Category: Sunday Songs

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. 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!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 8/9/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: A Beatles cover that David Bowie faltered on, but somebody else succeeded in. Plus, weird movies with weird scores, and mediocre movies with great needle drops.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 8/4/26

“All We Ever Look For” – Kate Bush

Kate Bush has her share of iconic album covers, but I swear Never for Ever has to take the cake for my favorite one. Can we acknowledge just how fantastic Nick Price’s album art is? Aside from capturing Kate Bush’s spirit and musical style, it’s just so kooky—how could you not love the parade of spooky storybook creatures coming out of Kate Bush’s skirt? It’s uniquely suited to most of the tracks I’ve heard from the album, but “All We Ever Look For” is an especially good fit. All of the flutes, koto, and quaint synth bubblings feel like they should be the backdrop for an elaborate story with stylized, woodcut characters rotating on a wheel, like a Rousseau painting that never came to be. The wheel is key here, not just because “All We Ever Look For” is neatly cyclical musically: the lyrics are as well: Bush explained in 1980 that “It’s about family relationships generally. Our parents got beaten physically. We get beaten psychologically. The last line – ‘All we ever look for – but we never did score.’” Aided by the almost medieval stylings of the instrumentals, the track plods along like a dirge, but what it’s mourning is the continuing cycles of generational trauma: “The whims that we’re weeping for/Our parents would be beaten for/Leave the breast/And then the rest/And then regret you ever left.” In a way, it remains a dirge—a kind of funeral for all of the generations who fell victim to these cycles.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Wearing the Lion – John Wiswell – “All we ever look for, a god/All we ever look for, ooh, a drug/All we ever look for, a great big hug/All we ever look for, just a little bit of you…”

“Everytime I’m With You” (feat. Jason Lytle) – Sparklehorse & Danger Mouse

Dark Night of the Soul was Sparklehorse’s final project before his too-soon passing, and it was an ambitious one: a collaboration with producer Danger Mouse, with a guest list consisting of the usual suspects (Nina Persson, Jason Lytle, Vic Chestnutt) and the more unexpected (Gruff Rhys, David Lynch). I haven’t listened to the whole album, but Mark Linkous and Danger Mouse’s powers combined make something so cohesive, that you’d think only a singular mind was behind it. “Everytime I’m With You” creeps along with a proto-C418 instrumental (tell me that this doesn’t sound a little like “Chirp”), where Mark Linkous and Jason Lytle’s vocals meld in a slurring warble, musing about how “everytime that I’m with you/I am drunk, and so are you.” It’s a woozy track that almost feels drunk itself, like the subjects have infected the very structure of the song itself with their own intoxication. It bridges the gap between something brighter than Sparklehorse’s usual palette, and something gentler than Danger Mouse’s usual fare.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words – Eddie Robson – “Yeah, everytime you come by/We get so trashed and stay up all night/Well, it’s so wrong, but it’s so right/Yeah, it’s alright…”

“Silver Lining” – Rilo Kiley

I’ve already aired out my many problems with Supergirl, but if it has one redeeming factor, it’s that it had a fantastic soundtrack. Then again, most of Rilo Kiley’s discography is made of songs that feel reverse-engineered for coming-of-age movies—and I’ve never gotten tired of it. It really doesn’t feel like a one trick pony situation, because they’ve clearly got the capability for breathless, adventurous indie pop (“Portions for Foxes”) and some truly devastating yet affirming wallops to the face (“A Better Son/Daughter”). It’s no wonder that “Silver Lining” was the pick for Supergirl; although the movie never followed through on this arc, it’s a stomping, indie-pop ode to dusting yourself off and regaining your self worth. Like Jenny Lewis leaving her fictional groom at the altar in the music video, this track celebrates, in all of its complicated, mushy feelings of guilt and freedom, of refusing to be treated as ornamental: “I never felt so wicked/As when I willed our love to die/And I was your silver lining/As the story goes/I was your silver lining/But now, I’m gold.”

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Something More – Jackie Khalilieh – “And I was your silver lining/As the story goes/I was your silver lining/But now, I’m gold.”

“Korben Dallas” (from The Fifth Element) – Éric Serra

The Fifth Element was back in theaters recently, so I had to do rewatch #3 on the big screen. Every time I watch it, I forget the sheer amount of bizarre things that had to align for this movie to have happened. It’d be easy to see this and lament the sameness that’s overcome pop culture, but I maintain that weirdness will always find a way to slip through the cracks. This, however, is on a level of originality—and absurdity—that just can’t be replicated. The supreme being of the universe teaches Bruce Willis about consent, and he still doesn’t quite get it. Gary Oldman with a horrendously funny haircut and a soul patch. Tricky gets two minutes of screen time and then gets blown up. Incompetent space priests. Top-tier creature design for 10 minutes. A climax synced up with a blue alien singing opera. It’s so unafraid of being weird, and for that, The Fifth Element will forever be aspirational for me as a creator. I just get jumpstarted with inspiration with every rewatch, once I get over the bafflement that Leeloo’s godawful Band-aid outfit got past that many layers of studio scrutiny. (War crime, I tell you.)

Most of the soundtrack for The Fifth Element gets overshadowed by said opera piece, and rightfully so, to an extent. But the pockets of brilliance like this in the score deserve so much more love. The “anything goes” attitude of The Fifth Element translated to Eric Serra’s score; you go into this film weaned on a few pieces that are very much indebted to John Williams’s Star Wars scores, only to be knocked senseless by this slick, grungy trip-hop track with some of the funkiest basslines ever committed to a sci-fi film. It has everything. Percussion that sounds like one of 23rd-century New York’s elevators malfunctioning, weird little electronic warbles, and a loop of a cat’s meow to coincide with the first glimpses of Korben Dallas’s cat. And did I mention the bass? Oh my god. It sets the scene with the immediacy of somebody kicking your door down in combat boots. All that, and it instantly gives you a sense of Dallas as a character (all sorts of disparate elements held together by…Bruce Willis, of course) and the aesthetic language—both visual and oral—of Luc Besson’s world. All that for a song that’s not even two minutes long. SUPER GREEN!

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle, #1) – Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff – look, I know I used this last week, but Amie Kaufman has cited The Fifth Element as one of her favorite movies of all time, and has said that it was a major inspiration for this series. See? All the cool people like The Fifth Element.

