Category: Sunday Songs

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 10/18/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

So last week, I got a comment on one of my Sunday Songs posts commending my song/book pairings. At first, it was nice to be recognized…and then I realized that the comment reeked of AI, was inexplicably posted four separate times, and came from a website that makes AI-generated playlists based off of book pairings. BOO, TOMATO, TOMATO!! USE YOUR BRAIN! Anyway, as always, you can get your completely AI-free, human-made, pretentious book-music pairings from an exhausted post-grad right here, and you don’t have to use up enough water to fuel a city to do it. There’s no excuse to use AI for much of anything these days. But this? Why deprive yourself of fun?

This week: Ziggy Stardust didn’t need a lawyer, but I’m defending him anyway. Plus, Björk does show tunes and Cate Le Bon enhances everything that she touches.

Enjoy this week’s review!

SUNDAY SONGS: 10/18/26

“Mefus” – Pys Melyn

I need to relinquish any shame that I have left about discovering great songs via social media. Sometimes you can stumble across random gems just from seeing some art on your cousin’s story. That’s the case with “Mefus,” and man, am I glad to have found this. How else would I have found a sunny, ’60s-inflected instrumental from some Welsh-language band that I’ve never heard of before? (I listened to all of this album, Fel Efeilliaid, the other day—it’s worth a listen, but “Mefus” remains my favorite track.) For all of the musicians desperately trying to sound like the ’60s and nosediving, Pys Melyn make it look easy; their plinking organs and shuffling drums seem like they were plucked straight from 1966. It sounds like what Wes Anderson would listen to on his morning jog. (Can’t you see this song soundtracking some of his meticulously-framed shots?) “Mefus” means strawberry in Welsh, and for a wordless song, it perfectly evokes summer sunlight and the carefree happiness of picking strawberries. Normally, I don’t gravitate towards instrumentals in terms of songs I have on repeat, but “Mefus” is nothing short of enchanting, a time capsule of the ’60s and of summers without a timestamp.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1) – Becky Chambers – WE’RE SERENELY STROLLING THROUGH THE WOODS TO FIND OUR PURPOSE WITH THIS ONE ‼️‼️‼️🗣️🗣️🔥

“It’s Oh So Quiet” (Betty Hutton cover) – Björk

For all of the innovation on Post, I feel like there’s a case for “It’s Oh So Quiet” being one of the more solid pieces of proof of Björk’s genius—and the song isn’t even hers. It’s a cover of a Betty Hutton song from the ’50s, a show-tuney B-side that Björk’s tour manager at the time would frequently play in the van on tour. (That version is also a cover, in a way—it’s an English translation of a German song from 1948, “Und jeszt ist es still.”) Hutton’s version is loads of fun, but having listened to this cover for so long, it makes me weirdly anxious—it’s not supposed to be that fast! It’s too compressed! But it’s one of those covers that’s all but eclipsed the original, and it’s easy to see why.

Post is already a fairly weird album, considering how mainstream it got back in the mid-’90s, but nothing gets weirder than a solid stretch of cutting-edge electronics being unceremoniously interrupted by a ’50s show-tune popping up behind you like a jack-in-the-box. Strangely, the transition is barely jarring. To be fair, “The Modern Things” has the right kind of rhythm to ease you into “It’s Oh So Quiet.” But to me, it’s proof of Björk being a truly mercurial, unexpected presence in music. She morphs her tales of mysterious, post-apocalyptic, moss-covered presents and futures into a Broadway-like tune complete with clicking heels and a ’40s-style big band. And though Betty Hutton was doing some pretty impressive yelling on her own, you can’t talk about “It’s Oh So Quiet” without how Björk punctuates it with ecstatically wild screams. It cranks the intensity of the original—which already evoked the devil and bombs exploding—up to a thermometer-shattering level. It goes beyond love or lust and into something so all-consuming that it’s scarcely quantifiable in words—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! And that’s why I think that mouse-quiet feinting between each chorus, slowed down from the original, works so well; it stretches out that tension like an accordion, truly lulling you into a false sense of security before the brass section detonates in your face. WOW, BAM! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

And I can’t not talk about Spike Jonze’s music video, and not for the plain reason that it’s an iconic touchstone in the history of ’90s music videos. “It’s Oh So Quiet” was the first Björk song that I ever fell in love with. I remember being genuinely spellbound by it when I was around six or seven (no way of getting around that). On its own, it felt like some part of my impressionable brain had been cracked straight open. But paired with the music video, which I distinctly remember watching with my mom huddled in the dark around the family computer, it was like tapping into some magical, unknown realm that I had no access to before. Of course, the magical realm was Björk, and I’d never be the same again. But the music video is just a pure joy. I’d fully believe it if this was just the effect that Björk naturally has on her environment: turning a sketchy tire shop into a dance floor, bringing mailboxes to life, and compelling entire hordes of strangers, from goths to businessmen in their suits and ties, into a spontaneous dance routine. And then she flies off. Manic pixie dream girl activities for anybody else, but that’s just Björk, and she’s naturally like that. It’s all very Amelie, pre-Amelie. Inexplicably, I started welling up when I rewatched the video for this post. Maybe it’s because it will always be that portal’s entrance to somewhere wondrous.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Last Night at the Telegraph Club – Malinda Lo – I suppose this would fit more with the ’50s version, but the atmosphere fits the setting of this novel.

“Predator” – The Crane Wives

My formal apologies: sorry, Crane Wives, I wasn’t familiar with your game.

To be fair, before one of my dear friends sent me some of their newer material, I primarily associated The Crane Wives with the kind of folk-pop that goes viral on TikTok from really corny DnD edits. I swear that’s happened multiple times. Real shame for a band with a fantastic name. But as with a lot of things, I didn’t dig deep enough—and there’s more to them than meets the phone-sized eye. It seems like a lot of their songs on their latest album, Beyond Beyond Beyond, expanded their palette considerably. I, for one, didn’t expect to come into “Predator” with a bassline faintly reeking of Radiohead, of all bands. (See also: “Black Hole Fantasy,” which has a great six-minute languish to it.) It seems like they’re undergoing a kind of Shakey Graves arc, splintering out from the folk model and into more adventurous territory. Sure, “Predator” has its missteps—easy on the handclaps, dude—but it’s got a real propulsive instrumental, darkly askew and more alternative than I’d given them credit for, a tale of being trapped in your own harmful habits (and getting tangled up in the same harmful habits of other people). It’s refreshing to know that I was wrong about a band—and it was to fun to realize that The Crane Wives had more to them than meets the eye.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Full Shift – Jennifer Dugan and Kit Seaton – “What were you thinking?/Shouldn’t you know better?/You opened the door for an apex predator…”

“Moonage Daydream” – David Bowie

I put this on my Sunday Songs lineup because I’d listened to it again for the first time in a while, and predictably, fell in love with it all over again. But I didn’t stop and think that I’d be really writing about “Moonage Daydream.” What do you even say about “Moonage Daydream?” One of the most memorable singles from one of his most iconic albums of all time. The song that gave the name to Brett Morgen’s biopic/documentary/mind exploration from 2022. It was the track they put in Guardians of the Galaxy to great effect back in the day. The lyrics gave me my username on several other social media platforms. What the hell do you even say about “Moonage Daydream” that hasn’t already been said?

In a lot of Bowie fan spaces, there’s a kind of aversion amongst the die-hard fans towards the Ziggy era. I’m behind some of it—I feel like there’s a tendency for a lot of Bowie fans to gloss over all of the other radical transformations (both personal and musical) that he made over the span of his career in favor of only fixating on Ziggy Stardust and the glam era, and maybe a bit of his late ’70s work as a treat. On the one hand, it really is a disservice to disregard decades of his career, and if you listen to Bowie but only acknowledge the ’70s, you’re depriving yourself of so much of the mercurial artistry that he’s praised for. How can you understand that transformation if you don’t see the radical leaps he made from suit-and-tie pop star in the ’80s to the electronic, experimental mastermind of the ’90s, and so on? It’s made it weirdly uncool to like Ziggy the deeper you get into fan spaces.

Yet I find myself so defensive of the Ziggy/glam era; even as somebody who’s been poring through his discography for the better part of my life, it remains my favorite period of his, both aesthetically and musically. Part of that’s purely nostalgic, of course—you never forget your first love, and this is the first version of Bowie that I fell in love with. The specific confluence of the glam rock sound at its finest, the visual aesthetic, and the sci-fi themes combined with the inherent and coded queerness of a lot of lyrics scratches a way too specific itch in my brain. Yes, it was a persona like all the others, but I think we often gloss over the fact that every persona inadvertently represented parts of himself. For me, I’ve always seen it as something of a product of the shock and alienation he felt being thrust into the spotlight after being a struggling folkie barely making a splash in the industry for years. He was alien, no matter how he dressed. He felt like an alien.

And that’s what makes “Moonage Daydream” so staggering and important to this day. Beyond the hastily-crafted concept behind The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, it still stands as the cornerstone of what the album represented. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that Ziggy Stardust, as grandiose as it is, has so many moments wanting to experience something real; I imagine it was a consequence of Bowie struggling to find a foothold anywhere and feeling alienated himself. From the quiet moments in “Soul Love” to the plastic-clad downfall of the titular “Ziggy Stardust,” there’s a yearning for the real behind the artificial. And that desire is what culminates in “Moonage Daydream,” a more straightforward love song behind all of the classically sci-fi lyrics. Behind the spandex, rayguns, and sensuality, Bowie wants to peel back what’s fake and fully fall in love. Could I be reading too much into it? Probably. But I think that’s what makes the yearning of this track feel authentic. Ziggy was always much more than the makeup and spandex—it was Bowie’s own desire to touch reality behind the artifice of modern life that he found himself suddenly faced with.

Also, the guitar solo just rips. God bless Mick Ronson.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle, #1) – Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff – yeah

“Hit My Head All Day” – Dry Cleaning

The Cate Le Bon kick was bound to lead me to Dry Cleaning someday, but as with Me Oh My, my older brother was the impetus for listening to their newest album, Secret Love, which Le Bon produced. I’d vaguely heard of them in relation to her, but I’d never gotten around to listening to them. There’s no doubt that Secret Love has Le Bon’s magical fingerprints all over it; her thrumming bass, blasts of saxophone, and angular sensibilities translated well to the palette that Florence Shaw and co. already had going. Nonetheless, I have mixed feelings about the album. I think I’m just not fully on board with Shaw’s kind of post-ironic, dead-eyed kind of spoken word style. Sometimes it works in diagnosing the many ills of modern life, but at worst, it feels like some faux-deep thinkpiece I would’ve had to read for my women and gender studies minor. (Lookin’ at you, “My Soul/Half Pint.” That one just made me roll my eyes. “Maybe it’s time for men to clean for like/Five hundred years” pack it up, dude.) There’s only so much deadpan meanderings about how terrible society is before it starts getting old.

But “Hit My Head All Day?” Now this is something special. Unfortunately, it kind of ruined the rest of the album for me because nothing was quite so good as this (save for “Cruise Ship Designer,” one of the album’s more energetic tracks that reminds me a lot of Wire/Talking Heads). In a gloomy, six-minute sprawl buoyed by slinking, ’80s bass, Shaw sings as though she’s trapped in an ever-shrinking box, contorting her limbs to sharp corners. The lyrics muse on extreme desensitization and the desire to feel anything, everything, even if it means, well…hitting your head all day: “When I was a child, I wanted to be a horse/Eating onions, carrots, celery/I simply must have experiences/Manipulate me, wiggle my arms.” It’s reminiscent of Peter Gabriel’s “I Have the Touch” in its desire for connection, though this is decidedly drier and angular than Gabriel’s synthy, impassioned pleas. Here, Shaw’s dreary delivery makes the case all the more for the narrator’s lack of stimulation; you really do believe that she’s desperate to the point of banging her head against a wall.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Translation State – Ann Leckie – “I simply must have experiences/Manipulate me, wiggle my arms/I hit my head in different places…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 10/11/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

This week: This is a long one, but I did this to myself by putting Phoebe Bridgers, Soccer Mommy, and Bowie all in one week. You’ve been warned.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 10/11/26

“God Break Down the Door” – Nine Inch Nails

Noisier, more metal-adjacent music isn’t usually my forte. I used to hate most forms of industrial or metal music when I was younger, up until about high school. This was true for all but a few Nine Inch Nails songs (admittedly, I did love a handful of songs from Pretty Hate Machine in middle school…fitting, and also, “Head Like a Hole” will always be a banger). To this day, I still can’t decide how much I regret not seeing them with the rest of my family back in 2018, at a Red Rocks show where they ended up playing one of the only live performances of “The Perfect Drug” up until that point. Cruelly, it took me until a few years ago to like that song, too.

