Sound has always been an integral part of my life.
I listen to music pretty much constantly—except for those rare moments when I turn it off to go deep into writing. Music helps me regulate my emotions while fully feeling them. In certain moods I know to avoid certain tracks because, as you can see from this list, some of this stuff cuts deep. But I tend to immerse myself in the emotion, the ideas, and the recursion of it all.
One moment you’re sitting in grief. The next you’re laughing. Then you’re angry. Then you’re staring out a car window at 2 a.m. wondering how you ended up where you are. Then a song comes on that reminds you that you’re still here.
Many of these songs have been with me for decades. Some were there when I was a teenager trying to figure out who I was. Some were there during addiction. Some were there after my brother died. Some were there during cancer. Some sat quietly in the background while I wrote chapters of The Recursive Man at three in the morning.
I don’t necessarily associate every song with a specific memory, but together they form a kind of emotional map of my life. If the book is the story, this playlist is a rough sketch of the weather system that produced it.
Welcome to my brain. Whiplash and all.
This list is a deliberate distillation—not every song that ever mattered, but one or two anchors chosen from the artists who have accompanied me through the long recursive loops of grief, adoption, recovery, bipolar disorder, failed relationships, spiritual searching, and the stubborn decision to keep participating in life anyway.
It mirrors the architecture of the novel itself. Heavy descent sits beside fragile beauty. Raw catharsis bleeds into haunted reflection. Repetition becomes transformation rather than resolution. These tracks occupy the same territory as the White Room, the Archive, Ollie, the Spire, and the endless attempt to understand what it means to be alive while knowing everything eventually disappears.
Playlist Stats
109 songs • Approximately 7 hours 38 minutes
Companion soundtrack to The Recursive Man.
Listen straight through for the full emotional arc or put it on shuffle and let it spiral—the way memory, grief, and editing actually work.
It’s the sound of 3 a.m. chapter revisions in Greenville. Late-night drives through South Carolina. Hospital waiting rooms. Empty apartments. Long walks. Good days. Terrible days. Staring into the Spire and choosing to keep going anyway.
I’ll get this playlist up on as many services as I can when time allows. Spotify, Apple Music, and wherever else makes sense.
Come sit in the room with it.
The Playlist
(Alphabetical by artist)
+++ (Crosses) – Pulseplagg
Acid Bath – Paegen Love Song
AFI – The Leaving Song, Pt. 2
Alex Cameron – Real Bad Lookin’
Alice In Chains – Black Gives Way to Blue
Alice In Chains – Black Gives Way to Blue (Piano Mix)
alt-J – Tessellate
Amorphis – My Kantele (Acoustic Reprise)
Arcade Fire – We Used to Wait
Audioslave – Like a Stone
Beck – Guess I’m Doing Fine
Big Head Todd & The Monsters – Broken Hearted Savior
Blind Melon – Tones of Home
Borknagar – Universal
Buddy Holly & The Crickets – Oh Boy!
Burning Brides – Stabbed In the Back of the Heart
Bush – I Beat Loneliness
Church of the Cosmic Skull – Black Slug
Coheed and Cambria – The Camper Velourium II: Backend of Forever
Cursive – The Rhyme Scheme
Daron Malakian and Scars on Broadway – Till the End
Dax Riggs – Graveyard Soul
Deftones – Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)
Depeche Mode – In Your Room
Don Williams – You’re My Best Friend
Dum Dum Girls – Trouble Is My Name
Frightened Rabbit – Death Dream
Further Seems Forever – Light Up Ahead
Ghost – Life Eternal
IDLES – Exeter
Iggy Pop – Break Into Your Heart
Iron Chic – Ruinous Calamity
Jeff Bridges – Everything But Love
Jeff Bridges – What a Little Bit of Love Can Do
Jimmy Eat World – Drugs or Me
Johnny Marr – European Me
Joy Division – Love Will Tear Us Apart
L.S. Dunes – 2022
Low – Just Make It Stop
Lullaby for the Working Class – Good Morning
Mad Season – River of Deceit
Mariachi El Bronx – Wildfires
Markéta Irglová & Glen Hansard – If You Want Me
M. Ward – Poison Cup
Matisyahu – Son Come Up
Morphine – Super Sex
Morphine – I’m Free Now
Murray A. Lightburn – I Believe, I Believe
Neutral Milk Hotel – King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1
Neutral Milk Hotel – King of Carrot Flowers, Pts. 2 & 3
