[Welcome to Tobira Listening Diary, our new English-language essay + music-roundup newsletter series.
As you know, music appreciation does not exist in a vacuum. For most of us it’s woven into the physical and emotional fabric of our lives: our hobbies, habits, and communities, our favourite films, books, art, and television. This series will explore the Tobira Records catalogue through a different lens each edition, moving beyond the classic ‘new release’ beat to try to find new meanings and connections in our musical landscape.
Written, compiled, and researched by Rosie Ball.]
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“I want to explore this one domain of skill, freedom, and individual responsibility – driving – before it is too late, and make a case for defending it,” writes Matthew B. Crawford in the introduction to his 2020 book Why We Drive: A Philosophy of the Open Road. One might assume he’s talking about defending driving from pro-environmental reform, perhaps, or urban planning initiatives that would discourage or limit the use of cars. Actually, the book addresses an existential threat from the opposite direction: Silicon Valley. Crawford notes how the steady merging of the tech and automobile industries in the 21st century has paved the way for increased automation, surveillance capitalism on roads, and, freakiest of all, driverless cars. “Silicon Valley is going to solve the problem of distracted driving that it helped to create, by removing us from the driver’s seat,” he writes. Without proper intervention, Crawford argues, amidst AI development and talks of ‘smart cities’, individual drivers could soon see their autonomy surrendered to profit-driven private corporations.
I went into reading Why We Drive earlier this year from the perspective of someone who quietly loves driving, and who feels pretty guilty about that. The guilt has only gotten worse the longer I hold my driver’s license (I got mine young - 27 years old), and typically reaches an apex with every apocalyptically hot summer that passes. My love of driving, my love of everything really, is overshadowed by the same existential dread everyone millennial-aged and under is currently feeling -- what will the world look like when I’m eighty? Will I make it to eighty? Existing, as we do, in a culture that prefers to place responsibility for environmental destruction onto individuals rather than corporations/governments, I internalise a tiny bit of shame every time I buckle my seatbelt. It’s for these reasons, I think, that I opened Crawford’s book, hoping for some kind of redemption, maybe some answers. What I got instead was a shift in perspective, and a surprise: this book moved me.
Crawford doesn’t attempt to undermine or understate the negative impact cars have on animal and human environments, but he does point out that (in the right contexts) roads can be a site of personal sovereignty and self-discovery. “The pleasure of driving is the pleasure of doing something; of being actively and skilfully engaged with a reality that pushes back against us,” he writes. “In skilled activities, we sometimes recover the joy of childhood play, that period in life when we were discovering new powers in our own bodies.” This is at odds with the reality that techno-capitalism would have us believe – that we are incapable of doing anything without technological mediation, including socialising, travelling, shopping, working, enjoying art, or generally being alive. In Crawford’s vision of the road, driving can even facilitate the human connection we all fear is slipping from our grasp. “Driving is a way of interacting with others while having shared, concrete interests at stake,” he writes. “When people come together around some particular interest that they share, such associations become a rival to the central power. They provide a check on its tendency to gather ever more power to itself.”
Moving beyond the question of whether cars are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ from a social and environmental standpoint, what struck me most while reading Why We Drive was a simple yet easily-forgettable fact - whether we like it or not, driving plays a central role in both culture and the cultural imagination. This is particularly true for working-class people; those most likely to have their lives rerouted by economic uncertainty, who suffer the worst under exploitative and extractive capitalist systems (enforced by the automobile industry, tech oligarchies, fascist governments, etc. etc.) Crawford writes, “as creatures who are self-moving, freedom of movement would seem to be the most fundamental freedom there is, a minimal condition for the basic animal pleasure that makes life sweet”. No one understands this fact better than the financially struggling, the disadvantaged, the marginalised – people for whom freedom of movement has never been a simple or straightforward matter. It's unsurprising that so many celebrated automobile movements (the import tuner scene, drag racing, hot rods, to name a few) have been grassroots movements that champion ‘folk engineering’. Crawford writes, “it is because of the role that a certain model of car (almost always an inexpensive one) plays in this world-making activity that it achieves folk-classic status. Viewed in retrospect, the car becomes an emblem of a life that has been lived.”