Nowadays, I can appreciate Trent Reznor much more as an artist, having gone from the throes of addiction to sobriety but still keeping true to his mission of making art to exorcise pain and create a safe space for those working through similar issues. Anybody with that mindset automatically has my respect. But of course, everything goes back to Bowie with me—I think I heard “I’m Afraid of Americans” around the same time as I started sort-of-kind-of liking Nine Inch Nails, and I don’t think there’s a way that you can come away from that experience without thinking that Bowie and Reznor are the coolest people on Earth. Hearing “God is an American” for the first time in the Trump era was certainly pivotal. But to hear of their relationship—Bowie taking Reznor under his wing, seeing pieces of his younger self in him and helping Reznor work his way out of his addiction and help his artistry blossom—is such a critical part of the Bowie and Nine Inch Nails story that a lot of Bowie fans who only fixate on the ’70s or ’80s woefully miss. The ’90s marked a turning point for Bowie musically and personally, with his no-holds-barred dive into experimental music and the peace of his private life, which allowed him to become that stable mentor for people like Trent Reznor, and many others afterwards. And then, of course, there’s the legendary tour they did together.

So understandably, Bowie’s death left an indelible mark on Reznor. Even before I got into Nine Inch Nails, I could understand that if anybody could, nay should cover “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” it was him. That’s not even mentioning his concrete song about grieving Bowie, “This Isn’t the Place.” Yet even if “God Break Down the Door” wasn’t directly about Bowie, it kinda still is, in its warped way. It’s a writhing mass of tentacles frenetically squirming ever outwards towards entropy. Reznor’s blares of saxophone are the most obvious Bowie (specifically Blackstar) callback and a connection point between them, as they both played the instrument in their younger years. But amidst all of the seemingly disparate aspects of the track—the writhing beats (almost goes into yoinky sploinky territory), the marimba, the persistent drone of it all—it creates something so singly whole. That fleeting beat of silence amidst Reznor’s droning and the explosive exorcism of sound that comes afterwards bottles a kind of feeling that I can only describe as a black hole being reversed, like all of the matter of the universe being shot back out from the point of oblivion. It’s the door that God’s broken down, from my interpretation. But to me, it’s not just the sound of Bowie that Reznor inherits: it’s the floodgates of creativity being busted open in the ’90s, wiggling free of all corporate and fan expectations to create something nobody expects.

It’s very succinctly summed up in this YouTube comment:

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Redsight – Meredith Mooring – “God break down the door/Everything all at once/There aren’t any answers here/No, no, not anymore…”

“Jane” – mary in the junkyard

mary in the junkyard is a band I expect to come forward with something fresh lyrically, whether it’s feral people in the woods, reincarnated mice, or people turning into trees. Clari Freeman-Taylor has an eye for the left-of-center, the unloved creatures and inherent weirdness that reveals itself once you peer beyond the space between branches; her songwriting cradles spiders, mice, and impish creatures and nurses them back to health, patting them on the head when most people would run away and abandon them. So it’s no surprise that “Jane” is similarly unique. It hung in unreleased but often played live-limbo, where it was introduced by Freeman-Taylor as a love song about her period, who she named Jane and is “too annoying and honest.” Ain’t that the truth.

Writing affectionately about your period is a daring undertaking, given that it’s the bane of pretty much every AFAB person’s existence. But I think that the same tenderness Freeman-Taylor offers to the unloved creatures translated naturally to menstruation, which frequently makes you feel like an unloved creatures, and is a kind of unloved creature in her hands. The understated combination of electric guitar and Saya Barbaglia’s plaintive viola makes it feel like an apology, the sort of intimacy of cupping your hands over somebody’s chin as they weep. (Which, once again, very much a period feeling.) For me, it evokes the fear when I went through puberty as a young girl, developing at a rate that felt entirely too fast for the uncertain body I was in, doddering around like a foal: “It’s hard to be a woman, is it harder to be here?/It’s hard to be someone when everything is new.” To me, it’s both about that womanhood/AFAB experience as well as Jane herself being new in the world, emerging like some nocturnal creature every month. I never considered that my sentient period didn’t want to be brought into this world either. Maybe I’m the bad guy. Nobody’s having a good time here. But that’s where “Jane” finds sympathy, for both herself and Jane being constant, confused, and cramping companions.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Greenteeth – Molly O’Neill – to be honest, I haven’t exactly read many books that are a) about menstruation, or b) sentient periods, but Greenteeth gives me the tenderly, whimsically dark yet sympathetic feel of a lot of mary in the junkyard songs.

“Rings of Saturn” – Soccer Mommy

Have I gotten to the point where I’m ambivalent about Soccer Mommy? I don’t think so, but I think I’m dangerously close. “Rings of Saturn” is a nice song. That’s about it. It’s a nice Soccer Mommy song. But I feel like it’s not a huge leap from any of her other work. I feel like this could be an outtake from color theory, which isn’t necessarily a complaint. Yet with somebody like Soccer Mommy, I expect at least something new with each new release—there was the color-coded concept behind color theory, the experimental daring of Sometimes, Forever, and the acoustic grief cataloguing of Evergreen. Other than the production, there’s not much that separates “Rings of Saturn” from the rest; but I do enjoy the production, with its spacey, retro graininess. The lyrics are solid too—certainly relatable, and they would’ve been even more so when I was in high school. “Rings of Saturn” is perfectly fine, but I just wanted more. At worst, Evergreen’s tracks blended together, and I’m just afraid that it’ll happen again. Then again, back when she released “Shotgun,” it felt like she was playing it safe, and then came Sometimes Forever. So who knows? I want more from “Rings of Saturn” because I know she’s capable of something more. Tentatively, I’ll follow Soccer Mommy wherever this constellation leads.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

This Is the Year – Gloria Muñoz – “The stars, they hardly shine/In the city lights, but I/Point my finger to a halo in the sky, I see your light/Rings of Saturn, do you hear me when I cry?”

“‘Tis a Pity She Was A Whore” – David Bowie

Blackstar was always going to be an album that I needed to sit with. It took me years to even listen to it all the way through. A second time around, and I could barely handle the crushing weight of grief coupled with the ecstatic art-jazz-rock freakouts. And then I bought the record because it was within my self-imposed budget, a fine addition to my collection, etc., and that final piece clicked for me. Granted, most of the tracks still make me cry like a baby, but once I vomited up that initial onslaught of sadness, I could peek back and not just appreciate but genuinely enjoy the artistry behind it. It’s not that I didn’t get it before—even while I was actively weeping, I recognized all of the snatches of odd time signatures and how flooring pretty much all the lyrics are—but the immediacy of it had worn off.

I hate hearing the sound of breathing. Not even consciously heavy breathing, that’s obvious, but just any audible breathing. It’s very much a sensory issues thing, but hearing breathing (nay, any kind of mouth noises), chewing, sniffing, it all makes me fucking squirm. Something about it sets my perpetually askew nervous system on high alert. And that’s how “‘Tis a Pity She Was a Whore” begins. David Bowie breathes into the mic, then licks his lips. You can almost hear how chapped they are. It’s laborious. The exhaustion, the energy sapped out of him, is immediately apparent in seconds, and even when the saxophones and pounding drums kick in, you can hear him heaving. Bowie never gave a statement as to what the lyrics were about: all he ever said about the track was that “if Vorticists wrote rock music, it might have sounded like this.” Keeping the art movement in mind, characterized by cubism, harsh angles, and secrecy, it’s very apt. But that no-frills, human panting and breathing inclines me to believe one of the more popular interpretations of the song; Bowie describes a woman (in quite disparaging terms) who “punch[es] him like a dude” and “steal[s] his purse with rattling speed”…what could said “whore” be if not cancer?

Even if the language is more sparse than the usual flowery, cosmic Bowie epic, “‘Tis a Pity” is an epic in every sense. There’s no shortage of aspects to pick apart. There’s the gender dynamic of the cancer personification, clearly marked as a woman but whose violence takes on distinctly masculine language (“Man, she punched me like a dude”). There’s the title, taken from a 1633 play by John Ford, which is only tangentially related to the song’s themes, but nonetheless contains that same undercurrent of violence. The literary references continue with an interpolation of Robert Southey’s Sonnet 1, part of a collection of poems condemning the Transatlantic Slave Trade, where Bowie gets “hold your mad hands.” (Thanks are due here for the no doubt exhaustive research from the blog Pushing Ahead of the Dames.) Through it all, it paints an image of Bowie as a frail boxer, battered but impossibly full of energy until his last breath. It’s a harrowing song, especially with that final ragged yelp he lets out at the end. He sounds beaten. And yet, he was ready to throw those creative punches in the ring until the bitter end.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The DSM-5 – American Psychiatric Association – we all need therapy after this, let’s be real…

“I Can’t Wait” – Phoebe Bridgers

Are you imagining me somehow serenely, sitting stationary while writing this post? Wrong. I’m still vibrating at the thought of Lost Weekend, mainly because I’ve got tickets to see Miss Phoebe (!!!!) very soon!! I’ve come back to the album constantly—easily one of my favorites of the year so far, and it only gets better every time I revisit it. This week’s pick was a real tossup—I could’ve easily gone with the enchanting slow dance (and brief Gracie Abrams diss) of “The Governor’s Waltz,” the bittersweet, country-fied healing of “Haunted,” or the visceral existential pleas of “As Above.” Now that I’ve had almost two months to sit with it, I think Lost Weekend represents the height of Phoebe Bridgers’s powers (no pun intended) so far. Dare I say that it’s better than Punisher? I do dare say it. She’s skyrocketed in fame and artistic ability, a rare combination; she’s only strengthened the emotional, raw pull in her lyrics without sacrificing a subtly adventurous spirit. The soundscapes have turned from artfully sparse to cosmically expansive, doffing shoegaze, country, and electronic hats with an ease that most musicians of her standing couldn’t attempt.

Yet I keep coming back to “I Can’t Wait.” There’s about a million puns I could make about this song and the fact that I can’t wait for the concert, but I’ll hold back. Another aspect of Lost Weekend that endears me is the fact that, in spite of the tragedy that led up to the album’s release, Bridgers has started finding peace of mind. Despite being labeled as such by the press and her fans, she’s frequently chafed against both a static sound and being pigeonholed as a sad girl; and, yes, while that’s part of why I love her, seeing her write songs of unabashed hope and love is like watching a depressed friend start healing and doing better for themselves. “Bobby” is the more obvious example, but “I Can’t Wait” hits me in the gut the most. With its juddering, harmonized sprint at the start, it’s brimming with anticipation. This time, it’s not the end-of-the-world prophecies of Punisher, but being excited for the first time about what’s on the horizon: romantically, emotionally. Bridgers paints herself as more than a little bruised and beat up, but she’s ready to run towards the finish line no matter how much dirt she’s got smeared over her bloodied knees: “I’m not good, but I’m better/Missed my cue, but whatever/It’s now or never.”

And of course, as if “I Can’t Wait” wasn’t one of Bridgers’s best already, it also solves one of the problems that she’s had for her whole career: her duet partners. She’s finally picked somebody with a lower vocal register than her to duet, and it actually works. They said it couldn’t be done…but if anybody could do it, it was obviously Cameron Winter uh [cough] excuse me, Son-John Johnson, my bad. The beat where the electronic skittering dissipates into folksy embers around a campfire, where Bridgers and Winter’s voices delicately intertwine, feels exactly like the song’s excellent music video; at that moment, the fly that the video’s POV has been from, gets gently cradled in Bridgers’s palms. It’s so secure, warm, and the moment that their voices coalesce feels like home, somehow. Incidentally, that’s where the real love song part of “I Can’t Wait” comes in, but that brimming, brilliant nucleus of hope and genuine excitement for the future gets me choked up. You can change your mind, but you can’t change mine…

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Idolfire – Grace Curtis – “Baby, baby, if you leave me/Can you take me with you?/I can sit in the back seat…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 10/4/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: Madeline gets annoying about shoegaze and Björk again. Plus, Robyn Hitchcock songs that make you go “wahoo! Hell yeah!”

