Playlist Picks: Felix White

It’s always hard for a Playlist Picks subject to pick the bevvy of tracks that they’ve been enjoying recently. But that gets even harder when said subject is Felix White, one fifth of The Maccabees and, over on BBC 6 Music, one half of The Morning Session with Steve Lamacq.

“It’s been an unexpected part of my life, being in The Maccabees again and our summer shows were magical,” he reflects.

“But the tricky part for me has been balancing the six or so other jobs I have. But working with Lammo has been great, because every single time I do a show with him, I’m walking away with a whole new record to listen to and something that I’ve never heard. I’ve listened to Steve since I was a kid and he was one of the first people to champion The Maccabees, so it’s an amazing thing to be doing a show with him.”

See Felix discuss his picks below and listen to them all – alongside all other picks from the series so far – on our Playlist Picks playlist.

The Tragically Hip – ‘Bobcaygeon’

I’d never listened to The Tragically Hip before the start of this year, but I found them by complete chance in a sickeningly modern way because a comedian called Robbie James did an Instagram post and it had the song ‘Poets’ from The Tragically Hip’s Phantom Power as that little snippet of music and I thought it sounded amazing. Bobcaygeon was the third track on there and it was one of those songs that you hear once every 5 years or so that just stops you in your tracks. The detail of the description of him talking about this nowhere town sort of north of Toronto and having this revelation about it, but in a very sort of everyday way , that just fucking nailed me. I’ve been listening to that song about at least 3 times a day since and I have done for months.

Whipping Boy – ‘When We Were Young’

This one comes from Steve Lamacq. We were doing a show where all the songs were about places and it was my idea for the show, but Steve brought in a few songs and this was one of them.

I’d never heard this before, even though I had a label called Yala and we put out a band called whenyoung who were from Ireland and named after this song. If any modern music owes a debt to the current music that’s popular like Fontaines or Wunderhorse, the essence of it is really in this man . But it’s almost the same thing as a Tragically Hip song, the second you hear it, you feel like you’ve known it all your life, it feels really important to you immediately. It’s something about believing the singer and how direct and specific it is. It’s magical.

Interpol – ‘Iron City’

I was so happy to hear this song off their new album because what I fell in love with Interpol for, back in the day, was that they were just really exquisite world builders. They made a universe for you to live inside. The thing that made them really special and is that when you’re living inside those albums, they really did build a whole universe for you to like sit inside. ‘Iron City’ is an example of that and I’m so glad they’ve gone in that direction where it’s a little bit more esoteric, a little bit more atmospheric, it feels much more like cinema. I just think they’re so fantastic at that and it’s just nice to hear a band being like ‘oh yeah, what’s that thing we do?’

Emahoy – ‘The Homeless Wanderer’

We were actually doing an interview with Daniel Kessler from Interpol and he was saying that he listened to this song first thing in the morning and last thing at night and he was saying something about how it sounds like pathways in your brain and I thought wow, that sounds fucking good. I don’t know the story behind it, but when you’ve got it on you do go somewhere and you’re not occupying the space of your own head or your own problems.

You kind of drift somewhere and I’m not saying meditate, but it is that kind of feeling and I love it.

Phoebe Bridgers – ‘Still Standing’

I’m trying to listen to records in their entirety once or twice, even if I feel like I don’t like it the first time. Because I feel like so many of the records that I now love so much, the first time when I was young, I don’t know if I necessarily completely got them and then I started to love them later and I think there’s so little space for that now.

I did that with the new Phoebe Bridgers record and then it really knocks you down because it’s so melancholic.

It really demands you to focus on it or give it a kind of due respect because because she’s so sad. But she’s almost doing like an English thing where she’s occasionally making jokes about it or make it feel like you’re sitting with a friend who’s had a really big thing happen to them, but then they’re kind of realising how funny their wallowing is essentially.

With ‘Still Standing’ there’s little lines I’ve got saved on my phone because they’re so good, like “you left your suitcase by the bed Like you needed to know you could go whenever you wanted”. That feeling of wanting to escape really got me!

Listen to The Morning Session with Steve Lamacq and Felix White each weekday, 10am-12pm on 6 Music Indie Forever, available on BBC Sounds.