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Into My Arms
Nirvana – Love Buzz
Oliver Tree – Life Goes On
Oliver Tree – Cowboys Don’t Cry
Oliver Tree & Robin Schulz – Miss You
Pantera – War Nerve
Pantera – Suicide Note, Pt. 1
Pantera – Suicide Note, Pt. 2
PJ Harvey – This Mess We’re In
PRESIDENT – Fearless
Priest – Beacon of Light
Puscifer – Monsoons
Puscifer – Grand Canyon
Queens of the Stone Age – Fortress
Queens of the Stone Age – Paper Machete
Queens of the Stone Age – Kalopsia (Alive in the Catacombs)
Radiohead – There, There
R.E.M. – Leave
Red Hot Chili Peppers – La La La La La La La La La La
Ren & CHINCHILLA – Chalk Outlines
Rivers Cuomo – The World We Love So Much
Rollins Band – Low Self Opinion
Serj Tankian – Empty Walls
Serj Tankian – Sky Is Over
She Wants Revenge – Tear You Apart
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum – Helpless Corpses Enactment
Sparta – Cut Your Ribbon
Spoon – The Underdog
Sunny Day Real Estate – In Circles
Taking Back Sunday – Liar (It Takes One To Know One)
Tame Impala – The Less I Know the Better
The Church – Under the Milky Way
The Cranberries – Ridiculous Thoughts
The Dears – 1998
The Faint – Agenda Suicide
The Futureheads – Hounds of Love
The Gloria Record – Good Morning, Providence
The Great Discord – Ephemeral
The Hush Sound – Hurricane
The Mars Volta – The Widow
The National – Sorrow
The Stills – Don’t Talk Down
Them Crooked Vultures – Bandoliers
Thursday – War All the Time
Toadies – Mister Love
Toadies – I Come From the Water
Toadies – The Charmer
Tomahawk – God Hates a Coward
Turin Brakes – Rain City
Turin Brakes – Ether Song
TV on the Radio – Wolf Like Me
U2 – COEXIST (I Will Bless The Lord At All Times…)
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats – Ritual Knife
VOWWS – SHUDDER
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Heads Will Roll
A Note on the Curation
No playlist can fully explain a life, but this one comes closer than most.
The heavier tracks—Pantera’s Suicide Note diptych, Acid Bath, Tomahawk, Rollins Band, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Uncle Acid, and VOWWS—capture the anger, pressure, self-destruction, and psychic noise that periodically rise to the surface.
Songs from Frightened Rabbit, Nick Cave, Alice In Chains, Mad Season, Low, Ren & CHINCHILLA, and Jeff Bridges sit closer to grief, recovery, acceptance, and the difficult work of remaining present.
The cosmic and metaphysical side of the novel lives in tracks by Borknagar, The Mars Volta, Radiohead, Puscifer, Ghost, Priest, Church of the Cosmic Skull, and The Great Discord. These are the songs that feel closest to the Spire, the White Room, and the strange recursive landscapes that eventually became Fulcrum & Axis.
There are other threads running through the playlist as well. The post-hardcore and emo records that soundtracked my teens and twenties. The goth and alternative bands that taught me atmosphere matters as much as melody. The Southern storytellers, oddballs, and outsiders who always felt a little closer to home. The strange art-rock records that reminded me music could build entire worlds. Looking back, I realize I wasn’t just collecting songs. I was collecting ways of understanding myself.
Then there are the songs that simply remind me why participation matters: Buddy Holly, Don Williams, Spoon, Blind Melon, Morphine, Toadies, Queens of the Stone Age, Oliver Tree, and countless others scattered throughout the list. Small moments. Human moments. Songs that remember life is not only suffering.
Taken together, the playlist swings between despair and hope, beauty and ugliness, transcendence and absurdity.
Which is probably why it feels so familiar to me.
I’ve noticed music posts get solid traffic over the years, yet they haven’t always sparked much conversation. So let’s change that.
I’d love to hear what music has stayed with you through the years. Which songs helped you survive? Which songs became part of your own recursive loops? Which artists still show up whenever life gets complicated?
Drop a comment below. Recommend something back. Tell me what I missed.
And if you’re one of the people who keeps finding this site through that old Father of Peace post, introduce yourself. I’m genuinely curious what brought you here.
This playlist is for everyone still revising their own story.
— Frank M. Anderson
Fulcrum & Axis Press
June 2026
Frank M. Anderson's Writing 
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