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 10/4/26

“Tugboat” – Galaxie 500

It’s been an embarrassingly long time coming for me to write about this song. I found out about it at least a month ago on the same BBC Radio 6 interview with mary in the junkyard that I discovered Jessica Pratt through. Admittedly, I talked about Jessica Pratt two weeks ago, and I’d had that revelation at least two weeks before I’d made the damn post. Sorry, excuse me while I pull down the massive Wizard of Oz curtain here…not that anybody really cared all that much about the timing here. There’s always a fair amount of lag in terms of the songs I’m writing about. Breaking my silence…

Anyways. Galaxie 500’s Today was drummer David Addison’s pick for his album. One way or another, I probably would’ve found my way to Galaxie 500 given how much I love shoegaze (and. Luna, for that matter), but I’m not complaining that today (figuratively) is the day. Plus, as the leaves around my apartment start to turn orange and the air turns sharp and chilly, it feels like the perfect environment to drift off to “Tugboat.” Even without the nautical title and lyric references, this track meanders like it’s a slow, lumbering boat miles away from the nearest coastline. Dean Wareham—who I didn’t even make the connection to until my dad pointed out that it was him—laments in a crooked rasp about wanting to be the one sailing that ship: “I don’t wanna stay at your party/I don’t wanna talk to your friends/I don’t wanna vote for your president/I just wanna be your tugboat captain.”

It’s 1/3rd love song, 1/3rd wistful plea to escape it all, and 1/3rd classic shoegaze freakout; once the repeated verse and chorus (if you can call them that) disappear into the mist, never to be seen again, Wareham launches into a spidery guitar riff as reverb swallows what remains of the song whole, like some sort of biblical leviathan. And sure, I’ll eat up some classic noisy shoegaze riff action any day of the week, but to me, it feels very thematically significant: after Wareham lays out his lament of wanting to escape, the last third of the song loses its structure, its DNA dissolving; to me, that’s exactly the escape he was looking for, and the tugboat captain has made his maiden voyage.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Celestial Seas – T.A. Chan – “I don’t wanna talk to your friends/I don’t wanna vote for your president/I just wanna be your tugboat captain…”

“Hyperballad” (Live at the Royal Albert Hall) [Björk cover] – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Just writing down “acoustic Björk cover” feels offensive to me. For the majority of her catalogue, it’s a kind of unholy combination that really shouldn’t exist. How do you reduce the soundscapes of an artist who specializes in creating veritable jungles with sampling, synth textures, and percussion? It just feels like sacrilege to see all that and go “welp, lemme whip out the acoustic guitar…anyways, here’s Wonderwall, amirite?”

Fortunately, Yeah Yeah Yeahs are no stranger to sacrilege. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) To be fair to them, it’s not fully acoustic—it’s a live cut from Hidden in Pieces, performed at the Royal Albert Hall with a full string section. And if there was anybody that understands the pioneering spirit of Björk, it’s one of the many daring women that she inspired to get weird with it: Karen O. Even having been a Yeah Yeah Yeahs fan for over a decade, it seemed like this was territory that even they couldn’t succeed in, and boy, was I wrong. Of course, nothing beats Björk’s original, but there’s something about this understated, almost humbled take on this classic. Only accompanied by said guitar and the melancholy strings section, it takes the lyrics—a private exorcism to keep a relationship afloat—in a softer, strangely ashamed direction. Karen O’s vocals are, as expectedly, nothing short of heavenly, but they lend a sort of whispery, bittersweet pang to an already emotional song, heavy with the weight of sacrifice.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Deep – Rivers Solomon – “I go through all this/Before you wake up/So I can feel happier/To be safe up here with you…”

“It’s a Mystic Trip” – Robyn Hitchcock

Robyn Hitchcock recently released Invisible Hitchcock, his collection of rarities, outtakes, and demos that was previously only available on cassette and CD back in the day, on Bandcamp last month. Other than the absolutely glorious cover, with Hitchcock somewhat menacingly showing you his radishes, is finally seeing the light of day for the first time since the ’80s, there’s one key reason why Invisible Hitchcock made me so excited. Why? Four words: “It’s a Mystic Trip.” Fuck yeah, finally!!

WAHOO!! HELL YEAH!!!! Or, in the words of the man himself, YAYSVILLE!! Listen, my poor dad didn’t get his justice after requesting this song at the most recent show and not hearing it, but at least “It’s a Mystic Trip” is more widely available (and in better audio quality than YouTube). About time, too, because this song is just joyous. I genuinely feel something close to ecstatic every time I listen to it, to the point where whichever neighbors saw me having a solo dance party to it definitely contemplated calling a hotline of some kind.

Dating somewhere back to the early ’80s, post-Soft Boys and at the beginning of his burgeoning solo career, Hitchcock described the songs on Invisible Hitchcock as offcuts from a period from “when New Romantics were at their zenith, I felt more comfortable clutching radishes outside a garden shed than trying to hang out in the Club for Heroes or the Batcave. I couldn’t get my quiff together, nor did I really want the digital patina sprinkled over my songs that seemed obligatory for 1980s pop music.” Keeping that timeframe in mind, “It’s a Mystic Trip” feels like the point where Hitchcock’s creative floodgates burst straight open. After The Soft Boys, who retained a punk sound while lyrically bucking up against tradition, this song goes headfirst, no holds barred, into straight-up psychedelia. His riffs seem to dance against the beat, which has the rhythm of the world’s most confident strut down a brick street. Compared to this, the Soft Boys’s lyrics sound like he’s holding back—he’s spouting the absolute quirkiest nonsense with the self-assured confidence of a time traveler peddling prophecies from the far, far future. Occasionally he veers into the exasperation of a checked-out British mother from the ’50’s at the objectively bonkers scenes unfolding in front of him: “Janice, don’t squat in the nettles/Last week, three people came in to be dignified/And they all got stung.” And to give you an idea of the average trajectory of “It’s a Mystic Trip,” here’s what comes immediately afterwards: “Lucy put her bean in her nostril/And Mr. Watkins said, ‘well, where there’s a barrel, there’s a bung!'” Naturally. It’s so British. But though it’s absurd through and through, there’s a relentless happiness to it. To me, even if it’s adjacent to the lyrics, “It’s a Mystic Trip” represents the moment where Hitchcock felt truly confident in breaking free of the mold, and setting carefree impulse in his songwriting free. I’d never call Hitchcock cringe (even affectionately, as somebody who’s embraced the cringe long ago) but it really does ring true to “to be cringe is to be free”: your best work comes along when you throw convention straight out the window.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Railsea – China Miéville – I sometimes struggle pairing books with Robyn Hitchcock songs, and this one was no different. To me, Railsea has that same spirit of being relentlessly, batshit weird and reveling in throwing expectations to the winds. Shoutout to weird British dudes, I guess.

“Hollow Trees House Hounds” – Cate Le Bon

I’ve done it. I’ve scaled the mountain. Minus a few EPs, I’ve listened to Cate Le Bon’s entire discography. I effectively went backwards, since Me Oh My was her debut album. The St. Vincent comparisons are inevitable, but Me Oh My is very much her Marry Me, not just temporally but sonically. It has the kind of relentless, freewheeling energy of somebody letting it all out and trying everything, and it serves as a time capsule of a weirdo’s first solo foray into the music world. There’s a slightly more cohesive sound than Marry Me, but it has that same late 2000’s indie precociousness to it. It veers into being to twee at times, and honestly, her keyboard choices weren’t doing her any favors for a good half of the album. I hate to slander my queen here, but that fake organ noise makes her sound like the weird Christian lady from Edward Scissorhands in some places. But as a whole, it’s a portrait of a budding weirdo who would eventually hold the torch for many more weirdos to follow. The seeds are all sprouting here, and the blooms that are coming up look alien.

What I didn’t add about finishing Cate Le Bon’s discography is that my brother beat me to the punch. The student has become the master, etc. But he was the one who shared “Hollow Trees House Hounds,” and it kind of ruined Me Oh My for me because it’s the best track on the album by a long shot. It’s just a kooky delight. Out of the whole album, which is mostly acoustic, it’s one of the few rockier tracks, and it really does rock—the chunky guitar chords and the drums make it an instant boot-stomper. The riffs in between skitter and scramble, and all the while, Le Bon is spinning a surreal tale. From the start, she was already getting weird with the lyrics—I mean, look at the title—but the imagery of overgrown moss and vines and a forest to conquer is nothing but her. But I think the outro is an amazing foreshadowing of her career; the repetition of “No room for me/I’m serpentine” is the perfect distillation of her consistent refusal to be boxed in and her penchant for daring, unconventional musical choices. Plus, the shrillness of it reminds me of St. Vincent’s “Now Now”—the “You don’t mean that/Say you’re sorry” bit in particular.

I can’t not mention the music video, which is somewhere between Radiohead’s “There There” and Björk’s “Human Behaviour”—and “Bachelorette,” for that matter—it reeks of the Michel Gondry/Chris Hopewell influence, but with way more beheadings. Which is to say that neither of the examples I just listed had any beheadings at all. Kaiju Cate Le Bon can’t catch a break. But like Me Oh My, it’s totally offbeat and kooky, and very meticulously animated with magazine cutouts and whatnot. Once again, very late 2000’s-early 2010’s, but I miss that era of music videos.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Lightfall: The Girl and the Galdurian – Tim Probert – more than fitting for a fantastical gallivant through strange, magical lands.

“No Thank You, I Love You, Goodbye” – Lucy Dacus

To quote one of the top YouTube comments on this video, “Phoebe set me up, Lucy knocked me down.” None of us were ready to get emotionally sniped by this. Lucy, diva, I know that No Burden turned 10 recently, but LET US BREATHE FOR A MINUTE before unleashing something like this! Christ. Either way, I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, because “No Thank You, I Love You, Goodbye” is an excellent track. Originally a rarity recorded during the sessions for No Burden, it’s a revived time capsule from 2016, shaking with the same angst that colored the album. Amidst an onslaught of reverb that feels strong enough to drag somebody into the riptide, Dacus recounts being dragged along by a lover’s careless antics: “You used to scare me/Bottle on the dashboard/Reckless abandon, abandoning me/I swore to myself I would not follow your lead/So why did I get in the car every evening?” The churning chug of the production, grainy and building to an implosion we never hear, accentuates Dacus’s mounting feelings of being trapped in a corner, knowing that it’s nearly too late to save herself. But save herself she does—she lets the song peter out, as though leading a limping, wounded animal to safety, letting it fade into soft but firm promises: “Put me to rest, to rest/Say ‘no thank you, I love you, goodbye.'”

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Nothing Burns as Bright as You – Ashley Woodfolk – “You used to scare me/Bottle on the dashboard/Reckless abandon, abandoning me/I swore to myself I would not follow your lead/So why did I get in the car every evening?”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 9/27/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: everything’s a David Bowie reference if you’re neurodivergent enough. Plus, the ocean and the taxi are rainy, and you can’t believe or keep anything.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 9/27/26

“Ocean Rain” – Echo & The Bunnymen

Ocean Rain’s cover art is suited to the songs on it to an almost scientific degree: gothic and dark, with a canvas of deep indigos and blacks. Whoever made the decision to have the cover (photographed by Brian Griffin) in the Carnglaze Caverns should’ve gotten a raise. All of the tracks I’ve heard from the album (see also: “The Killing Moon,” “Nocturnal Me”…damn, remember when Stranger Things had meaningful and fun needle drops?) have the feel like the grand, orchestral arrangements are pinging off of the dappled light inside of a moonlit cavern.