Consider all the great road movies: Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, Thelma and Louise, Paris, Texas, Y Tu Mama Tambien… road movies are rarely centred around wealthy people (at least, not the best ones), probably because their autonomy is rarely hard-won, it’s a given fact of their class. For ultra-wealthy people, not driving their car (having a personal driver) is one of the great expressions of freedom. My favourite lyrical example of this is when Cardi B iconically rapped “All my cars is chauffeured / I ain't touch door handles in years” in the first verse of ‘Better Than You (feat. Cash Cobain)’. A musical ode to looking down on everyone from the ivory tower of newfound wealth, fame, and success, the song embraces all the cultural values of the elite, like diamond jewellery, designer clothes, and holidaying in Aspen. It’s also shrewdly reminds us that, to a certain subsection of society, touching car door handles is povvo behaviour.
To the average working person, on the other hand, cars can often come to symbolise more than just a neutral mode of transport. This isn’t to speak of commuting in peak hour to an underpaid, unstable, and unsatisfying job, obviously, but rather to speak of driving as it pertains to leisure - to the facets of life where we have space to breathe and time to take in a little of life's beauty. One of the most prominent features of working-class life is the frustration of having far fewer paths available to us than our wealthy counterparts. This might be why a road trip, or simply setting out from point A to point B, can feel so existentially validating and satisfying. “On a road trip, you encounter landscapes and human types beyond the ken of your usual routines, and there is something rejuvenating about this,” writes Crawford. “It reminds you that there are possibilities you hadn’t reckoned with, lives you could have lived - or might yet.” For those lucky enough to own one, a car can sometimes be a lifeline and a friend.
Some of my most joyful memories happen to be in the driver’s seat. Driving through the countryside with loved ones and friends, driving on warm, sunny days, windows rolled down, face pleasantly belted by wind, a nice album coming through the speakers… The freedom and autonomy Crawford describes in his book has contributed to the joy I’ve felt, for sure, but upon further examination, I notice some other factors at play, too.
The first thing I notice is distance. Driving feels good because it provides temporary distance from our homes, our neighourhoods, our jobs, and our day-to-day routines. Distance from the emotions that come to reside in those physical spaces. As well as a more literal distance – the distance between ourselves and the horizon, the mountains, fields, and towns. “Distance disperses nothing but, on the contrary, composes a miniature of a country in which we should like to live,” wrote the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. “In distant miniatures, disparate things become reconciled. They then offer themselves for our ‘possession’ while denying the distance that created them. We possess from afar, and how peacefully!” We could say, then, that driving through expansive landscapes can allow us to ‘possess’, or grasp hold of, the world streaming by our window. It can enhance our overall sense of competence at life, if only subconsciously. As Crawford writes, “sometimes a car seems not simply to move you through the world, but to put you into the world more thoroughly.”
Another great thing about driving is its ability to facilitate problem solving. I’d go so far as to say that driving can be functionally similar to sleeping, in that you don’t necessarily have to be consciously thinking of a problem for answers to bubble to the surface. In driving, like in sleep, repetitive actions and processes run in the foreground while other parts of your mind can wander around (just replace 'cell regeneration' with 'stopping at red lights', 'muscle repair' with 'indicating', 'hormone secretion' with 'giving way'...) Instead of circling around the same ideas, the same dead ends, we can turn into avenues of thought that branch off from each other, possibly all the way to infinity… On the act of walking, Rebecca Solnit wrote, “the surprises, liberations, and clarifications of travel can sometimes be garnered by going around the block as well as going around the world, and walking travels both near and far”. Unlike in walking, however, a car enhances our physical capabilities beyond what should be humanly possible. I personally think this facilitates a flexibility and openness of mind usually unavailable to us in more ‘analogue’ forms of transport. Driving, like dreaming, is a surreal experience that helps us process life's endless stream of information.