“Across the Universe” (The Beatles cover) – Fiona Apple

I’ll never stop being a die-hard Bowie fan, but I’m mature enough to acknowledge when he misses. David Bowie covering one of The Beatles’s most moving and iconic songs—what could possibly go wrong? A lot of things, unfortunately. The vibes are just off. His cover of “Across the Universe” appeared on Young Americans, and even though John Lennon contributed guitars to this cover, I think it’s just an awkward pairing, with Bowie stretching his voice out too much and the worst of the plastic soul of Young Americans grating against the transcendental beauty of the original. Oof.

Fiona Apple, on the other hand, knocked it out of the park. Nothing can top The Beatles’s original version, but I think she captured what a lot of covers have failed to do. I’ve always taken the song to be about transience, but the persistence of love regardless; all of the overpowering sensations are threatening to overtake Lennon (“Pools of sorrow/Waves of joy/Are drifting through my open mind/Possessing and caressing me”), and yet he remains firm that “nothing’s gonna change my world”—he can still anchor himself to what matters, which seems to be that sense of “limitless, undying love.” (Of course, he wrote it after an argument with his ex-wife, which doesn’t paint the sunniest outlook on the song, but I think the meaning breaks through like sunlight regardless. It’s just an arresting song.) But I think what Apple understood about this song is how weightless it fundamentally is. Against Lennon’s poetry, where all manner of objects drift free of gravity or any earthly constraint, Apple’s voice—and the gentle yet cinematic instrumentation—make it feel as free-floating as the original. Like Lennon, her voice is quietly reverent of witnessing these wonders every single day, her pronunciations making the word “sorrow” into something that I mistook for “sound”—that’s how soft she makes things. Like the Paul Thomas Anderson-directed music video, which finds Apple oblivious to a diner getting robbed and ransacked, it has that core of tearfully transcendent emotion while still feeling wholly untethered from this earthly plane.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Mad Sisters of Esi – Tashan Mehta – “Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes/They call me on and on across the universe…”

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: 8/2/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

This week: bear with me, this color scheme is hanging on for dear life. Also, the many connotations (positive and negative) of “they were really just doing whatever in the ’80s.”

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 8/2/26

“Wherever I Lay My Phone (That’s My Home)” – Super Furry Animals

I love when album covers have absolute Creatures on them. Super Furry Animals lived up to their name in that regard—we’ve got the raccoon critter and its evil twin on Radiator, whatever’s going on with Phantom Power, and perhaps the most Creature of all their Creatures: the one-eyed, many-legged missing link in Minion evolution on the Guerrilla album cover. I love that dude.

In their heyday, it seems like Super Furry Animals were willing to do whatever. For me, that’s why they’re so iconic—they refused to be predictable, even if they weren’t setting out to be experimental, as was the case with Guerrilla, according to Gruff Rhys. This is the only track I’ve heard off of Guerrilla, but it’s apparently just one of the many, many detours they were willing to take on the album. “Wherever I Lay My Phone (That’s My Home)” is full of false starts and twists, all made to make you jump—it’s one of the band’s many flirtations with dance music, and it’s littered with jittering beat drops aplenty. They crammed all manner of sounds into this track (one of them being a sample of an early ringtone), from foghorn like blares at the beginning to bass that can only be described as blorping (hear me out here), and all kinds of autotune, distortion, and sped-up chipmunk voices. The beauty of Super Furry Animals is that it all works together; with the electronic connective tissue, none of the seemingly random sound effects and touches feel random. Apparently, while touring for Guerrilla, this song was used as the opener to their shows—understandably, because I’d go fucking nuts if I heard this right out of the gate.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle, #1) – Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff – this song could 100% be playing during the ballroom scene on the Sempiternity, right? Or maybe the bar fight right before.

“Seen and Not Seen” – Talking Heads

Pitchfork’s review of Remain in Light contains this goldmine of a line: “At nearly every turn, Remain in Light thwarts cognitive sense to appeal to the gut. Or maybe the limbic system? I’m not a doctor—whatever part of human physiology is responsible for getting funky.” I don’t think there’s ever been an album so dissociative and alienated that’s simultaneously so funky. That’s probably the best distillation of Talking Heads—and most of David Byrne’s career, honestly—I can think of. To be honest, it wasn’t the showstopping marvel that everybody makes it out to be, but it was great regardless. I’d listened to “Crosseyed & Painless” and “Once in a Lifetime” so much that the best was already ruined for me. The second half meanders slightly, but it’s such a unique, influential, and unreplicatable blend of isolation and togetherness.

I’ve never really been one for spoken-word tracks, but I’ve warmed up to them lately, in no small part thanks to Jeff Tweedy’s “Parking Lot,” which is probably the pinnacle of them. (The quiet vulnerability of “I’d like to teach the world to sing…fuck, anything” is a high point of the album.) “Seen and Not Seen” is entirely out-of-body, with David Byrne’s voice devoid of almost any emotion. He describes a man with a desire to change his appearance who has tricked himself into thinking that he can “by force of will, cause his face to approach those of his ideal” after focusing on models in magazines and passersby on the street. He’s burrowed so far into his own head that he’s convinced that everyone around him has been able to replicate the process; every face he sees is the product of relentless wishing. It’s interesting that the facial features that the protagonist wants—”a more hooked nose, wider, thinner lips, beady eyes, a larger forehead”—aren’t traditionally desirable facial features, at least in the eyes of pop culture and Western beauty standards. It’s simply the image the character has in mind. “Seen and Not Seen” has the dread of a sci-fi short story from the ’70s, something that Philip K. Dick could’ve conceived, sans drugs and casual misogyny. There’s a distinct discomfort about how removed it is, but it’s a key piece of Remain in Light’s distanced story.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Queen of Faces – Petra Lord – I’m reminded a lot of the Chassises in this novel: magical, synthetic bodies and faces that can be swapped and altered at will, guaranteed that you’re rich enough.