This is probably kind of silly, considering that I’ve only listened to about half of Ocean Rain, but my hot take is that “Ocean Rain” would’ve been a way better opener than “Silver.” No shade to “Silver” (which has always reminded me of Wii Sports Resort music, weirdly…if Wii Sports Resort was goth), but I think this track lends itself more naturally to that classic, swelling build that more cinematic openers have. Whisper-quiet, “Ocean Rain” tiptoes in before launching into a slow-burn tale of storm-wracked seas—and minds: “All hands on deck at dawn/Sailing to sadder shores/Your port in my heavy storms/Harbors the blackest thoughts.” (I love the double meaning of “harbor” here—harboring thoughts, but then there’s the connection to the ocean/sailing imagery. Peak.) The more Ian McCulloch weaves the lyrics, the more his ocean begins to roil with crushing waves, a cry for help on a raft drifting further and further out to sea. But I doubt that it would be half as impactful without that expertly-timed, cinematic build, from McCulloch’s echoing vocals, almost a cappella, to his wail accompanied by the swells of an orchestra.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea – Rita Chang-Eppig – “I’m at sea again and now your hurricane/Have brought down this ocean rain/To bathe me again/My ship’s a-sail, can you hear its tender frame?/Screaming from beneath the waves…”

“Rainy Taxi” – Spoon

“Rainy Taxi” is a frantic love song for the end times. Amidst the kind of biblical apocalypse besetting the characters, Britt Daniel only has one thing on his mind: “Put on your red shoes; sing it to me, lover-girl/When you do, my love, I forget the world/And if you say ‘run,’ I may run with you/I’ve got nothing else, I’ve got nowhere else.” First off: I can’t not mention the nods to the David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” and its placement feels very intentional; in Daniel’s hands, “and if you say ‘run,’ I may run with you” is molded from a declaration of love to a sign to flee the oncoming end of the world and devotion as everything crumbles. The graying minor key and Alex Fischel’s spurts of discordant piano gives “Rainy Taxi” the anxious, precipice feel that at the slightest hint of danger, it’s time to bolt. By the outro, the characters presumably have run for the hills for good. Spoon isn’t a band that I’d usually think of with more sci-fi narratives like this, but their painting of the apocalypse is as good as any prog-rockers or metalheads; their nervy style translates effortlessly into the sky falling.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come – Jen St. Jude – “I came home last night, I had no good news/And you’ve been sleeping through the brightest flash of apocalyptic ruin/And if you leave, I’ll never sing another tune…”

“I Can’t Believe” – The Apples in Stereo

The Apples in Stereo could rarely write a straight-up love song: there’s always a sci-fi element. Somebody’s a robot, somebody’s in space, et cetera. But that’s why I come back to them anyway—it was never a complaint. I thought that “I Can’t Believe” was one of those rare birds that didn’t include any of those elements until I listened more closely to the lyrics. What first appears to just be a classic case of an absent girlfriend turns into an absent girlfriend who’s also a time traveler: “She told me she came from tomorrow/And from a world far away, man/She told me leaves here this morning/Has she come back yesterday, man?” Yup. Just another Tuesday for Robert Schneider, apparently. It’s so perfect. It’s like the plot of some pulp comic from the ’60s.

And like the strange time loop that the girlfriend seems to be traveling through, “I Can’t Believe” is a song that I keep coming back to, over and over. There’s a timelessness to it, an instant clicking that feels rooted in classic rock elements but retains that signature Elephant 6 quirkiness. Something about the harmonies on the chorus—that repetition of “I can’t believe what she said to me,” before Schneider feinting silence on the last “what”—is so impeccably choreographed. Something really scratches an itch in my brain about the note change and Hilarie Sidney’s harmonies on the last repetition of the chorus before the verse starts again. The spacey synths and the crunched-up guitar riffs—it’s just a perfect pop song with a sci-fi twist, as is the mission of The Apples in Stereo.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Swift and Sudden Exit – Nico Vincenty – self-explanatory: time-traveling girlfriend.

“Can’t Keep Anything” – Cameron Winter

Alright, here I go. I feel like that meme of all of the identical Buzz Lightyear action figures in Toy Story, but oh my lord, Heavy Metal is a fantastic album. What people tend to gloss over is that it really isn’t the most palatable listen. The wise-beyond-its-years optimism of “Love Takes Miles” is the outlier. Whoopsies. Some of the songs are downright anxiety-inducing, like you’re standing on the unstable ground of a volcano about to blow its top; you’ll see a truly inspired lyric whizz by your head like shrapnel, but oh god, another piece of the ground just broke off into the lava flow and you’re precariously teetering on the edge. And then you fall down—that’s “$0” for you. After a certain threshold, Heavy Metal is completely untethered, hurtling towards some sort of chaotic, terminal doom, fully aware of its own destruction. It’s like witnessing somebody’s manic episode. I was honestly shaking a bit during that stretch between “Nina + Field of Cops” and “$0,” but thankfully, Cameron Winter finds a way to land the plane.

The best comparison I can make to Heavy Metal is Wilco’s masterpiece, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Not that the albums are fully comparable, since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is easily a top 10 album for me, but Winter has that same spirit of Tweedy in terms of dressing up personal turmoil in intricately noisy compositions, whole worlds contained in three minutes. “Can’t Keep Anything” feels the most Wilco to me in its lyrics. As the closer to the album, it’s no “Reservations” (but what could ever be?), but Tweedy feels alive and well in the beat-up, tired self-reflection: “Walking and walking, you used up your feet…Begging and praying, you used up your knees.” After this pseudo-religious spiral desperately trying to win back affection (romantic? spiritual? artistic? all three?), Winter’s laid down his sword. In the many ways that self-deprecation manifests on Heavy Metal, this feels like the admission of defeat. Love, or whatever it may be, has slipped through his fingers, and this is his final acceptance of it. (I can’t help but thinking that the repetition of “I can’t give everything away” in the outro is a reference to the David Bowie song of the same name...cathedrals for those with eyes to see, etc. etc.). Musically, it’s much more subdued, with the soft plunking of the xylophones seeming to gently usher of Winter into the next stage of his life. It’s a gesture of futility and exhaustion, but also a kind of pledge to himself: he’s wasted all of this time going to inhuman lengths to pursue this something; from now on, there’s no use butchering pieces of himself. For an album that goes to such catastrophic highs and lows, it’s a sad ending, yet it feels like making peace with your mistakes. Whether or not he follows up on it, “I just can’t give everything away” feels like the binding of a pact: it’s over.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The River Has Roots – Amal El-Mohtar – “I don’t know where I’m going, babe/Wherever it is I’m going, baby/You’re going too/Baby, where I’m going/I can’t keep anything/But I can’t just give everything away…”

“Pink in the Night” – Mitski

“Pink in the Night” really does glow. Everything about the production and instrumentation just glimmers, bathed in reverb and synths that feel like they could dissipate with the slightest breath. Listening to it feels like watching afternoon light illuminate specks of dust until they become stars. Even the persistent kick drum that ushers the song into its ending might as well be the hammering of a lovesick heart against a ribcage. That glowing feeling is so intimately concentrated that it might as well be emanating straight from Mitski’s chest. And that’s exactly where it’s coming from—Mitski described “Pink in the Night” as being centered around “that visual of someone glowing pink because they’re so infatuated,” but that the heartbreak threaded through the first verse “doesn’t have to be a hard, horrible bad thing. It’s just like ‘I’m so infatuated and in love that I feel myself crumbling… but in a good way!'”

Of course, there’s an undercurrent in this track that the love feels one-sided or unrequited, but like too many of Mitski’s songs, they’re automatically pigeonholed as depressing. “Pink in the Night” doesn’t seem to be so, as painful as unrequited love can be. It’s just an overpowering emotion, of falling so head-over-heels in love that you feel weightless, tumbling through space with no trajectory. That infatuation is heady, but that carefree tailspin takes you all the way down, sprinting through summer rain that catches the evening light; it feels like dust turning into stars (or raindrops singing) because that’s how infatuation feels: like the ordinary has somehow become the most cosmic, wondrous thing in the universe.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

If You Still Recognize Me – Cynthia So – “I glow pink in the night in my room/I’ve been blossoming alone over you/And I hear my heart breaking tonight…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 9/20/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: women getting weird with it is a common theme here, but the vibe you gravitate towards is your choice today. Plus, Tall Dwarfs get lost in the woods.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 9/20/26

“Jacquelyn in the Background” – Jessica Pratt

Talking to Radio 6 Music for BBC, Clari Freeman-Taylor of mary in the junkyard described Jessica Pratt’s album On Your Own Love Again as “the kind of music that frogs would make on lily pads” and Pratt herself as “an alien.” And just like that, I was sold. Both of Freeman-Taylor’s descriptions are right on the money. There’s a charming, familiar yet alien quality to Pratt’s music. The first comparison that jumped out at me was early Cate Le Bon, before she’d gone full-throttle into sensory synth maximalism; St. Vincent circa Marry Me comes to mind as well. Their joint wavelengths of quirkiness manifest in similar ways, with folk skewed enough out of the ordinary to sound like something timeless but new.

I’ll always love a woman vocalist with an unabashedly unconventional voice. Pratt’s voice is nasally at the best of times, and that’s part of what makes Freeman-Taylor’s frog comparison genius: she totally sounds like she could be an extra on Over the Garden Wall, or something. Against the delicate pluckings of an acoustic guitar, “Jacquelyn in the Background” weaves a story that seems innocuous—just a folksy tale of mundane friendship—with flickers of uncertainty that belie some sort of imaginary friend narrative. Jacquelyn is in the background, but the image of her shifts colors, morphing as Pratt catches glimpses of her between shadows in her room. My favorite part of the song comes when the music catches up to the meaning: at 2:41, the pitch suddenly shifts and wobbles all over the place, dopplering in and out of the realm of the ordinary before tripping head over heels back into normalcy. Twitches of pitch-shifting fleck the rest of “Jacquelyn in the Background” until it ends. I was on board from the beginning, but that flourish of genius, connecting the narrative to the music itself, is what sold me on Jessica Pratt. If my never-ending album bucket list is anything to go by, it’ll be a long time coming, but something tells me that this isn’t the last time I’ll talk about her on here.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

I Am the Ghost in Your House – Mar Romasco-Moore – “Ode to Jacquelyn, I see you coming through/See the changes in your smile/In the background, you’re coming in colors now/Leave your bad news for a while…”

“Lord of the Reedy River” (Donovan cover) – Kate Bush

I’m biased, since I listened to the Kate Bush version first and I really don’t know much of anything about Donovan. (To be fair, not all of her covers hit the mark—see her weirdly pseudo-reggae cover of Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” If that concept makes you go huh?, you’re not alone. To be fair, it’s not bad, it’s just a combination that doesn’t fully work.) But this cover elevates Donovan’s original song so much. Donovan’s version, a retelling of the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan, is eerie to begin with. It has that uneasiness that you find with a lot of ’60s folk songs, this kind of whispery discomfort that hints at unsaid things beneath the surface. But for a song about a myth about a mortal woman getting raped by Zeus in the form of a swan, the lyrics don’t suggest anything all that distressing, other than the waver in Donovan’s voice.

Kate Bush had to be keen on that undertone. Swapping Donovan’s acoustic guitar for flutes and a ghostly choir, her interpretation of “Lord of the Reedy River,” without changing the lyrics, makes it clear how inherently chilling the story is. There’s a quivering anxiety everything, shadows concealing feathers and uncertainty afoot. The male choir that Bush often used in her early years (to mixed results) hums discordantly, groaning and murmuring as though they’re spirits watching from the underworld itself. The only change is that Bush switches Donovan’s “she” to the more personal “I,” and that might be the most crucial change of all; closing the distance between Leda and the listener makes the mounting fear—and the implications of the myth itself—much more immediate.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Crane Husband – Kelly Barnhill – even with all of the Greek myth retellings I’ve read, I’ve never come across one of Leda and the Swan; and listen, fully admitting to double-dipping with this one, but it’s the first book that came to mind with eerie birds and uneven power dynamics (to put it lightly).

