jokes, another the groove, another some tiny production detail buried underneath everything. It rewards attention without ever feeling serious about proving how clever it is.

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2/ The surprise is how disciplined the music is underneath all that personality. The bass hits hard, the drums are tight, the arrangements turn on a dime. They can make something ridiculous, danceable and technically sharp all at once.

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1/ FREE SPIRITS feels restless in the best way. It jumps between funk, electronic music, rock, pop and whatever else gets in the way. The point isn’t to sound “eclectic.” It’s to keep moving before anybody can put them in a box.

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CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso FREE SPIRITS #MusicaArgentina #NowSpinning Alternative Pop / Funk / Latin Electronic / Experimental Rock

5/ I came to the Grateful Dead later than some, but maybe that made the discovery even better. Dead Set opened a whole world of American music, improvisation and community for me—and I’m still wandering through it. Long live Jerry. 🌹⚡

4/ That’s what this album taught me about the Dead: the songs aren’t fixed objects. “Franklin’s Tower,” “Fire on the Mountain,” “Brokedown Palace”—they breathe differently live. The magic is in what happens between the musicians.

3/ “Friend of the Devil” is still my favorite version. Slower and more reflective than the studio recording, it feels less like a folk tune and more like something lived-in. Jerry’s voice and guitar give it this beautiful, tired wisdom.

2/ Released in 1981 from shows recorded the year before, Dead Set catches the electric Dead sounding loose but focused. Jerry, Weir, Phil, Brent leave space for the songs to stretch without ever losing the groove.

1/ This was my doorway into the Dead. I found them in the U.S. around 23, and I’m glad I did. Some bands don’t arrive when you expect them to. Sometimes you have to live a little before their language starts making sense.

The Grateful Dead Dead Set #GratefulDead #NowSpinning Jam Rock / Psychedelic Rock / Americana

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5/ There’s something refreshing about a band returning after so long and refusing to simply recreate the music people already loved. Eat the Elephant takes a few listens, but those are often the records that stay. Growth should sound a little uncomfortable.

4/ What I like is that the record asks for patience. The guitars still hit when they need to, but they’re no longer the whole conversation. Piano, synths, silence and Maynard’s phrasing create tension in a different way. It feels older, but not softer.

3/ “The Doomed,” “Disillusioned” and “TalkTalk” carry a lot of the album’s weight. Technology, religion, apathy, the way we distract ourselves from uncomfortable realities—there’s plenty of anger here, but it comes out controlled rather than screamed.

2/ Released in 2018 after a 14-year gap between studio albums, it sounds like a band that had no interest in pretending time hadn’t passed. Billy Howerdel’s arrangements feel spacious and uneasy, while Maynard James Keenan sounds more reflective than explosive.

1/ Eat the Elephant isn’t the A Perfect Circle album you put on expecting Mer de Noms again. It’s slower, stranger and more patient. Piano, electronics and atmosphere do as much work as the guitars, and that shift is exactly what makes it interesting.

A Perfect Circle Eat the Elephant #APerfectCircle #NowSpinning Alternative Rock / Art Rock / Electronic Rock

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5/ Maybe that’s why this record means more to me than a normal greatest-hits album. Music was always around, quietly connecting Caracas to America and one version of life to the next. Sometimes the soundtrack makes sense only when you look back.

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4/ Released in 2000, Greatest Hits shows just how much ground he covered—“Let Love Rule,” “It Ain’t Over ’Til It’s Over,” “Fly Away,” “Again.” Rock, soul, funk, psychedelia, pop. Old influences, but never just nostalgia.

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3/ Then after I moved to America came his version of “American Woman.” Different country, different stage of life, but there was Lenny again. That’s one of the strange gifts of music: the same artist can become attached to completely different places and memories.

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2/ In Venezuela, “Are You Gonna Go My Way” was everywhere. That guitar riff sounded enormous. Kravitz had this way of taking Hendrix, Zeppelin, funk and soul, mixing it all together, and making it sound completely natural for the ’90s.

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1/ Some compilations are just collections of hits. This one feels more like a map of different parts of my life. Lenny Kravitz somehow connected two worlds for me—music I knew in Venezuela and music that followed me into my first years in the U.S.

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Lenny Kravitz Greatest Hits #LennyKravitz #NowSpinning Rock / Funk Rock / Soul / Psychedelic Rock

Wow. The memories , the beauty of music . I saw him a couple years ago here near Boston and he was great !