“Your Touch” – Saâda Bonaire

The creation of Saâda Bonaire might be the epitome of the statement “they were just doing whatever in the ’80s.” It was the brainchild of German DJ Ralph Von Richtoven, who formed a loose supergroup that consisted of two models-turned-singers (Stefanie Lange and Claudia Hossfeld) and a bunch of musicians (namely Kurdish and Turkish) who had been found in an immigration center. (There was also the fact that Lange and Hossfeld would be dressed in traditional Bedouin clothing, which…hoo, boy. Yikes.) It was an early exploration of “world music,” which would later become a cornerstone of the ’80s. Richtoven’s ambition was in vain, and the project lay unfunded and unreleased until 2013. Incidentally, I heard about it through my brother, who heard it playing at some random coffee shop, which sounds like the exact kind of obscure music that only a barista could unearth. The result sounds like an alien trying to recreate ’80s disco-pop from memory. “Your Touch” adheres so strictly to what ’80s pop was, and yet it retains that left-of-center skew that makes it tread into lovable weirdo territory. Spacey synths bounce, tapes rewind, and telephones ring as Lange and Hossfeld coo about frustration (sexual and just generally situational). “Your Touch” speaks to the kind of creative freedom that was running rampant in the era; of course, it wasn’t without its cultural and financial boundaries crossed (again, probably for the best that it didn’t go forward with the cultural appropriation), but in spite of its failure at the time, it was the product of somebody with creativity to spare, and that’s the strange beauty of it.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Love Galaxy – Sierra Branham – between the reality TV, sexuality, and espionage, there’s plenty of this energy going on here…in space, of course.

“Ghost in Sunlight” – Robyn Hitchcock

The Confuser! Even though I’ve been steadily following the singles on Robyn Hitchcock’s latest album, I haven’t gotten around to talking about them much here, which is a real shame. (“Yesterday’s Rain” and “My Dead Astronaut” are some of my other standouts.) Overall, it’s another showcase of his brand of quirky, jangly psych-pop, defiantly himself after decades in the industry. Having seen a few of these songs live, the studio versions of a handful of songs weren’t as potent, but fantastic nonetheless (see: “I Am This Thing”). “Ghost in Sunlight” was one of such songs. The experience of seeing it live was nothing short of enrapturing—and downright raw. Hitchcock played it solo on piano. I feel like should’ve stayed as such, because the sheer force of his craft bowled me over. He just delivered one of the most gut-wrenching lines in his catalogue (“They tore up the tracks this morning/The tracks they laid the day that you were born”) and followed it up with a raspy, powerful belt; imagine, if you will, a sprightly British man in his ’70s banging away at the piano, screaming his throat raw, then pausing to yell “FUCK ICE!” and going right back to the screaming. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is doing it quite like him.

In his defense, that spur-of-the-moment vulnerability is hard to replicate. The more polished version of “Ghost in Sunlight” that appears on The Confuser doesn’t quite capture that same feeling of wounded primality. Yet Hitchcock’s lyricism, even with his oddball lyricism, retains the core that made the live performance so memorable. That central metaphor of “a ghost in sunlight” evokes such an ephemeral image, of something already transparent on the brink of disappearance altogether. It’s all about the painful parts of transience, of old institutions and memories crumbling with time: “You disappear/Like a ghost in sunlight/Your outline fades away.” I imagine it’s more raw for Hitchcock, seeing as he’s in his 70s, watching bygone eras fade away. “They tore up the tracks this morning/The tracks they laid the day that you were born/Look at them, they’re gone” is one of Hitchcock’s most devastating and impactful lyrics to date. The Confuser is chock-full of surprises like them, and although the whole album isn’t a success, it’s well worth a listen.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Lost Story – Meg Shaffer – “They tore up the tracks this morning/The tracks they laid the day that you were born/Look at them, they’re gone…”

“Mine’s Not a High Horse” – The Shins

I haven’t talked about The Shins much on here, which is a real shame. Speaking of which, if we’ve got any Shins fans here…are y’all okay? And I thought the Phoebe Bridgers drought was bad! We’ve gone almost a decade without a new album, send help…

James Mercer is a lyricist for the ages, one of the few songwriters that deserves the title of being called a poet. But as much as great joy and tragedy can be wellsprings for poetry, so too can petty arguments. “Mine’s Not a High Horse” is the kind of poetry that sounds like it sprung up while seething in the shower post-argument, and that’s some of the best kind of poetry there is. (See also: “Therefore, I Am.”) I recently revisited Chutes Too Narrow through the episode of Life of the Record, and that kind of argument was how “Mine’s Not a High Horse” was born; by Mercer’s admission, it was a culmination over several arguments and conversations he’d recently had. It has that “oh, and ANOTHER thing!” feel that you can only get while replaying an argument for an audience of an empty shampoo bottle, but with Mercer’s signature touch. I’d be hard-pressed to think of a putdown more eloquent—and brutal—than “Will you remember my reply/When your high horse dies?” YOWCH. Of course, my main takeaway is that Mercer’s horse may, in fact, have been a little bit higher, but what resulted is a perfect indie rock kiss-off to whomever it may concern.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Heaven’s Graveyard – Grace Curtis – “Don’t ask for his opinion/They ought to drown him in holy water/Will you remember my reply/When your high horse dies?”

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: 7/26/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: here’s what Supergirl (2026), my Instagram algorithm, and my ongoing Britpop obsession dragged in.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 7/26/26

“Animal Nitrate” – The London Suede

Something about listening to early Suede makes me feel like an anthropologist. Every song I’ve heard off of their debut feels like finding a missing link in alternative music evolution, the point where British alt-rock branched off and evolved into Britpop in earnest. It’s cloaked in the power pop of the ’70s and the Smiths-like atmosphere of the ’80s, and yet it feels like the breaking point where the ’90s distinguished itself and became a whole new beast.

“Animal Nitrate” is one of my favorite Suede songs at this point—at their best, Brett Anderson and co. had an innate talent for crafting some of the most intoxicating British rock at the time. I remarked that “New Generation,” which came a few years after this album, sounded like fanfic set in David Bowie’s Hunger City; “Animal Nitrate” only fuels that flame. Awash in intoxication and seduction, “Animal Nitrate” glides along with razor-sharp guitar riffs from Bernard Butler and Anderson’s howl. The music video continues their quest of pushing the envelope as far as possible while maintaining their velvety, shocking aesthetic, but, yeah, the fact that Anderson admitted that the whole band consumed copious amount of cocaine in preparation for the video shoot explains…well, practically everything about that video. (“Fuck it, let’s spin this pig head around a bunch of times! Faster! FASTER!”) Yet it fits the slinky underworld of “Animal Nitrate” in all of its drugged-out splendor. But honestly? I feel like there’s no drug more powerful than the key change at the two-minute mark. WHEW.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Hammajang Luck – Makana Yamamoto – a soundtrack for the gritty—and grotty—cyberpunk underworld of this series.