“Sign the Dotted Line” – Tall Dwarfs

“Sign the Dotted Line” has a strangely childlike quality to me, but it’s a very specific brand of childlike. Other than the grim territory that some of the lyrics verge into, it feels like it should be soundtracking the quest of a band of feral children with bindles wielding big sticks as swords with dirt smeared on their knees, like something out of Calvin and Hobbes. (I’m imagining at least one of them is wearing a colander as a helmet.) The looping background percussion—which reviewer Roger Shepherd derogatorily likened to a “burping mud pool” (ouch)—adds to that feeling; if there were any more instrumentation other than guitars and said loop, it ought to be a washboard or a shaker made out of an rusty can filled with gravel. The jangly rhythm has the measured march of gallivanting through the woods with some glorious purpose, which is where the enduring charm of it comes to me: “Let’s descend through fog and rain/And see if we can find the same way out/Of this whole mess/It’s not as if we’d lose our lives/Or be impaled by carving knives just yet.” Knox’s lyricism is undeniably pretty sarcastic, but it has the kind of glee that comes along with losing your way and embracing it. Of course, that’s my interpretation—Shepherd, writing for Flying Nun (the Tall Dwarfs’s label), posited that “[it] could equally be about a musician signing up to a record company” or, based on this illustration by Knox in Weeville‘s liner notes, “a commentary on the willingness of people to surrender their lives to religion.”

art by Chris Knox, from the liner notes of Weeville

The screwed-on halo makes the whole drawing for me. (As do the dubious three arms.) Knox draws exactly how he writes songs—I love it when artists have that touch that’s so distinctly them that it translates across mediums. Either way, I’d take “Sign the Dotted Line” to be about willingness, earned or unearned—the “sign the dotted line” is undeniably sarcastic, but what awaits our heroes on the other side? That’s for you to decide.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Art of Prophecy – Wesley Chu – “Let’s descend through fog and rain/And see if we can find the same way out/Of this whole mess…”

“VCR” – The xx

“VCR” is inherently comforting. In the simplicity that The xx crafted out of some loops, guitars, and bass, they created a kind of nest where life is easy and romantic. Like the couple tearing off pieces of an abandoned building in the music video, it’s a song that’s for making you (and somebody else) feel like you’re the only people in the world. It’s a late-night blanket fort of a song, relishing in the quiet, cozy moments shared between two people: “And we, we live half in the day time/And we, we live half at night/Watch things on VCRs/With me and talk about big love/I think we’re superstars/You say you think we are the best thing/But you, you just know.” Falling asleep to this song on my beat-up, 13-year-old iPod feels like the best way to listen to “VCR”—it’s a song that nestles in those warm, half-asleep moments between dreaming and waking.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Sound of Stars – Alechia Dow – “Watch things on VCRs, with me and talk about big love/I think we’re superstars, you say you think we are the best thing/But you, you just know, you just do…”

“This Is Love” – PJ Harvey

“This Is Love” rocks. Sometimes you don’t need so many paragraphs to describe how potent a song is, and this track is one of them. It’s just pure rock n’ roll, from the raw sensuality of the lyrics (very much giving meaning to the original meaning of rock n’ roll as a sexual slang term in the early 20th century) to the confidence she oozes with every shred of the guitar. Sure, I think women will never fully be free of the scrutiny that men don’t get when writing unabashedly sexy material, but PJ Harvey at least makes it feel like we’ve gotten somewhere, no matter what conservative panics may rise and fall. “This Is Love” is horny as fuck, and nothing but. And it rocks. The music video enhances that confident, sensual energy. It’s a simple setup, but every deliberate choice—PJ Harvey’s Dolly Parton-looking suit, that red lipstick, the bedazzled heels, the classic black and white tele she plays, the black and white background—exudes the confidence of somebody who already knew full well that she was an icon. It’s so gloriously in-your-face. Some songs scream “rock star” more than others—PJ Harvey, in this moment, was as emblematic of the term as you could possibly get.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Calamity – Constance Fay – “I can’t believe life’s so complex/When I just want to sit here and watch you undress…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 9/13/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: at this rate, I could probably condense material from several previous posts to just have a whole album review of Pompeii. Plus, Bill Callahan gets existential, Lisa Germano gets sarcastic, and The Ladybug Transistor gets…very Elephant 6.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 9/13/26

“Why Do Men Sing” – Bill Callahan

Last week, I was concerned about Bill Callahan going through it back during the era of Red Apple Falls. That sense of isolation thankfully seems to be behind him, but these days, it seems like he’s having a different kind of existential crisis. His newest album, My Days of 58, came out in February of this year, and it seems he had a mission to pick apart all of the questions that seem to emerge in the midst of a midlife crisis. “Why Do Men Sing,” the album’s opener, gets right to the meat of it: why is he still attached to this craft in the first place? I love the slowly-building meander of it, the acoustic strummings that are gradually strung with horns, harmonies, and electric guitars—it’s a song that languishes in all seven of its minutes, giving a weight to its stream-of-consciousness stylings. Callahan doesn’t necessarily answer his central question—it’s repeated over and over in the chorus, but he leaves the answer in the realm of ambiguity. But if there’s ever a sign that you’re artistically on the right track, it’s the visitation from Lou Reed beyond the veil that Callahan describes. (He even adopts a bit of Reed’s New York affect in several places in the song, which is a lot of fun.) His advice? “It’s cool, baby. Just got to let it ride.” First off, that sounds exactly like something he’d say, but I think that’s where the not-answer lies. There’s no one, concrete answer to the question Callahan poses. Creativity’s meaning is unique to you, but more importantly, the many meanings come from the winding journey you’re on. Let it ride, baby.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut – the existential absurdity of this track feels very Vonnegut, in spirit if nothing else.

“Wheel” – Cate Le Bon

Shit, I’ve probably talked about at least half of Pompeii at this point. I’ve run the whole gamut of emotions about it; at first, it was more just “this is a great album, but the second half lags a bit” to “wait, that second half really doesn’t lag” to now, where I’m certain that it’s at least a top 10 album for me. The more I dissect everything about it—the origins, the lyrics, the aesthetic, the Cate Le Bon of it all—the more I adore it as an exercise in processing loneliness and isolation.

From the start, I loved “Wheel” as a closing track. Like its namesake, the blasts of distorted saxophone feel like the melody is eating itself, being born, dying, and being reborn in the space of a few beats. The synthy sway of it reminds me of St. Vincent at her weirdest. Its echoing lament made the track feel like it was ushering the end of the narrative into the fog, as ephemeral as the glow of a lighthouse. But it took me years to get why this album—and this song—got me. I think it was because I found it during a time when I was mired in some woefully self-imposed self-isolation, and something about that sensation planted a beacon in me, one that slowly but surely helped clear the fog. I loved the music, then I loved the aesthetic charm, and then wham: here comes “I do not think that you love yourself/I’d take you back to school/And teach you right/How to want a life/But it takes morе time than you’d tender.” FUCK.

Le Bon told Apple Music that this track was “more direct than the rest of the record. I was struggling to call people over the pandemic. What do you say?…I missed him, but couldn’t pick up the phone.” The circular feel of the melody now gives the image of somebody stumbling time after time over the same, self-imposed hurdle, like feeling your mouth clamming up before you can say what you desperately need to say. And it lodged itself in me deeply—even outside of said self-isolation, I relate painfully to that feeling of knowing that you want to connect more deeply with people, but agonizing so much over what to say, what to do, that it comes too late. Somehow, it feels more digital—especially given the pandemic context—it’s a feeling I experience way more when connecting with people over texts. I feel the urge spill over, desperate to say everything that you want to say, but then that mental barrier clogs your repository of words, anxiety freezing your hands. That previous lyric I referenced (beginning with “I do not think that you love yourself”) perfectly encapsulates that feeling of having an armful of things to say and do, but feeling inadequate when the time comes to condense them into something comprehensible, even if it’s just “hey man, do you want to hang out on Thursday?” Back to “I do not think that you love yourself”—I feel like it’s both Le Bon addressing these friends, but also herself, in a way: seeing yourself suspended in your current state, but frozen in the moment, you’re just observing yourself pacing in circles.

In this light, the outro of “no prisoner, no peace” feels like a call to arms. I’m still chewing on it. The prisoner is, to my understanding, herself, locked in these patterns: from there, “no peace” is the resulting state from being the prisoner of your own patterns. Le Bon repeats it like a storm warning, letting it crash against the waves: you’ll have no peace while you’re still a prisoner of these unsaid thoughts. And to end Pompeii, a study of being stir-crazy and vulnerably self-reflective in Le Bon’s childhood home during the pandemic, feels like the solution to claw through the dirt and see the light of day again. No prisoner, no peace indeed.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Heaven’s Graveyard – Grace Curtis – “It’s been a mild winter here/And I’ve buckled like a wheel/Sucked the life from god’s routine/Broke the royal we…”

“Twangy Wig-Out” – Transvision Vamp

I’d only heard of Transvision Vamp from songs off of their final album, Little Magnets Versus the Bubble of Babble, so it came as a surprise to discover that this album was their critically panned finale after several years of UK Number One singles in the ’80s. Of course, it’s reportedly pretty different from a lot of their earlier work, hence why it was initially barred from release in the UK by their record label. There’s nothing here that would suggest that Wendy James and co. were pop stars—I could see them being underground neo-psychedelia legends only going off of this. But it seems like that’s exactly what they wanted to do, after years of smearing by the UK music press (often at James’s expense, with many a misogynist insult hurled in her direction). “Twangy Wig-Out” has some pop genealogy, but it’s pure, British psychedelia—you can’t get much trippier than this. Its dreamlike prediction makes you feel like you’re stumbling through somebody else’s movie-montage drug trip, complete with lyrics that are the exact kind of thing you could only find deep if you got really, really stoned. (“‘Art is the mind set free’/She says, I don’t know any real artists?’ Shiiiiit, dude, that’s deep…[cough] pass the blunt…”) On its own, it’s a real fun track, but as a stylistic rebellion against a label (and a country) that wanted to kick them to the curb, it’s even more enjoyable.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – Philip K. Dick – admittedly, I didn’t particularly like this novel, but you can’t get much druggier than this.

“Rushes of Pure Spring” – The Ladybug Transistor

Right off the bat: The Ladybug Transistor is an awesome band name. It also sounds like the kind of name you’d make up for a fake band to sound more pretentious than you are at a party. Oh, you haven’t heard of The Ladybug Transistor? Name three songs, poser. Their song and album titles only accentuate the vibe. Oh, you clearly haven’t heard of their critically acclaimed album Beverley Atonale and the lead single “Your Wagging Tail (Single Space).” Pitchfork gave it an 8.6, you know. Well, they actually didn’t, and that wasn’t the lead single, but you get what I mean. Apparently, they’re so niche that Beverley Atonale didn’t even get reviewed by Pitchfork. Who’s the poser now?

To me, that’s the mark of a fantastic band name/general aesthetic, because it’s a sign that they’re doing nothing but them. The Ladybug Transistor is another member of Elephant 6, and the influence is clear: like many of the other bands in their company, they were producing charming, ’60s-flavored indie pop. From my limited experience, they seem gentler and more slow-paced than some of their peers, but I love the atmosphere that “Rushes of Pure Spring” creates. Unlike a lot of other Elephant 6 bands, the ’60s comparison doesn’t jump out at me, but what does is another band from the ’90s—that being Luna. Aside from the fact that Gary Olson and Dean Wareham’s vocal styles are similar, it has that same gentle, observant quality to it; both the lyrics and the misty instrumentals sound like the results of a steady hour of journaling while staring out a window during a spring rain shower. My only complaint is that I found out about this song after I started taking the bus to school regularly, because this is prime bus commute music. There’s always tomorrow.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Monk and Robot – Becky Chambers – “Beverly Road brings/Rushes of pure spring/I hear the day sing/It’s alright…”

“Happiness” – Lisa Germano

If you’re coming into a Lisa Germano song called “Happiness” and expecting it to reflect any semblance of happiness…strap yourself in. Don’t say I told you so.

A lot of Lisa Germano’s songs have a childlike quality to them. It’s not in the sense of purity, but more in the sense of feeling like a nine-year-old hearing their parents fighting through the walls, learning some choice words, then misspelling them in their diary. There’s an almost-innocence to it, but it reflects a twisted mirror of childhood, a theme that recurs in a lot of her songs. (It’s especially evident in songs like “My Secret Reason,” whose plain lyrics paint images of rot through simplistic language: “But I know this/As dumb as I am/When I was young/And it was winter/In our yard/There used to be snow there.”) It’s a kind of reversion to lost childhood in adulthood, since that childhood wasn’t properly provided. A lot to unpack, to say the least.

“Happiness” has that same eerie simplicity to it. Germano intones the lyrics like she’s unenthusiastically regurgitating advice from a therapist: “Happiness/Is like TV/On or off/It’s up to me.” The subsequent ones are darkly childlike, with the sarcastic bent of a children’s songwriter with an acoustic guitar gathering everybody for a singalong: “Mom and dad/Are like my head/I won’t listen to them/Until they’re dead/Or I’m dead.” There’s a deliberate bit of gallows humor, a smirk evident when she sings “C’mon, everybody—sing!” and the next verse begins with “Pain and sadness/Are real to me.” (“Everybody!”) I wouldn’t go so far to say that “Happiness” is a funny song, but there’s a rotten sarcasm to it that only became more refined with time in Germano’s catalog. The chorus’s repetition of “Inconsiderate bitch, inconsiderate bitch,” sung in a similar singsong quality, is deeply wry and eerie, reflecting both the hollow platitudes people tend to give to suffering people (especially women) and the consequences of questioning them. Oh, you’re not just deciding to be happy? You’re not depressed! You’re just a selfish, inconsiderate bitch. Just turn on the happiness and be a docile, obedient woman, why don’tcha?