I love Dylan , mostly his 90s and rolling thunder era

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Look at those prices !! What a show !

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5/ For me, The River is one of those albums that explains why Springsteen means so much to people. Big enough for an arena, personal enough to feel like somebody telling you a story across the kitchen table.

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4/ That’s the Bruce I love. He can make blue-collar life feel heroic without pretending it’s easy. There’s pride here, but also exhaustion, compromise and people trying to hold things together. Very Northeast. Very human.

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3/ What makes the record special is the balance. “Hungry Heart” and “Sherry Darling” can feel loose and joyful, then “The River” or “Independence Day” turns around and hits you with adulthood, disappointment and the weight of choices.

2/ Released in 1980, it’s a huge double album, but it never feels bloated to me. The E Street Band is ridiculously tight—piano, organ, sax, guitars, drums—all pushing these songs forward with the kind of energy that sounds built for a crowded room.

1/ The River feels like the Northeast to me. Working people, long drives, bars, factories, relationships under pressure, little victories that matter more because life is hard. Bruce makes ordinary lives feel worth writing songs about.

Bruce Springsteen The River #BruceSpringsteen #NowSpinning Heartland Rock / Folk Rock

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5/ There’s something almost radical about how quiet The Trinity Session still sounds. In a world constantly asking to be louder and faster, this record asks you to sit down and listen closely. More than 35 years later, it still feels intimate and alive.

4/ What I love is how old songs and new songs seem to belong to the same world here. Country, folk, blues and rock lose their borders. It’s a reminder that genres are useful labels, but great music usually gets interesting when people stop obeying them.

3/ Margo Timmins’ voice is the center of it all: calm, haunted, never forcing anything. “Blue Moon Revisited,” “Misguided Angel” and their version of “Sweet Jane” prove you don’t need volume to create intensity.

2/ Recorded in Toronto’s Church of the Holy Trinity in 1987, the band played together around a single ambisonic microphone. You can hear the room itself in the record—the air, the distance, the natural echo. It feels less produced than simply captured.

1/ Some records don’t grab you by the collar. They wait for the room to get quiet. The Trinity Session is like that—slow, spacious, almost whispered. The kind of album that reminds you how powerful restraint can be.

Cowboy Junkies The Trinity Session #CowboyJunkies #NowSpinning Alt-Country / Folk Rock / Dreamy Americana

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5/ That makes SOL feel less like a document and more like a conversation with it. Tradition remembered, reshaped and carried somewhere else. A fitting way to end the week: music showing how culture keeps moving even after people leave home.

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4/ What makes this interesting is that it isn’t music made from inside Venezuela today. Raúl Monsalve has been based in France for years, so the Venezuelan roots arrive filtered through distance, migration and everything he’s absorbed abroad.

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3/ “Como el Sol” even reworks a John Coltrane idea through Afro-Venezuelan drums and psychedelic synths, while “Machete no hace piquito” mixes Barlovento percussion with Afrobeat. Familiar traditions meeting sounds from somewhere else and coming back transformed.

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2/ Released in 2025, SOL was shaped by musicians from the Venezuelan and Latin American diaspora in Europe. You can hear Caracas in the percussion, but also Paris, London and decades of musical exchange. That mixture is the whole point.

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1/ Some records make tradition feel like something alive, not something preserved behind glass. SOL takes Venezuelan rhythms and sends them through funk, jazz, electronics and Afrobeat. Deep roots, but absolutely looking forward.

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Raúl Monsalve y Los Forajidos SOL #NowSpinning Afro-Venezuelan / Psychedelic Funk / Afrobeat / Spiritual Jazz

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5/ If you’ve never explored Venezuelan music, this is a beautiful place to start. You don’t need the memories attached to these songs to understand them. Sometimes good songwriting does the traveling for you.

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4/ For people who leave home, music can become a kind of portable geography. A song can carry a city, a family, a language, even an entire period of life. Yordano’s music has that quality—very Venezuelan, but emotionally easy for anyone to enter.

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3/ “Días de Junio,” “Aquí Viene la Noche” and “Perla Negra” are great examples. Beautiful melodies on the surface, but underneath there’s always a little melancholy. That combination of warmth and sadness is a big part of what makes his music endure.

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2/ Yordano’s strength has always been the way he makes everyday emotions feel important. Love, loneliness, memory, city life—nothing is exaggerated. The songs feel lived-in, which is probably why they’ve stayed with people for so long.

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