“Blush” – Annika Rani

For all of the heinous evils of the Instagram algorithm, the one credit I can give it is that it occasionally hacks up new music I might not have heard of otherwise. This one interrupted my scroll with an unusually catchy bassline, hooky enough to make me do a double take. By all accounts, Annika Rani is leading up to her debut album sometime in the future, and if “Blush” is the lead single, then it’s a great pick—it instantly snags you with its funky rhythm and Rani’s vocals. (That guitar/piano double hitter at the three-minute mark is especially addictive.)

Granted, there really isn’t a reason for this song to be over four and a half minutes long. It gets repetitive in sections, and I think it would benefit from being a minute or so shorter because it has the perfect bones for a catchy, three-minute indie-pop tune. Along with the music video, where Rani pouts in clownish makeup and tries to shake off too-small heels, “Blush” is an unfolding tale of going to the extreme trying to impress the person you’re attracted to, to no avail—all Rani ends up with is a smudged, messy face: “Blush on my cheeks starts to run/Damn, my mascara’s a river/It fills up and leaves me with none.” Despite a few snags, I’m glad that I stumbled upon “Blush”—it’s a catchy track full of angst and goopy makeup.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Margo Zimmerman Gets the Girl – Brianna R. Shrum and Sara Waxelbaum – “I know you pick the people who look like you/So I’ll try and put some blush on/I’ll dab it right up…”

“Care” – Hana Vu

Madeline can’t be normal about comic book movies, more at 6. Yes, I finally saw Supergirl last week, and while it was fun in places, there were so many decisions that hampered it. To keep things somewhat short, nothing about Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s Woman of Tomorrow—possibly the best comics treatment that Supergirl has gotten to date—was respected. Not Kara’s character arc, not the aesthetic of the comic, and certainly not the message. Don’t get me started on how they brutally botched their attempts to be feminist. (There was no need for Krem of the Yellow Hills to be a sex trafficker and to have all of those teen girls unnecessarily exploited for their trauma onscreen…it gets to a point. Jesus Christ. Just let a woman take the wheel, god.)

One of the lesser criticisms that I have is that it blatantly tried and failed to be Guardians of the Galaxy. But for the most part, it had some great needle drops, and that might be the only ray of light amidst the botched-ness of it all. There’s a great list of mainly women-led bands in the mix: Wolf Alice, Wet Leg, Rilo Kiley, and Modest Mouse all get their day in the sun. (Supergirl was basically reverse-engineered to include a fight scene set to “catch these fists.”) In the theater, it was killing me where I’d heard a certain song before—and then I realized that it was Hana Vu, who I’d discovered last year after seeing her open for Soccer Mommy! She’s not my favorite, but if there’s any positive impact that Supergirl has, I hope it gives Hana Vu a wider audience. She deserves it. “Care” plays during an appropriately angsty scene of Kara staring teenagerly out the window, and Vu, with her aching vocals and punchy indie-rock production, provided the ideal backdrop. On its own, “Care” pairs well with the emotional atmosphere of Romanticism, with its crunching guitars. Vu truly has a powerful voice, and it only positively propels her perspective of love gone down the drain.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Forever Is Now – Mariama J. Lockington – “Oh, hold me now/When I open my mouth/It just screams ‘why?’/And oh, I don’t know/I just hope that someday I’ll be fine…”

“Angel” – Madonna

What a wonderful, talented pop star…it’s such a shame that she never made anything after 1998 and never expressed any questionable views about vaccines…what a shame…[cough cough]

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Like a Love Story – Abdi Nazemian – it’s in the title…very much a love letter to queer resilience, the ’80s, and Madonna, of course.

“Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me” – David Bowie

Diamond Dogs is the gift that keeps on giving. It’s been regularly on my rotation ever since I got a copy on vinyl back in June (because pride is all about self-love and self-care and supporting queer artistry…so I bought some Bowie on vinyl). At the moment, it’s still in my top 5 Bowie albums—even the weak links are darkly theatrical romps through the twisted, dystopian world that he weaves. Interspersed between them are songs like “Rebel Rebel,” which Bowie called his “goodbye to glam rock”—and what an enduring goodbye it was. Both this track and “Rebel Rebel” were holdovers from the Ziggy Stardust era, and it shows. There’s a lot of ballad-ing going on in Diamond Dogs, what with the thematic through-line of forbidden love in the face of a totalitarian government; “Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me” is the most Ballad of the ballads to me, more of a traditional rocker. And yet it holds some of the same emotive yearning as “Sweet Thing,” though it sounds more like a drunk serenade than the former’s heartstring-tearing plea.

This was the tip of the iceberg in terms of Bowie’s experimentation. He was a master of musically pushing boundaries, and Diamond Dogs was far from his first attempt at worldbuilding and concept albums—and it would be far from his last. And yet, “Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me,” despite being on the simpler side shows that he could bring that same charm to more stylistically straightforward songs. Like with Let’s Dance, he could make even the most ordinary formats into something exuberant and fresh, which is exactly why “Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me” endures to me.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

You Sexy Thing – Cat Rambo – “When you rock ‘n’ roll with me/No one else I’d rather be/Nobody here can do it for me/I’m in tears…”

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: 7/19/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: another whiplash lineup here, buckle up…at least you can boogie a little bit before the crushing weight of seasonal depression and/or a doomed relationship gets to you.

Enjoy this week’s review!

SUNDAY SONGS: 7/19/26

“Glass Mountain Trust” – Mark Ronson & The Business Int’l.