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Crane Husband – Kelly Barnhill – “Relationships
Are like a cow/Growing strong/Just for now/Poor little cow…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 9/6/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: these grooves are out of fashion, these beats are…ancient? So is nature.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 9/6/26

“Strange Overtones” – David Byrne & Brian Eno

You thought it was over? Surprise, bitch, I still won’t shut up about Brian Eno. David Byrne’s just joined the party. We’re still Eno-maxxing over here.

There are special songs that come once in a blue moon that touch you without you even knowing why. You just know it’s one of your songs, something that clicks itself into the ever-changing jigsaw of your soul. I mean, again. It’s Brian Eno, so it was bound to do that in some capacity. But I’ve now spent several mornings with my headphones on, dancing to “Strange Overtones” on repeat while making my tea. There’s a kind of easy optimism to it, like sprouts stretching out their leaves and waking up, ready to soak up the newborn sunlight. Something in David Byrne’s voice urges you on, gently ushering you like a parent with a child at the top of a waterslide. It’ll be fine, the water’s warm at the bottom, it seems to say. Take the plunge.

That quality of “Strange Overtones” endeared me from the start. But it was the specificity of the plunge that made this track thousands of times more meaningful. Eno described “Strange Overtones” as “a song about writing a song,” and that’s as evident as ever, as the narrator paces around an apartment, cherrypicking ordinary but wondrous vignettes from around their surroundings: the cold weather, a neighbor singing, small gestures of kindness between strangers. As a whole, Eno described this collaborative album as “a picture of the human trying to survive in an increasingly digital world.” Ah, there we are. That’s why it resonated so much with me. No wonder!

Everything That Happens Will Happen Today was released in 2008, but nearly 20 years later, it’s more immediate than ever. Artificial intelligence is encroaching on our sense of creativity, encouraging us to give up the slow, laborious things that give us life in favor of convenience and enshittification, touting itself as the inescapable, inevitable future (by techbros that have sunk all their money into it). But “Strange Overtones” is a celebration of that slow, contemplative life and the frustrating but worthwhile endeavor of creativity. As the narrator struggles to string their song together, words of encouragement steer them towards new paths: a change of key, a new chorus, 20-year-old beats. The end of the chorus doesn’t necessarily seem all that encouraging at the first glance (“It is strong and you are tough/But a heart is not enough”), but I think it speaks to the inherent labor of creativity, of sticking with it even when you’re mired in writer’s block, or whatever else. Your heart is not enough, and you have to put in the work—but the work is the fun of it. Byrne and Eno described “Strange Overtones” as a kind of gospel song, and it makes sense: it worships the act of creativity, and the rocky yet rewarding journey of sticking with an idea.

BONUS: as if this song couldn’t get any better, here’s David Byrne performing it with St. Vincent, featuring the latter attempting a casual lean on the saxophone player, for some reason:

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1) – Becky Chambers – “Strange overtones in the music you are playing/I’ll harmonize/It is strong and you are tough/But a heart is not enough…”

“River Deep – Mountain High” – Ike & Tina Turner

Here’s a music history fact that blew me away when I first heard this song: apparently, it underperformed and barely charted when it was released in 1966. There’s probably more eloquent ways to say this, but when confronted with a song like “River Deep – Mountain High,” all you can really say is “what the fuck?” There’s no accounting for taste.

I talked about Erasure’s cover last week, and how, as fantastic of a cover as it is, it doesn’t quite capture how infectiously joyful the original is. There are few songs that are quite this convincing about just how deeply, hopelessly in love Tina Turner is. It’s just so exuberant, but you believe every single note of it—Turner’s breathless, using every metaphor for loyalty in the toolbox, and she convinces you of every single one: like a robin loves to sing, like a schoolboy loves his bag, you bet that she will love you. Unfortunately, as with…well, an unfortunate amount of songs at the time, “River Deep – Mountain High” has the misfortune of being attached to some of popular music’s most notorious scumbags at the time (that being Ike Turner and Phil Spector), especially since the latter forced Tina Turner to do a frankly inhumane number of vocal takes for this track, to the point that she was “drenched with sweat. I had to take my shirt off and stand there in my bra to sing.” I really don’t want to credit them with anything, but even from a more objective standpoint, it really is Tina Turner that makes “River Deep – Mountain High” this monumental and timeless. With the sheer power of her voice, she manages to overtake Spector’s signature Wall of Sound, and I think that’s exactly why this song is so spectacular. You just feel it rising, rising, with an unstoppable momentum, deep in your chest, and you feel the lyrics, like a flooding river about to break free of its banks.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev – Dawnie Walton – the music history threaded throughout this book calls back to the climate of the ’60s and ’70s—it definitely reminds me of songs like this, at least in the early bits of this book.

“I Was a Stranger” – Smog

Jesus. Between this and “Ex-Con,” Bill Callahan really must’ve been going through it while recording Red Apple Falls. “Ex-Con” was at least upbeat, even though it belied a deep-seated sense of alienation. “I Was a Stranger” mines just as deep into the feeling, but makes its costuming more desolate, much more somber. That thread of isolation carries into an obscured tale playing on tropes of old Westerns and cowboy stories: Bill Callahan is now the stranger kicking open the saloon doors and casting a long shadow. Normally, I’d cue the whistling and the tumbleweeds, but there’s no air of mystery here, just a man desperate to be left behind but mystified that these new people are willing to embrace him, despite all that he’s done: “Why did you believe/All every word I said/Why did you believe/Believe a stranger?” The tinges of country instrumentation add an innate sort of melancholy to this track, barely filling in the spaces left by Callahan’s profound isolation, one that separates you from yourself, but convinces you that you don’t deserve to be believed—or embraced in any sort of way. All these touches really do make you feel utterly alone, staring at an empty horizon as the sun goes down.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Before the Fall – Noah Hawley – “In the last town/You should have seen what I was/If I was a stranger/I was worse than a stranger/I was well-known…”

“My Snare – Nature is Ancient” – Björk

Take my hand, we’re getting out of the sad Smog times. Let’s go frolic in the woods, yippee!

Behind every incredible album is a bunch of singles that inexplicably didn’t make the cut. “Nature is Ancient” (later renamed “My Snare”) was recorded during the sessions for Homogenic, and sonically, it has that same slick futurism, imbued with hope, that made that album so iconic. But I can’t help but think that “Nature Is Ancient” feels like a Post track dressed in Homogenic‘s clothes. Its awestruck, upbeat descriptions of the nature of the natural world (no pun intended) feels like a sister to “The Modern Things” or “Isobel”—no matter the robotic dressing of the album, Björk will forever be a woman gleefully skipping through the woods and stopping to look at every flower and toadstool.

“Nature Is Ancient” is very primordial to me. The wet pulsations of the synths feel like the closest thing I can imagine to how it sounds when cells divide. I can imagine this track soundtracking the earliest evolution of life itself, watching single-celled organisms consume each other and evolving into multicellular life, wiggling around and developing eyes and feelers. With mischievous glee, Björk delivers the lyrics like she’s some sort of alien sprite giving a lesson to a lost traveler: “It’s wet in the middle/With a shell around it/It’s called ‘life’/It goes wherever it wants to/Don’t try to predict it/Then you’d offend it/It’s meant to surprise.” In spirit, it feels like the common ancestor of later, more naturalistic albums like Biophilia or Medúlla, but that reverence for nature and its mercurial qualities have been part of Björk’s DNA from the beginning.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Hero for WondLa (The Search for WondLa, #2) – Tony DiTerlizzi – tell me this isn’t what it sounds like inside of the Heart of the Forest with the Vitae Virus Generator…

“You and Your Sister” – Chris Bell

First things first: absolutely nothing against Chris Bell, but Kim Deal’s version with This Mortal Coil is better than the original. Here’s the thing: “You and Your Sister” is approaching perfect song territory, but you know what will instantly push a song even further in that direction? Kim Deal. You just can’t compete with Kim Deal. That’s just a fact.

That’s not to say that Chris Bell’s version wasn’t stunning on its own, though. I listened to the This Mortal Coil cover to death when I was in middle school, and I remember looking up the original, and being real put off by Bell’s voice. Sure, it’s not exactly conventional on this song—there are times when his rasp works better with more upbeat, louder songs with Big Star. But 10 years later, having been reintroduced to this song by surprise by my dad (as usual), something stuck me right in the ribs. I’m still not 100% warmed up to Bell’s voice, but half the time I hear “You and Your Sister,” I start getting misty. It’s just…pure. It’s been stripped down to the bone, leaving only the most essential, warm feelings of the romantic experience. The composition is, again, very simple, but everything is so impeccably placed: a swell of strings here, harmonies with Big Star bandmate Alex Chilton here, the flutter of a flute there. It’s innocent, but it doesn’t make an effort to be innocent: it just is. Between the ragged cracks in Bell’s voice and the stripped-down production, it feels as sincere as a love song can get: unafraid to sound unfinished to some, but wholly genuine as the sum of its unassuming parts. It’s just beautiful—there’s no two ways about it.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

I Love This Part – Tillie Walden – similarly, a portrait of blossoming love that finds quiet profundity in the simple and mundane.

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 8/30/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: unfortunately, I’m still in a very ’80s time of my life. Plus, the Apples in Stereo take a break from the robots and take a nice dip in the ocean.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 8/30/26

“Love, Try Not To Let Go” – Julia Jacklin

That soft shade of pink on Julia Jacklin’s face on the album cover of Pre-Pleasure couldn’t fit this track more. Setting aside the association of pink and romance, that blush color feels exactly the hue that “Love, Try Not To Let Go” is shaded in. Easygoing percussion and piano soundtracks Jacklin’s feathery vocals, as she drifts untethered from the Earth, swimming through memories and lust alike. I can’t help but be reminded of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” when listening to this track—similar beat and key, for sure. I love all of the subtle touches that Jacklin layers into this track to make the image shine with such clarity, everything from the fact that the harmonies kick in when she starts off the pre-chorus with the word “echo” (it literally makes a kind of echo!) and the swiftness that the chorus rushes from a gentle piano ballad to a quivering burst of electric guitars. At the end of the final chorus, Jacklin’s vocals fizz into static, as though everything keeping her grounded has dissolved, leaving us with her lovelornly murmuring as the track fades. It’s such a memorable indie rock track, and an excellent piece of push-and-pull between rose-colored fantasies and less-than-ideal memories.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Some Girls Do – Jennifer Dugan – “The echo of my hometown/The things I never said/Consumes the space between me/And everyone I left…”

“The Golden Age” – Beck

Beck isn’t somebody I readily associate with slow songs. Pre-Sea Change, even his more meandering songs had a hint of humor to them (see: “Jack-Ass”). His impish spirit was always there, even under layers of acoustic guitars. It’s even more jarring that, other than some EPs and B-side collections, Sea Change came right on the heels of Midnite Vultures, ostensibly his funniest, most deeply unserious album. (I can’t imagine the whiplash of going from “Debra” to something this plainly depressing.) But given the circumstances surrounding Sea Change—his breakup with then-fiancee Leigh Limon—it’s no wonder that he couldn’t summon any humor.

