How I got over

Music can see you through a lot. (It is not unlike faith, or drugs, or friends, not that these things are mutually exclusive.) It may not always be the cure for what ails you, but it can make certain situations — from the pain of separation to the crushingly familiar day-to-day routine — more bearable, at least. Here are a few albums released this year that have been helping me get over long bus rides, feelings of frustration, random sadness, homicidal impulses, and just general boredom.

THE SILVER SEAS, Chateau Revenge! One of my favorite bands at the moment, The Silver Seas deal in “Old-fashioned, proper tunes, played superbly with blissful, sun-drenched harmonies,” according to The Word. I started listening to them in the mid-2000s, when they were still known as The Bees; they changed their name recently to avoid being confused with a UK band of the same name, and actually upped their insane catchiness factor — song after song, from the sweet romance of Candy to the ELO-referencing What’s the Drawback? and beyond, they keep up the quality across a whole album’s worth of instant rock/pop classics. To quote the quasi-fictional Steve Porcaro portrayed in Yacht Rock, they make “Smooth music that rocks.”

GOLD MOTEL, Summer House. In an interview last year with Gold Motel’s Greta Salpeter (of The Hush Sound fame), she said that lately, “I’ve been worshipping Brian Wilson, devouring the Beach Boy musical box sets and learning much of the material.” She lists other influences as “The Kinks, The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Motown recordings, T-Rex, and Peter, Paul, and Mary.” That may be all you need to know to determine whether or not you will like Gold Motel’s debut full-length, really. Or listen to something as immediate and irresistible as the singalong kiss-off Don’t Send the Searchlights — or the equally alluring Perfect In My Mind — and you’ll know.

THE ROOTS, How I Got Over. I’ve been getting every Roots album since “Illadelph Halflife” — I love their funky/jazzy approach to hip-hop, complete with smart, impassioned rhymes (as opposed to sheer braggadocio) and live instruments (as opposed to samples and loops). But to be honest, I have rarely enjoyed their albums all the way through. There are always a few standouts that I play more than I play the other songs (You Got Me from “Things Fall Apart,” Star off “The Tipping Point, and so on). This new release, however, is great all the way through, collaborations (with other hip-hop/soul stalwarts, as well as stranger partners in crime like Joanna Newsom), calls to arms and all. Goodbye to skipping, hello all-day soundtrack to feeling cooler than I actually am.