More little Madeline lore: Record Collection dominated my elementary school music taste. I haven’t revisited the whole thing, but every song feels nostalgic even if I don’t remember it as clearly. Mark Ronson assembled a disparate team of Avengers for this album (Simon Le Bon, Q-Tip, Rose Elinor Dougall, Spank Rock, and Boy George are just a handful of them), but the result is a surprisingly cohesive collection of pop songs. Chances are, that’s owed to Ronson’s talent as a producer—the glossy, neon sheen he applies to these songs make them feel like a machine all his own—he has a very distinct synth sound on this album. “Glass Mountain Trust” was one of the ones that I’d forgotten about, with D’Angelo serving as the lead vocalist. Even if you took away the metaphor of the glass mountain, the electronic atmosphere of this track feels glassy, all shiny and transparent. From D’Angelo’s rippling vocals to the drum machine that seems appear and disappear in thin air, “Glass Mountain Trust” proves Mark Ronson’s innate ear for intricate pop music.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Red Star Rebels – Amie Kaufman – “Formidable, the structure surrounding me only looks/I bust right through the glass, one attempt and that’s all it took/I wanted to remain feeling safe, but it just can’t sustain me/It feels more like a trap, gotta break out, won’t let it contain me…”

“Stonemilker” – Björk

I’m nearly done listening to all of Björk’s discography (and if I keep at it like this, I should be able to finish it all before her new album in 2027, EEK), but I’m pointedly afraid of listening to Vulnicura. I know it’ll devastate me. I just need to rip off the bandaid. “Lionsong” already guts me on every single listen, and I know that it’s objectively not the most brutal song on that album, so I’m already cooked. “Stonemilker” seems to be one of the more toned-down songs on the album, but it’s no less emotionally vulnerable. Björk’s dissection of the dissolution of her relationship with Matthew Barney is as raw as the open wounds she describes in the lyrics; her plaintive pleas for connection and understanding carve a rift in the notes themselves. But it’s the central metaphor of trying to connect as being as fruitless as “milking a stone” that drives home the emotions—there’s a lingering sense that their relationship is destined for failure, and she knows it. It’s a six minute lament of futility, the final toss of an anchor before it gets lost in the stormy waves.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Memory Called Empire – Arkady Martine – “A juxtapositioning fate/Find our mutual coordinates/Moments of clarity are so rare/I better document this…”

“Za” – Supergrass

Even in some UK publications, the impact of Supergrass on Britpop goes woefully understated, especially post-“Alright.” They were crafting album after album of some of the tightest British rock tracks time after time, with a mind for experimentation and a devoted admiration to the great British rock bands of years past. But if there’s anything that they’re hardly acknowledged for doing, it’s making a killer opening track. I mean, come on—“In It For the Money?” “Moving?” Dude. If I had that many genius album openers up my sleeve, I’d be able to die happy. “Za” deserves a place among those ranks as the cinematic opener to Life on Other Planets. What starts as a spacey synth that belongs at the beginning of a documentary about the universe unfolds into a classic rock ballad, with electric guitars arm in arm with sci-fi keyboards. Sure, there’s not much going on the lyrics department, but “Za” was built to indulge in instrumentals, not lyrics. It’s the perfect introduction to the album, which swerves in all manner of rock-adjacent directions, but wasn’t afraid to explore the outer space of Supergrass’s musical capabilities. It’s a classic.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Full Speed to a Crash Landing – Beth Revis – “Love/I see it in lies/It shines like the winter sun/So why don’t we get it on…”

“Gronlandic Edit” – of Montreal

Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? came out around when I was in kindergarten. I remember my dad playing it pretty early on in the car, and when I first heard “Gronlandic Edit,” my tiny, barely-grown mind was just enraptured. Something about that chord progression cracked something in half in my brain like a geode. I wanted to hear “Gronlandic Edit” over and over. Looking back, it was a sign of things to come that this toddling five year old who liked pink, Zoboomafoo, and stuffed pigs was also fixated on an of Montreal song. Pretentious music taste foreshadowing? Depressing music foreshadowing? Gay foreshadowing? Probably all three.

To this day, “Gronlandic Edit” retains that enchantment that first snagged me when I didn’t have the words to describe it. I recently revisited it thanks to Kevin Barnes’ episode of Life of the Record about Hissing Fauna, which was, admittedly, a real downer. They explained that song after song, they were holed up in their ex-wife’s hometown in Norway trying to turn their depression into something upbeat just to feel something. Indeed, “Gronlandic Edit,” which starts off with a hypnotic, funk-like bassline and electronic claps, begins with a description of Barnes sarcastically singing: “I am satisfied hiding in our friend’s apartment/Only leaving once a day to buy some groceries/Daylight, I’m so absent minded/Nighttime, meeting new anxieties.” Sometimes you make bleak-sounding music to articulate your bleak feelings, but if you’re Kevin Barnes, you try to dance the seasonal depression away. Whatever the case, “Gronlandic Edit” remains infectious—the immaculate construction of the chord progression of the chorus somehow makes a string of notes into a key that bottles the deep-seated yearning residing in Barnes’s heart. Their layered harmonies rise as though in prayer, dismissing of organized religion and yet simultaneously desperate for something to pray to in order to anchor themself through their disarray. (It’s a common theme throughout Hissing Fauna—just see “A Sentence of Sort in Kongsvinger” and its prayers to “a saint nobody has heard of.”) It’s a self-deprecating cocktail about outer and inner concerns, especially the biting barbs he directs at himself in the lyrics about the “faker indie star” (yowch, give yourself a little credit…).

It’s no wonder that Barnes doesn’t look back on Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? fondly. The whole album is an unforgiving chronicle of self-loathing, parenthood fears, marital tension, and seasonal depression. And yet there’s a reason why it’s held up for so long—it’s some of the most meticulously crafted indie pop of the 2000’s. There’s always some beauty to be found in the darkest of times, even if you have to force it out of yourself just to see it.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Ephemera Collector – Stacy Nathaniel Jackson – “Daylight, I’m so absent minded/Nighttime, meeting new anxieties/So am I erasing myself?/Hope I’m not erasing myself…”

“Yeah! Oh, Yeah!” – The Magnetic Fields

When “Andrew in Drag” gained traction on TikTok last year, I was surprised that a lot of people took it seriously—not as a song poking fun at the confines of heterosexuality and masculinity, but as a tragic tale of a repressed, closeted man who could never fulfill his queer desires. I kept thinking to myself: wasn’t the jokiness obvious? Were the lyrics—full of rhyming innuendos and dick jokes—not enough to clue people in that this song wasn’t at least partially silly?