None, maybe, save for the title: “The Golden Age” is the exact opposite of what he’s describing. The chorus is only two lines long: “These days, I barely get by/I don’t even try.” Nevertheless, Beck’s talent translates to every emotion—he’s just as skilled with this wallowing, acoustic lament as he is cracking jokes with a fanfare of saxophones in the background. The plucks of almost country electric guitar, acoustic strums, and keyboards give “The Golden Age” an air of sunshine, but the kind of glaring sunshine that comes from listlessly staring at it, utterly unsure of your direction in life. I think it represents how much of a chameleon Beck could be in his prime—no matter the situation or emotion, he could adapt to it in his own, irreplaceable way.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Here Beside the Rising Tide – Emily Jane – “It’s a treacherous road/With a desolated view/There’s distant lights/But here they’re far and few/And the sun don’t shine/Even when it’s day…”

“How to Be a Millionaire” – ABC

Maybe I’m just not reading the right stuff, but I swear that ABC don’t get credit for being one of the most distinctly ’80s bands to ever ’80s. It’s just so in-your-face ’80s. Sure, some of the cuts from How to Be a Zillionaire are…well, painfully so (if you’re looking for proof, there’s the extended Cold War metaphor on “Between You And Me.” Still a banger, but…it gets to a point). But songs like “How To Be a Millionaire” are just such perfect products of their time. I feel like this song sounds like being inside of a slot machine. This is a very distinctly Reagan/Thatcher-era commentary on consumerism and class inequality, with its synth chorus, and the rapidly looped utterances of “billions and billions and billions of pounds.” (It’s said so fast that it almost starts sounding like “beans.” I can’t unhear it.) But you can’t say that it’s not still relatable today—and not undeniably a genius pop song: “I’ve seen the future, I can’t afford it/Tell you the truth, sir, someone just bought it.” Surely this isn’t applicable to anything today…

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Machinehood – S.B. Divya – “Hardly surprising if you might consider/Loyalties go to the highest of bidders…”

“River Deep, Mountain High” (Ike & Tina Turner cover) – Erasure

Being a musician with an already-established career in the late ’80s must’ve been nuts. At any moment, your song could get sniped and covered by some gay Brits with synths out of nowhere.

Of course, “Always On My Mind/In My House” is the obvious example because it surpassed the original by miles. Ike & Tina Turner’s original version of “River Deep – Mountain High,” on the other hand, couldn’t possibly be touched by any cover—it’s just that good. But though it doesn’t reach nearly the same heights, boy, Erasure’s cover is loads of fun. I think I’ll eternally have a soft spot for it just because it’s the first version of the song that I ever heard, especially during my big Erasure phase when I was in elementary school. (And yet it took me until I was about 14 to realize that I was queer…”the closet is glass” doesn’t even begin to cover it 😭) Nothing could ever rip the synths away from Erasure, but here, they work both for and against the effectiveness of the cover—they’re gleeful, sure, but I feel like the exclusively electronic sound makes it feel slightly colder than the original, unintentionally. But “River Deep, Mountain High” isn’t cold by any means—you just need to listen to the original and hear how overwhelmingly exuberant it is. Nothing can reach the staggering heights of Tina Tuner’s joy on that song—Andy Bell and Vince Clarke came close, though. With an extended dance mix that revels in the translation of the organic to juddering synths, it’s clear that the same kind of exuberance that Ike & Tina imbued the original with was ever-present here, with Bell’s vocals soaring with every successive declaration of everlasting love. OH I LOVE YOU, BABY! BABY, BABY, BABY!

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Like a Love Story – Abdi Nazemian – I promise that I’m not pairing this book with every queer ’80s bop. You can’t say that it isn’t fitting…

“Submarine Dream” – The Apples in Stereo

The Apples in Stereo have such a knack for creating an atmosphere. Most of the time, that atmosphere evokes a distant retro-future full of cartoonish robots and sleek spaceships, a world flung into the furthest corners of outer space. They’ve never been ones to have their feet planted on the dull ground of planet Earth. But if there’s anywhere here on this planet that’s just as wondrous and unknown as space, it’s the ocean—so it’s no wonder that Robert Schneider and co. wrote a song about it.

“Submarine Dream” feels like their tribute of sorts to “Octopus’s Garden,” in both its imagery and its ’60s-indebted sound. I feel like Ringo would be proud. Though it’s much slower than the former, it has that same carefree joy that comes from the freedom of the sea. The sparkling synths that they usually liken to robots have now translated to the glimmer of sunlight on the waves and the shimmer of pearls under the ocean’s surface. Gently flowing at a dreamy, lazy pace, Robert Schneider’s mixture of acoustic and electric guitars, as well as their synths, vibrant as the varied colors of a coral reef, drifts along. Weightless and starry-eyed, it makes you feel all the ease and awe of the mermaid-like protagonist as she watches the delicate wonders of the ocean: “The time slips through her hands/Just like the ocean sand/And everybody knows/That’s the way it goes.”

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Letter to the Luminous Deep – Sylvia Cathrall – “She likes the ocean caves/The world beneath the waves/Where everything is strange…”

BONUS DOUBLE FEATURE, BECAUSE THIS WEEK HAS BEEN HELL:

Admittedly, I didn’t have as strong of a connection to Dolly Parton’s music as many people did. But I’d be hard-pressed to think of somebody who has done the sheer amount of good in the world that she has. What a guiding light for so many, someone who shared her wealth and talent to make sure that the COVID vaccine was funded, that thousands of children in underserved communities could have books, that the LGBTQ+ and Black communities could feel accepted and welcome, and that people like her—who came from unassuming, working class roots—could be stars.

I picked this clip in particular because I remember seeing it floating around on Instagram sometime in high school. There was a tweet that went around that likened her fingerpicking the guitar with her signature acrylic nails to playing tennis in heels—and it’s spot on. Without knowing much about her, I saw that clip and thought to myself, there’s somebody who knows her stuff. Among everything, I hope we don’t pass over just how singularly talented she was. Rest easy, Dolly, knowing that you’ve done an insurmountable service to our country—and the world.

And then, as if this week wasn’t bad enough…

God. Even now, I’m struggling to find the words. Just looking at these clips is making me tear up. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is my main point of reference for the genius of Tim Curry. When my parents introduced it to me when I was 17, it was during the mire of COVID; I’d been out for about two years, but a global pandemic made it so that I hadn’t been able to engage much with a larger queer community (outside of my friends), socially and, to an extent, culturally. Something instantly clicked when I saw this film—here was a radically queer touchstone that, 50 years on, was a thing of transgressive beauty, a madcap, anything-goes film that retained a message of freedom and unconventional self-expression.

And that message applies to the rest of Curry’s long career, playing a variety of characters with an insatiable appetite for the villainous and unusual. His work created a sacred space for all of the freaks. I’m just glad that I can count myself among them. What a gift it’s been to have been moved so deeply by his art. Rest easy.

Don’t dream it, be it.

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 8/23/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: the last vibe I expected to have from a Chelsea Wolfe album was “go girl, give us nothing!” but here we are.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 8/23/26

“In the Light” – Led Zeppelin

It’s a real shame that I haven’t talked much about Led Zeppelin here, but to be fair, they are talked about quite a lot—as is what they deserve. I did go through a brief Led Zeppelin kick last year after watching the great documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin, but somehow, it never made it here. (In lieu of that, I’ll share their goosebump-inducing cover of “I Can’t Quit You Baby.”) But somehow, even though I spent my childhood hearing snatches of Led Zeppelin, “In the Light” slipped through the cracks. All I can ask, at this point, is how? How did I miss one of the best Led Zeppelin songs I’ve ever heard for this long?

“In the Light” feels mammoth in every way, as do a lot of classic Led Zeppelin songs. Partially, that’s the length—this track is nearly nine minutes long, and it’s one of those songs that deserves every minute of its runtime, because Led Zeppelin juices every ounce of gravity from it. Every second is used to its fullest extent—the intro, which lasts nearly two minutes, is a sparse palette consisting of synths and Jimmy Page’s best party trick: using a cello bow on his guitar. (I eat it up anytime somebody does it. I saw Johnny Greenwood do it on his bass with The Smile and I haven’t been the same since.) It’s enough to make you shiver with antici……pation. But once the full band kicks in, the momentum never stops feeling colossal. “In the Light” is just towering—it feels like staring up at a crumbling, ancient monument, a relic brimming with power underneath the surface. I can’t pin down the time signature, but there’s something so enticing about how John Bonham’s drums have such a consistent, fairly ordinary rhythm to them while Jimmy Page and the others just go absolutely nuts over it—that’s half the fun of the average Led Zeppelin song, to be honest. It has this zigzagging, staircase rhythm to it—everything feels like it’s climbing, with chord progressions that call to mind the Beatles in their later career. And of course, it’s held together by Robert Plant’s rich vocals, his signature howl becoming the weathered stone holding “In the Light” together. It doesn’t feel like a long song at all—you just get so hopelessly lost in it.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Ancestral Night (White Space, #1) – Elizabeth Bear – you know what the best Led Zeppelin songs and good space opera novels have in common? Feeling this expansive, colossal, and ancient.


“Seethe” – Chelsea Wolfe

How did Chelsea Wolfe go from having one of the most hard-hitting albums of 2024 to…this?

So, The Dark. I came away thinking that Wolfe’s newest batch of 10 goth-rock (citation needed, at this point) tracks were…perfectly fine. Pleasant. Solid. But those aren’t words that I want to describe Chelsea Wolfe with. She’s adventurous, she pushes boundaries, she’s not afraid to get in the mud, to get raw and visceral and vulnerable with it! She’s a poet that finds the empathy even in the darkest corners of the psyche! So why does The Dark feel so lightweight? The lyrics are significantly weaker, the song structures are traditional, the instrumentals just fine…it just feels like she’s holding back. Of all the artists I’d expect to play it safe, Chelsea Wolfe wasn’t one of them. Unfortunately, that’s my overarching takeaway from The Dark. Even the album title is just vague. Like, oooh, naming your goth album The Dark? Completely uncharted territory…

That’s not to say that “Seethe” is a bad song. I feel bad ragging on these lyrics, but next to, I dunno, “Be All Things” or “Dusk,” it feels a lot simpler. It’s like Jeff Tweedy having some of the greatest poetry in American rock n’ roll and then using a metaphor about somebody being “cool enough to be ice cream.” (Again: nothing against “Ice Cream,” but it just feels like low-hanging fruit. At least Hot Sun, Cool Shroud – EP was leagues better than The Dark is.) But for “Seethe,” I feel like it isn’t the song for gothic, flowery poetry: it’s just a fun song about getting your righteous revenge. You don’t necessarily need a lot of complex metaphors if you’re on Chelsea Wolfe’s list and she’s out to get you—she’s just coming for you, she’s got her knife in her pocket, and she’s gonna getcha if it’s the last thing she does. Her vocals are as flowing and ethereal as ever, and we get some top-notch, raspy screaming in the background towards the end. With its ragged guitars and mile-a-minute bass and percussion, “Seethe” is a perfectly fun cut from the album—it’s just Wolfe letting loose, and who can fault her for that?

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Saints of Storm and Sorrow – Gabriella Buba – “I see the ill in all of you/The violence hidden out of view/What I have done, if you only knew/I’ve got sharp edges all for you…”

“Fisherman’s Grotto” – Justin Warfield

As much as I credit my dad for my musical upbringing, I feel like my mom equally deserves the credit—especially when it comes to hip hop. Particularly, she’s basically given me my hip hop education: I know about Queen Latifah, Lauryn Hill, De La Soul, and the Beastie Boys (who she loves) because of her. And she’s the reason that I know about Justin Warfield—this track, as well as the low key instrumental “Guavafishcentepede (Aquatic Meditations).” Speaking of the Beastie Boys, Warfield samples them in “Fisherman’s Grotto” (that’s a sped-up portion from “Hold It Now, Hit It,” which appears at 1:24). It reminds me of how much artistry can go into samples; the centerpiece, to me, is the blaring horns that introduce “Fisherman’s Grotto.” You’re instantly hooked—it’s the audio equivalent of watching Warfield kick down a brick wall. Said horns are sampled from Blood, Sweat & Tears’s “Lucretia MacEvil,” and from there, Warfield expertly rides the groove of this track—it’s so effortlessly smooth from beginning to end.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Obake Code – Makana Yamamoto – this is exactly the kind of soundtrack I’d expect this gritty yet trickstery cyberpunk world to have.

“Who Are You” – Tom Waits

Physically and mentally, I haven’t recovered from my grand decision to listen to Bone Machine and Lost Weekend in the same week. I know I’m cooked. I really haven’t changed since the age of 16. I love a sad bastard. Of course, if this was a sad bastard music competition (Phoebe Bridgers is also a noted fan of Tom Waits), Tom Waits would come crashing into first place—Bone Machine was the emotional equivalent of riding a dilapidated roller coaster with rotten, wooden slats that’s been decommissioned since the ’70s and should not humanly hold any weight beyond two pounds. It wildly oscillates from some of the most plainly, horrifically sad songs that I’ve heard in my life, and then we’re back to hootin’ and hollerin’ like a bunch of rabid swamp goblins around a campfire. Whiiiiplaaaaaash. Moments of unlikely beauty rub shoulders with moments of depravity and rot, but they’re all strung together by Waits’s uncanny knack for storytelling. A lasting impression, carried over from “The Earth Died Screaming,” is that he has more than a way with words.