Most importantly, the car is a great place to listen to music. At Tobira Records we regularly have solo travellers stop by who are at the start or middle of a road trip. These customers often tell us that their car model has a CD or cassette drive, and they’re looking for something to listen to on the road. Maybe it’s my own bias talking, but observing these customers from a distance, they usually seem to have an air of calmness and tranquillity about them. Or maybe it’s fatigue. Either way, I like to imagine them listening to whatever cassette or CD they chose on their journey. I like to wonder what kind of realisations and clarities they'll come to as the music and landscape melt into each other.
For this edition of Tobira Listening Diary, I cruised around our catalogue and found a selection of songs and albums inspired by the road. It’s a selection of music that, like the act of driving, inspires reflection, empathy, joy, and sometimes sadness. Crawford’s book shows us how, in a time where tech companies are actively trying to infiltrate and colonise every aspect of the human experience, even the self-directed act of driving is vulnerable. Listening to these songs made me realise something else: the car can give us the gifts of personal autonomy, distance, and a space of reflection, sure. But it’s also a place where life happens. Relationships formed, deepened, or even lost. Circumstances arrived at or escaped. It’s like that beautiful chorus by Cassandra Jenkins: "The mind is just a hard drive..."
Sam Wilkes, ‘Driving (from Driving – Wilkes Records)
Listen/shop the vinyl HERE
Sam Wilkes describes ‘Driving’, the title track from his 2023 ‘indie rock’ album, as a ‘story song’. “I love story songs,” he told Pow Magazine in an interview shortly after its release, “I walked around for three months one summer listening to a lot of different story songs from Marty Robbins and Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter. These are people I grew up loving, and I never consciously realized that they were story songs. I thought, ‘Man, who writes story songs anymore? No one does that.’” While the song is based on his own experience from long ago, he says the present-day lyrical result is a character that is both Wilkes and not-Wilkes – a version of the multi-instrumentalist that is, in his own words, “grasping the temporary wisdom one gets by learning through failure”.
With its subdued, country-inflected vocals and steady thrumming acoustic guitar, ‘Driving’ gives you everything you’d expect from a ‘story song’, while its slightly distorted qualities sonically place it undeniably in the 2020s. The story follows Wilkes in the passenger seat of a car while the girl he likes is driving him home. In the first verse we hear him trying to impress her by playing a song on the aux cable (relatable), “In the front seat of your car / You were driving me home / Dead of summer, A/C’s On / IPod’s in, I wanna play you a song”. As is so often the way of young people, however, the intensity of his desire and focus on the task at hand tragically leads to his downfall. They pass their English teacher Ms. O’Hara, and when the girl suggests they go back to pick her up, he declines. He doesn’t realise that this swift rejection of Ms. O’Hara and the girl’s subsequent disappointment would lead to his own sabotage: “And the song I’ve waited to play you for so long / Oozes out of your car speakers / This wasn’t the effect I had planned on”. By the time he steps out of her car, he has learned an important lesson, only too late.
herbal tea – Driving Slow (from Hear As The Mirror Echoes - Orindal Records)
Listen/shop the vinyl HERE
“Driving slow to a bridge,
I kind of know where.
Whispering, we're almost here”
In a thematically similar vein to Sam Wilkes’ ‘Driving’, herbal tea’s ‘Driving Slow’ follows a young couple on a trip out into nature, towards an ending that may not be happy or romantic. With layered, distorted harmonies, ethereal vocals, and lyrics that skew more poetry than straightforward exposition, the song is dreamy but contains a sense of foreboding that’s difficult to place. We get hints of that ominous emotional undercurrent in the lyrics of the main verse, repeated twice, “Two pretend un-feelings / I knew to protect the ceiling of you”. If not describing an outright breakup, with its strange mix of guilt, love, and certainty, then maybe signalling one person’s unspoken knowledge that things won’t last. We can imagine the drive acting as an emotional cushion for the couple, a hazy liminal moment between what they were and what they’re becoming.