Sure, it’s TikTok, the place media literacy goes to die, but then I remembered—I used to think that “Yeah! Oh, Yeah!” was playing it straight too. Stephin Merritt is a trickster and frequently sarcastic in his songwriting, but he’s written his fair share of sincere songs (see: “The Book of Love,” which is about as genuine as you can get with a love song). And then I saw The Magnetic Fields on the anniversary tour for 69 Love Songs, where they played this song—and explained that it was a parodic, Sonny & Cher-style duet about a couple who hate each other’s guts. When I first heard it in high school, it just depressed me—and that’s saying something, given that my musical diet at the time primarily consisted of Car Seat Headrest, Radiohead, and Sparklehorse. But it struck me as so achingly tragic: this woman built her whole life around her husband, only for him to only respond “yeah, oh yeah” to all of her darkest fears about him, and then he murders her? It sure is bleak.

But after that revelation at the live show, “Yeah! Oh, Yeah”‘s sarcasm is blatant. A lot of it was evident in the performance, where Claudia Gonson’s mischievous grin and Stephin Merritt’s drier-than-dry delivery of each “yeah, oh yeah” gave the song’s intended nature away. “Yeah! Oh, Yeah!” is full of mockery, from the playground “ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah” of the chorus, to Merritt’s exaggeratedly villainous portrayal of the gold-digging, murderous husband. The more Gonson’s fears escalate, the funnier each utterance of “yeah, oh yeah” gets—it goes from simply confirming that the husband isn’t in love with her anymore to “would you really kill your wife? Yeah, oh yeah!” It’s all very camp—it’s hard to expect anything less from The Magnetic Fields.

BONUS: Suki Waterhouse, an avid Magnetic Fields fan, recently performed a duet of “Yeah! Oh, Yeah!” with Stephin Merritt, and she does a pretty solid job at Claudia Gonson’s part:

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Here Beside the Rising Tide – Emily Jane – “I thought if we lived apart/We could make a brand-new start/Do you want to break my heart?/Yeah, oh yeah…”

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: 7/12/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: four years of Sunday Songs (!!), and the vibes are nothing short of baffling. Buckle up. And if you happen to get unexpectedly bopped on the head by falling fish, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 7/12/26

“The Earth Died Screaming” – Tom Waits

I know the expression “[xyz] could kill a Victorian child” is overused, but my shuffle recently made the transition from this song to “L to the OG,” and I feel like that could reasonably put a Victorian child into a coma. It almost put me into one.

I think I was destined to stumble upon more Tom Waits eventually. I guess he’s been having a bit of a minor moment, what with the recent needle drop in Wake Up Dead Man and his emergence from hibernation on Massive Attack’s biting anti-war track “Boots on the Ground” (which samples this song!). I’d also been familiar with him from his feature on Sparklehorse’s “Dog Door”; the words “gremlin,” “goblin,” and “chaos” have lost all of their meaning thanks to Tumblr, but if there’s anybody who actually sounds like a gremlin on that song, it’s Mark Linkous. And then here comes Tom Waits bellowing like an ogre. The whole experience of “Dog Door” is like witnessing some bog goblins performing a sacrificial ritual in an abandoned shed with some rusty nails and a fish skeleton. Great stuff. It’s peak, just trust me.

Bone Machine in particular vaguely fascinated me from afar—it always seemed to pop up on my Apple Music recommended albums. Of course, my brother ended up being the impetus for me finding this song. Is the fact that I’ve had “The Earth Died Screaming” on repeat on and off for a few weeks a cause for concern? Probably. But it’s such a captivating herald of the apocalypse. Wait’s signature growl is probably the only voice that could properly convey the bleakness of this vision of the end of the world. We’re talking Biblical levels of apocalypse here—the Devil’s shoveling coal, for one, but the last line of the last verse invokes the plague of locusts, so we’re already off to a great start. Waits’ rasping delivery of “Bring me some water/Put it in this skull” might set the atmosphere more than any of the others. Some of the lyrics are truly spine chilling—I don’t know why, but the invocation of army ants picking off the bones of whoever’s left after the initial onslaught of ungodly abominations gives me the willies. And the way that Waits’s lips seem to form around the words “it rained mackerel, it rained trout” cement this song’s feeling of being passed down as an omen of doom between haggard street preachers. The percussion, which marches on like a dirge, sounds like it’s being played on the dusty ribcage of a horse. I can almost imagine a Cab Calloway-like parade of skeletons marching along to this song. All of the instruments are sparse here, and the Lisa Germano-esque organ outro only adds to the feeling of foreboding. It all feels very Cormac McCarthy to me, and if not for the fact that I hated The Road, it would’ve been my book pairing—it’s a bleak tale, a world populated by dust, bones, and dirt roads that haven’t seen human feet in years.

Wait’s storytelling is what keeps this from going fully into The Road territory, but more notably, I think it’s the romance. It’s not a ballad by any stretch. But the fact that the rotted connective tissue of the chorus, howled by Waits, is “The earth died screaming/While I lay dreaming/Dreaming of you” sets the tone for the song—every post-apocalyptic trope is happening to Earth in an unrelenting barrage, but he’s still dreaming of that you. Amidst the horror, there’s fleeting bright moments—”I walk between the raindrops” for one, one of my favorite lines from the whole song—and maybe that’s the real human instinct of perseverance during the apocalypse, even while you’re getting pelted by locusts and fish.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Anthem – Noah Hawley – “And the great day of wrath has come/And here’s mud in your big red eye/The poker’s in the fire/And the locusts take the sky…”

“Peter the Dog” – mary in the junkyard

At long last…Role Model Hermit, everybody!! The album I’ve been anticipating for years has been out a little over a week now, and the shine hasn’t worn off. It’s such an excellent spread of the things I love best about mary in the junkyard. It’s a lovingly-sewn patchwork of remnants of their earlier sound and the more mature songwriters that they are now, full of off-kilter, Radiohead-esque chord progressions paired with whimsical lyricism evoking folklore and landscapes populated by weird little Jim Henson puppet creatures. Role Model Hermit is a world of vegetable gardens, reincarnated mice, hungry dogs, and men turning into trees. All of it showcases a kind of storytelling that’s more than comfortable veering into the fantastical while retaining the weepy, angry vulnerability that endeared them to me in the first place.