“Who Are You” falls into the latter melancholy category. The minute the lazily ambling upright bass kicked in, I was transported to some rusting, barely populated pub at an ungodly hour, with Waits dejectedly slumped over the bar. It’s a track that’s positively drenched in venom and scorn, but Waits’s bitter storyteller’s bent gives it such a distinct feel. “I did my time/In the jail of your arms” feels like the exact kind of lyric I’d expect from Waits, but it gets so much better—and evocative—from there. Evoking the imagery of a run-down carnival and drunken, reckless escapades, Waits maps out a rugged terrain of a relationship gone sour: “Do you cry? Do you pray? Do you wish them away?/Are you still leaving nothing but bones in the way?/Did you bury the carnival with the lions and all?/Excuse me while I sharpen my nails.” All delivering in Waits’s wavering, throaty growl, “Who Are You” hits all of the visceral parts: biting, stinging, and raw.

A final note: I swear that Bone Machine gives the distinct vibe of the exact kind of music that Hellboy would listen to. The vibe carries over the whole album for me, but there’s a few moments on “Who Are You” that have pronunciations that sound straight-up Ron Perlman. Tom Waits and Ron Perlman do have a vaguely similar vibe, now that I think about it.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The First Bright Thing – J.R. Dawson – “Tell me, what did you do? What did you do the last time?/Why don’t you do that?/Well, go on ahead and take this the wrong way/Time’s not your friend…”

“Champagne Coast” – Blood Orange

Alright, steady now. Hold my hand. We’re getting out of this Bone Machine morass together. Go take a shower, let’s dance! Up and at ’em! Life is worth living!

I’ll get it out of the way: yes, I remember “Champagne Coast” primarily from when it had a moment on TikTok about two years ago. The instrumental almost-chorus, with its high-pitched guitar riff that just glittered, was easily understandable as a catchy hook—and unfortunately, a backdrop for the unattainable beach vacations of influencers. (Happens to the best songs, I guess. I miss when TikTok didn’t know who the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were.) But on its own, “Champagne Coast” is a solid piece of indie pop—Perfume Genius is the best comparison that comes to mind, with Devonté Hynes’s warm, breathy vocals and the airy quality that lingers around the track like a silvery garland. Breathless and yearning, Hynes’s near-mumbled lyrics speak to a loving kind of desperation while waiting for a lover to return home. But its centerpiece is that viral, delicately plucked guitar, performed by Hynes himself; the greatest tragedy about “Champagne Coast” is that even though it’s nearly five minutes long, that guitar doesn’t get much room to breathe. Come on, man! “Let it rip” isn’t appropriate for a song this light, but give that guitar some love!

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Love Galaxy (The Imperial Broadcasts, #1) – Sierra Branham – “I told you I’ll be waiting/Hiding from the rainfall/Tell me, what’s the joy of/Giving if you’re never pleased?”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 8/16/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: Yes, I did, in fact, preorder a song for Sunday Songs because I knew that I’d have Things to say about Lost Weekend, even though it’s only been two days since it came out. No, I’m not trying to kill you by putting Sparklehorse, Mitski, and Phoebe Bridgers in the same post (I swear the Mitski is actually upbeat. No, really!).

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 8/16/26

“Little Fat Baby” – Sparklehorse

In the aftermath of a near-death experience that gave Mark Linkous chronic pain for the rest of his life, this is what he said that he realized: “I started noticing all these things I’d forgotten about. I remember I was outside the rehabilitation place and I noticed a grasshopper, and I’d forgotten about grasshoppers…I just had this new perception of things I’d been oblivious to.” Sure, Sparklehorse is a hallmark of sad bastard music (a label that Linkous himself somewhat chafed against). But as I get older, what draws me back to Sparklehorse again and again is the encased eggs of hope beneath the sadness. His world is populated with dust and rotten wood and bones, but there’s lively insects hopping around, bird’s nests in the rafters of crumbling barns. There’s a liveliness that persists in spite of many sources of great strife in Linkous’s too-short life.

“Little Fat Baby” is one of the more somber songs in an already somber album, It’s a Wonderful Life. Yet it’s also one of the more empathetic songs. In the chorus, he ruminates on the song’s nebulous protagonist: “He got dragged/By a donkey/Through the glass/And the myrtle/But he was once/A little fat baby.” We never know what circumstances lead to this man meeting such an agonizing fate, but Linkous peers beyond the pain to see the inherent humanity in this character. The circumstances aren’t the point—the point is that all of us started off as helpless little creatures deserving of love. “Little Fat Baby” is a tender duet between Linkous and Sol Seppy, who provides fairylike accompaniment to Linkous’s already fragile voice. Quivering strings give this track a kind of grand reverence, amidst the quiet sympathy it weaves for the man who was once a little fat baby. There’s a strange comfort in “Little Fat Baby” amid the sadness—the feeling that you can always come home, no matter what you did before you stumbled onto the doorstep.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Language of Liars – S.L. Huang – “Did you make the city slickers laugh?/He got dragged by a donkey/Through the glass and the myrtle/But he was once a little fat baby…”

“Fireproof” (One Direction cover) – Mitski

Everything that Mitski touches turns to gold. Well, maybe not Laurel Hell, but they can’t all be winners. The recent tenth anniversary of Puberty 2 prompted her to release an edition with two new covers with whiplash-inducing source material: Frank Sinatra (which I talked about around a month ago) and One Direction. Of course, Mitski didn’t have to try in order to make “Fireproof” loads more fun than the original, which is pretty much the dictionary definition of milquetoast. (How do you make a song called “Fireproof” and then make it into the most sauceless, pallid excuse for a song possible? Jesus.) Mitski, on the other hand, made the vague promises of the lyrics into something tangible and fiery—her breathless admission of “I’m feeling something deep inside/Hotter than a jet stream burning up” makes it feel real. Aided by the crunchy guitars of her Bury Me at Makeout Creek era, this cover feels like she means every word, even if they aren’t hers.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Song of Salvation – Alechia Dow – “I’m feeling something deep inside/Hotter than a jet stream burning up/I got a feeling deep inside/It’s taking, it’s taking all I’ve got…”

“Museum of Sex” – Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3

Having only seen him live twice, I can say in confidence that there’s a point in every Robyn Hitchcock show where it goes from a concert to a stand-up routine. The last time I saw him, he veered into a whole bit about how rock n’ roll was invented in the 1700’s aboard ships. There was a joke about “Horse Latitudes” somewhere in there. He quoted “Time and again, I tell myself/I’ll stay clean tonight” from Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes” before segueing into “The Cheese Alarm.” The guy’s just naturally hilarious. This is the same man who casually used the interjection “yaysville!” multiple times in his memoir, after all. It felt nothing but natural.

What sticks to me about Robyn Hitchcock’s sense of humor to me is that yes, he’s got jokes, but he never half-asses them. He still puts his all into a song with lyrics like “I love that old museum of sex/You never know what’s happening next.” With the grooving, horn-laden accompaniment of the Venus 3, he launches into a track that winds along slinkily like a snake. He added in a lyric about said Museum of Sex closing at 4pm, to the laughter of the crowd, and all the while he’s chipping away at an artfully complex riff. He’s committed to the bit to a degree that most artists aren’t.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Early Riser – Jasper Fforde – there’s not a lot of books or authors I can think of that are similar to Hitchcock’s sense of humor, but Fforde’s quirky, dry wit and out of left field premises certainly comes close.

“The A Song (Laid In Your Arms)” – Spiritualized

“The A Song” is monumental. There’s no doubt about it. When I saw Spiritualized back in 2022, about a month before Everything was Beautiful was released, I remember being caught up in the towering tidal wave of noise. I could sense that “The A Song” was new, and all I could make out from the dizzying bee’s nest of sound was the line “One man’s crime is another man’s thrill”; the rest was just a shockwave.

It’s no wonder that I listened to Everything Was Beautiful to death when it came out. I had to take an extended break from it because it consumed me so much in mid-2022. To this day, I still think it’s one of Spiritualized’s best albums to date, nearly on par with Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, no less drugged-out but with the optimism that comes with age—and the revelation that you’re still alive, and there’s a myriad of things that you can do with your body and your life. Sure, “The A Song (Laid In Your Arms)” is probably as much about being high and watching your life slip away as any given Spiritualized song, but it’s a truly spectacular show of the amount of command that J Spaceman has of sound. Watching him at work is like watching a conductor with a 60-piece orchestra; squealing horns, screeching guitars, and percussion like pounding waves all convalesce into a marvelous, tidal force that knocks me off my feet, even when I’m sitting down. It’s so meticulously controlled and constructed, and yet there’s something so primal about how this song just swallows you whole. “The A Song” is a cosmic force—like the album title, it’s the kind of immaculate construction that, in spite of its lyrics, taps into the wonder of watching life itself unfold in front of your eyes, just like J Spaceman’s arresting compositions unfold in front of you. I think that’s the point of Everything Was Beautiful, in the end; it’s a celebration of the overwhelming shock of being alive.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Brightness Between Us (The Darkness Outside Us, #2) – Eliot Schrefer – I associate this duology a ton with Spiritualized—they have a very similarly epic quality to them.

“Kill Me” – Phoebe Bridgers

Predictably, I’ve become insufferable about Lost Weekend. Phoebe Bridgers could’ve easily gotten away with releasing Punisher 2: Electric Boogaloo after six years of radio silence, but she’s easily defied it. It’s a different record, temporally and stylistically. I’m struck by how it sounds next to Punisher; the former was lonely in the way of expansiveness, intensely sparse, like the image of Bridgers staring up at the stars in the middle of nowhere on the album cover. Lost Weekend, on the other hand, is lonely in a way that only happens when you’re caught in the eye of a storm in a roiling sea of chaos. The album is all about upheaval and disorientation, both positive and negative, with the confluence of her father’s unexpected passing and her relationship with Bo Burnham. Add to that the unforgiving eagle-eye of the music industry and the tabloid press, it’s got enough hairpin turns to make somebody want to abruptly get off the ride and throw up.

Chaos is something that Bridgers takes full advantage of on Lost Weekend, with some of the stylistic detours feeling disorienting if not played in the right order. But in order, the cohesion is difficult to miss; it feels strung together in a more adventurous way, especially with the bevy of instrumentation and noise that’s been added to the soundscape. “Kill Me,” one of my standout tracks from the album, feels like the lodestone of the chaos and disorientation: the repetition of Bridgers’s breathy admission of “This is gonna kill me/Wait!” as the instrumentation blinks into momentary silence feels like stumbling off of a dizzying rollercoaster, not knowing which direction is up or down. (Fittingly, I had a similar feeling coming out of the accompanying laser show at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. In a good way, for sure. Fitting.) Much of the song deals with time out of time, years bending and blending together: “My boys are getting married/Turning 21/I’m not, but I was once certain, always.” That sense of uncertainty feeds into the verse about a shared kiss at a costume party where “the veil is thinning.” (Admittedly, I thought that the “flower with chemical petals” line was corny, but it turned out to be a reference to David Foster Wallace.) All of it culminates in a propulsive turn into cascading shoegaze at 3:34 that sounds like the fabric of reality itself is fragmenting into fragile pieces, buoyed by Cameron Winter’s (!!!) backing vocals. Bridger’s rallying cry of “Let’s go missing” certainly puts “Lost Boys” in a new light—all of this upheaval and heightened visibility would make anybody want to go off the grid.

Lost Weekend, in the end, reads to me like a beautiful statement about facing the inherent unpredictability of life. Some days, it’s enough to make you want to disappear. But some days, it represents a promise of something wonderful that you’ll never see coming on the horizon. Life is full of this chaos, in all of its grief and turmoil—there’s no use running from it, good or bad. Sometimes what’s on the other side is the very thing you’ve always wanted.

BONUS: Speaking of Cameron Winter [ahem] Son-John Johnson, here’s one of my other absolute favorites from the album, the duet “I Can’t Wait” and it’s newly released music video:

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Infinite Miles – Hannah Fergesen – “Turning twenty-one/I’m not, but I was once certain, always/Now all I know is the ending…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!