Stefan Ringer, ‘Road To Shizuoka (The Lost Mix)’ (from R We There Yet? EP – Dotei Records)
Listen/shop the vinyl HERE
The R We There Yet split EP from Atlanta producer Stefan Ringer and Dotei Records label head/shop owner Takuro Higuchi was born after the pair met in 2023 and 2024, while Ringer was touring Japan. The title of the EP comes from the track ‘Road To Shizuoka’, inspired by a “long, unexpectedly drawn-out” road trip the artists took together from Hachioji to Shizuoka. Explaining in the press release, that drive: “evolved into a broader reflection — am I (or are you) really reaching the things we're striving for in life? Am I truly working hard to move forward?” A favoured catchphrase of bored children on long-distance drives, in “Are we there yet?” that repeated phrase takes on an existential, inward-looking hue. Even so, the mood of this minimal house track stays upbeat and communal – though on his own individual path, Ringer seemingly isn't alone. “Are we on the same journey?” he muses, “Have we made it to our goal?”
Nicole McCabe – ‘Driving Home Alone At Night’ (from A Song To Sing – Colorfield Records)
Shop the vinyl HERE
Alto-saxophonist Nicole McCabe’s ‘Driving Home Alone At Night’ seems to contain three different songs in one (or possibly more). The composition’s frenetic stops, twists, and starts are thanks (most likely) to the improvisational discoveries McCabe describes making in the studio, where she explored clarinet, piano, percussion, and synthesizer, as well as her usual alto sax. An experience that was, in her own words, “an extension of myself into a different world”. ‘Driving Home Alone At Night’ is imbued with that effervescent feeling of artistic discovery: it kicks off with soothing sax and synth, before jumping into a boisterous, drum-infused sequence, then swerving back into a peaceful arrangement to close. The soulful, innately reflective quality of the saxophone lends itself nicely to a night time drive, real or imagined.
Bagel fanclub – ‘How Are Your Cars Driving?’ (from How Are Your Cars Driving? – Retrac Recordings x Maulcat Records)
Listen/shop the vinyl HERE
Bagel Fanclub’s ‘How Are Your Cars Driving?’ is frenetic, noisy breakcore that combines frantic beats and fuzzy electronic distortion with a melody that veers into melancholic darkness. The duo’s work was described by Bandcamp Daily as “chirpy video game music”, and this track would definitely fit well in some eery, cyber-punk-adjacent, apocalyptic virtual universe. The mystery of the song/album’s title supports this idea of an immersive other world - how are your cars driving? Not on petrol, maybe on dark magic…
Drones Over Dufferin ‘Driving To Cap Rock’ (from Grievous Landscapes – Imaginary North)
Listen/shop the vinyl HERE
In Grievous Landscapes, brothers Duncan and David MacKinnon, aka Drones Over Dufferin, imagine the days surrounding American folk/blues/country musician Gram Parsons’ death in 1973. The story goes that Parson had loved spending weekends at Joshua Tree in California, where he would get high and watch for UFOs. He was staying there with friends on the weekend that he died, where days of heavy alcohol, drug consumption, and an injection of morphine resulted in a fatal overdose. After Parsons’ step-father set out to claim the body and take it to Louisiana (where he could exploit state laws that would automatically name him heir to Parsons’ estate), Parsons’ friend Steve Kaufman and an unnamed co-conspirator stole the hearse that contained his body. They drove it to Cap Rock Monument and set fire to the coffin – honouring an earlier promise that Kaufman and Parsons had made, that for whoever died first, the other would take the body to Joshua Tree, then burn it. Before the police could arrive, Kaufman and the friend made their way back to Los Angeles, where they lay low before eventually turning themselves in. For their crimes they were given a roughly 1300 dollar fine.