The one major drawback of Role Model Hermit is that the most memorable tracks were the singles. It’s kind of a rough move to release almost half of the album as singles before the release (six, if you count the fact that they frequently played “Thou Shalt Sprout” before the album came out), and although there wasn’t a bad song on the album, none of them live up to early standouts like “Crash Landing” or “New Muscles.” Even so, the album remained full of surprises—”Peter the Dog” was a standout on the first listen. This is the aforementioned hungry dog, a comfortable but hungry creature that eats all of the narrator’s fears and anxiety. It’s one of the more painfully vulnerable songs on the album—it candidly captures that feeling when you think you’re out of the woods when it comes to anxiety or any other kind of issue, and then the feelings start to resurface: “I don’t understand my tears/I’ve been doing so well/And the big black dog ate all of my fear/And I was starting to smoke.” I love the imagery of the dog (Peter, apparently), because to an extent, these feelings are like a domesticated animal: you’ve learned how to treat them and lived with them, but even the most rigorous training can make old habits resurface. But the comfort that comes with this dog is that you can always train it more, and you can calm it down just as easily: “And I’m made of strong stuff/But I’ve always got this pain in my head.” mary in the junkyard have never shied away from this kind of vulnerability, and it’s resulted in so much fantastic songwriting; but their earlier songs were more scattershot in the lyrics, embodying their old Instagram bio of “angry weepy chaos rock.” But “Peter the Dog”—and Role Model Hermit as a whole—feel like the result of them really honing in on their songwriting, and the end product has resulted in their most impactful songs to date.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Heaven’s Graveyard – Grace Curtis – “I don’t understand my tears/I’ve been doing so well/And the big black dog ate all of my fear/And I was starting to smoke…”

“Death is Not the End” – Chelsea Wolfe

SHE’S BACK!!

So there’s definitely an album on the way. There has to be, she’s already announced a tour! Chelsea Wolfe recently reemerged with two new singles, this track and “The Dark.” I liked “The Dark,” “Death is Not the End” was, without question, the stronger of the two; while the eerie, meandering goth-folk of “The Dark” is solid but listless, “Death is Not the End” feels like much more fortified vision of a song, coalescing into the best parts of what I like about Chelsea Wolfe. Her ethereal whispers and the pluckings of an acoustic guitar assemble themselves like a skeleton before the real skin and muscles—the ascending, doom-y guitar as foreboding and ragged as a stormy cliffside—shield it. Amidst the crushing instrumentals in the latter half, she muses in her true gloomily poetic fashion, about the nature of death and transience: “This life heaves a sigh/Relief amid night/To water I return, in sea-dress/Seal-skin locked away for a time.” I, for one, fully support Wolfe’s selkie arc—her visuals for this set of singles return to the well-trod ground of “Chelsea Wolfe looking like a modern-day goddess in various biomes,” but the video for “Death is Not the End” is perfectly suited to the lyrics, with Wolfe clad in frilly tulle amidst kelp and a stony beach with bony spires rising from the shore.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Soul Keepers – Devon Taylor – “Let it wash over/Unspoken/Like the mouth that eats the tail/I keep hoping death is like the ocean…”

“Cancer of the Skull” – Cameron Winter

The last time I talked about Cameron Winter, he had a much sunnier outlook on life. Heavy Metal really seems to run the gamut of emotion, because we’ve gone from embracing the bumpy road of love to the battle between having to work an unsatisfying job and desperately wanting to create. Granted, enough of the lyrics have enough quirkiness to them to suggest that Winter at least has something of a humorous outlook on things: “Cancer of the ’80s/I was beat with ukuleles” sounds abjectly goofy out of context. For me, that’s what prevents “Cancer of the Skull” from being purely pessimistic for me—like the swaying rhythm of the acoustic guitar, Winter documents the boat-on-the-sea pendulum swing between devoting yourself to work and devoting yourself to creativity. There’s a bevy of interesting instruments that work themselves into the fabric of the songs, from the warbling organ to the grasshopper boings of the barely-audible jaw harp, and they all serve to make this push-and-pull feel like Winter’s “pirate’s crazy-eyed quest,” adding a degree of sarcastic grandeur to something that most creatives have to grapple with once in their lives. Winter’s rich vocals, layered one on top of the others, make the thesis of “Oh, songs are a hundred ugly babies/That I can’t feed” into the kind of chorus you’d drunkenly sing around the fire—and oof, yeah, that’s such a fantastic distillation of having millions of ideas but neither the time nor the patience to attend to them.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Embassytown – China Miéville – “I came here to sleep in your infamous kitchen/You’re holding out a baby’s shoes/I can’t take ’em/I pray to a pirate’s maniac religion…”

“Voyager” – PJ Harvey

What is it about songs called “Voyager” that always end up gutting me one way or another? I think it’s just the inherent bittersweetness and cosmic smallness that comes with evoking Voyager I. Yowch. Granted, PJ Harvey’s version didn’t really destroy me until I looked closer at the lyrics, but boygenius? Yup. I’m still reeling from their “Voyager” three years later. Damn you, Phoebe.

But we’re not here to talk about that “Voyager.” PJ Harvey’s newest track, a companion to an upcoming stage show by musician and physicist Professor Brian Cox, is a synth-driven slow-burn meditating on the probe that was launched into space nearly half a century ago. Amidst methodical keyboards that evoke the inner workings of a rocket, Harvey details its ongoing journey through the heavens: “Dark nights, dark days/Frozen, silent/Bearing Earth-songs.” The lyrics are simple and quite sparse, but it fits the construction of the song, a glacial build from keyboards into a grand orchestral hum. But then…ow, there was no need to gut me with the reference to Carl Sagan. Or, at least, that’s how I interpreted this line: “Look back at us/As a speck of dust/Darkness our home/Bear it through love.” It’s awfully similar to this line from page 371 of Contact: “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” …excuse me while I keel over into the fetal position for the next hour. FUCK.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Contact – Carl Sagan – “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.”