Recorded live with improvised guitar and pedal steel, ‘Driving To Cap Rock’ is a droning, cosmic composition that stretches out like the vast desert landscape it’s based on. As a musical interpretation of that momentous final drive Kaufman took to Cap Rock, his close friend’s body right behind him, it wonders at the thoughts that must have swirled through his mind. The grief and anguish, the defiant certainty of a promise fulfilled.
Jana Horn, ‘Driving’ (from Optimism – No Quarter)
Listen/shop the vinyl HERE
In ‘Driving’, songwriter Jana Horn embarks on a solo car journey with uncertainty as to where exactly she’ll end up. “Driving so far from home / Don't know what it is, makes me want to go,” she sings over a gentle guitar-led arrangement. She almost seems to be talking to herself in these lyrics, maybe giving herself a pep talk. Such as in the second verse, where she vows not to give into magical thinking: “I won't be looking for signs / Or ways to be deceived / I know that kind of mind / It's no way to be thinking”, or the third, where she proclaims “fear itself will take your health if you believe”. What is she driving away from? That much is not clear, though it could be the vestiges of a broken relationship of some kind. Whatever the reason, the song calls for courage in the face of new horizons.
Personal System 個人システム, ‘Blurred Streetlights’ (from Transcoastal Night Drive – Constellation Tatsu)
Shop the cassette HERE
The jazzy, downtempo sounds of ‘Blurred Streetlights’ are part of a larger concept album from Personal System about a peaceful, reflective night time drive along coastal shores. Positioned as track two on a journey that starts at dusk, ‘Blurred Streetlights’ could denote the point on the road where the driver starts to shake off the emotional residue of the day. The song oozes 80s/vaporwave-infused ambiance, complete with atmospheric synth, gentle beats, piano, and echoing saxophone to close the song out. This record, the label tells us, is about “motion, atmosphere, and memory”. It's introspective without leaning into negativity, and the sounds are calming, smooth, and endlessly listenable.
Anton Pearson – ‘Driving Past The Muscular Cows in Belgium’ (from Driving Through Belgium – World of Echo)
Shop the vinyl HERE
Anton Pearson’s 2026 album Driving Through Belgium was inspired by long days on the road touring around Europe. Pearson explores texture, atmosphere, and space through ambient drone compositions made on his guitar. He played around with combinations of pedals, loops, synthesisers, and even trumpet, to “see what they might reveal”. The label notes that “many of the sounds were created out of pure curiosity, wanting to understand a piece of equipment or technology, and then following wherever it led”. The result is absorbing and beautiful, a collection of songs that bear these marks of creative discovery while still engrossing the listener into the landscape. An ode to the magical, mystical quality that long periods of driving can sometimes take on; to all the rural landscapes streaming by the window, melting into each other.
A Country Western, ‘Drive’ (from Phenom EP [B-side of the self-titled A Country Western] – Crafted Sounds)
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‘Drive’ is a slightly obscure track from slow-core indie rock band A Country Western’s catalogue. The final track on the EP Phenom, it was released digitally in 2018, then reissued in 2023 as the B-side to their self-titled LP/CD (and unavailable on any of the big music streamers). Clocking in at just over two minutes, the song has all the marks of dreamy slowcore emo rock: fuzzy vocals, lilting guitar, and a sweet, nostalgia-infused keyboard melody. The sounds and lyrics evoke lazy days of daydreaming and detachment, of letting the wind guide your direction:
“I don’t mind
I didn’t say it’s mine
But who am I to side?
Who are you?
I never saw your name
Take me out to drive’
MORE DRIVING MUSIC @ TOBIRA RECORDS:
EROSLOVESYOU, ‘summer_drive.exe’ (from LOVE | UGLY - self released)
Twopine, 'Open Road' (from Everywhere Is Home - Aural Canyon)
Delta Kane, ‘the long drive’ (from Eugene - Deathbed Tapes)
Richard Osborn – ‘The Open Road’ (from Endless - Tompkins Square)
Berzingue – Road Trip (Pont Neuf Records)
Dev John - this road will never end (Adhesive Sounds)
Ted Byrnes - Roads (Krim Kram)