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: 7/5/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: in honor of the 250th anniversary of our glorious, flawless United States of America, I’ve concocted a color scheme that pairs well with the sickly algal green of the Reflecting Pool. God bless America, or something. Worry not: there’s enough women, queers, and people of color to give half of the White House a stroke. D.E.I.!

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 7/5/26

“Lost Boys” – Phoebe Bridgers

SHE’S BACK!! SHE’S BACK, THIS IS NOT A DRILL! LOST WEEKEND COMES OUT THIS AUGUST!!!

Returning to music—and the public eye—was always going to be a tall order for Phoebe Bridgers. In the absence of new music since 2022, her fame has unexpectedly skyrocketed. It’s so bizarre to think that when I got into her music in 2019, she was on par with artists like Soccer Mommy, Snail Mail, or Jay Som in terms of recognition, and now she’s selling out arena shows…whiplash, for sure. Opening for Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour was likely the turning point. Either way, when she finally came back, there would be an inevitable torrent of naysayers and unwarranted speculation. I almost still can’t believe that she’s back.

Most of my thoughts about “Lost Boys” coalesced while I was listening to it on repeat while making a grilled cheese, which feels strangely fitting—here’s a song with themes of immaturity and not wanting to grow up, and there I stood with the ultimate kid’s menu dinner. (At least it wasn’t American cheese and white bread.) But the doubts kept swirling around in my head. Is the production too polished? Are the horns and tempo too much like “Kyoto?” Was Punisher the only trick up Phoebe Bridgers’s sleeve after all? Sure, I maintain that the production feels on the unnecessarily slick side (damn you, Jack Antonoff). And it does ring similarly to “Kyoto.” But “Lost Boys” feels like being invited into something new. It feels like the lulling into a false sense of security before the sound of Lost Weekend unfolds in earnest.

Yet even if it wasn’t, “Lost Boys” would be a worthy addition to Bridgers’s catalogue. The “Kyoto” comparison is apt because they have that same quality of feeling like a reckless sprint—both to escape something they should’ve confronted long ago. Imagery of fantasy and escapism melds with Bridgers’s usual structure of very modern vignettes—these lost boys are emblematic of the kind of escapism she longs for, but she’s equally damaged by being in the company of that amount of emotional stuntedness and immaturity. It’s a bittersweet concoction, made all the more so by the effortless shifts from whispery reflection to the raw-throated count-off before the final chorus. “Fun” isn’t the word I’d normally describe Phoebe Bridgers with, but I can’t help but feel a rush of excitement every time I listen to this song—there’s something ecstatic about it amidst the uncertainty. Maybe it’s the fact that both Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus quietly contributed backing vocals. Either way, “Lost Boys” is a strong start for Bridgers’s long-awaited return.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Do You Dream of Terra-Two? – Temi Oh – “To another life/Where they make you cut your hair/Impatient with a rifle and your papers/Weightless, but not scared…”

“All My Loving” – Jim Noir

Jim Noir’s new album, The DLC Tapes, is now available exclusively on Patreon and Ko-Fi! If you’re financially able, I highly recommend this album alongside Programmes for Cools.

After all this time…not one but TWO Jim Noir albums this year! We truly have a bountiful harvest on our hands. Alongside Programmes for Cools (now available on all streaming platforms), Jim Noir has released The DLC Tapes, an album of 13 more songs previously released as part of the Jim Noir EP Club. (This song is technically a double-dip that I featured all the way back in 2022, but it was well before I even started writing these posts. If any song deserves it, it’s this one.) From the start of the Programmes announcement, I was holding out hope that “All My Loving” (originally from EP 7) would make the cut—it was one of the best tracks from his entire run of EPs, a delightful piece of catchy, ’60s-indebted jangle-pop. Granted, the changes from EP 7 to The DLC Tapes are minimal—mainly just the production—but it was exactly what I was hoping for. “All My Loving” was already a prime example of just how neatly Noir has carved his niche over the years—it’s proof that his craft has only gotten better as the years have gone by. The cleaner production amplifies the cheery, dreamy mood of the track—the harmonies, the starbursts of space-age synth, and the warm organ all get their flowers with this fresh coat of polish.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Cybernetic Tea Shop – Meredith Katz – the lyrics are minimal, but the electronic, cozy feel of this track wouldn’t feel out of place in a tea shop run by robots.

“I’m a Fool to Want You” (Frank Sinatra cover) – Mitski

If there’s any artist who genuinely baffles me with the unexpectedness of their cover choices, it’s Mitski. Case in point: for the 10th anniversary of Puberty 2, Mitski released an extended edition that included two extra covers: one of One Direction, and one of Frank Sinatra. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that Mitski was throwing darts at a board with all of the most popular artists of the past 70 years and covering whatever they landed on. But both of these covers—yes, also the One Direction one—show off the many different facets of her artistry that frequently show up in her original music. Her cover of “Fireproof” has notes of her more straightforward rock days, especially from Bury Me at Makeout Creek.

“I’m a Fool to Want You” is almost the exact opposite. Accompanied only by grainy, droning synths, she turned Sinatra’s swell of big band strings into some of her most desolate-sounding music. The comparison that immediately came to mind was This Mortal Coil’s cover of Syd Barrett’s “Late Night”; both are incredibly sparse in their instrumentation, letting both of their vocalists unnervingly tremble to their hearts’ contents, and shining a spotlight on the more abjectly dreary parts of the lyrics. The latter part is more applicable to “Late Night,” but Mitski’s interpretation “I’m a Fool to Want You” turns a lovelorn ballad into something weighed down with deep-seated shame. Without the backing of an orchestra and a chorus of voices, “I’m a Fool to Want You” becomes almost unbearably ominous and lonely…in typical Mitski fashion.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Salvation Gambit – Emily Skrutskie – there’s a very “dark, ominous, abandoned spaceship” atmosphere that Mtiski creates with those droning synths.

“Sea Life Sandwich Boy” – Horsegirl

On the subject of songs that take me back to high school…

“Sea Life Sandwich Boy” occupies a brief but distinct place in my memory: sometime in the winter of 2021, during my senior year of high school—the start of my eventual Horsegirl awakening. This song will always be arm-in-arm with The Beatles’ “Oh! Darling”—I was listening to both of them on repeat at the time. It’s very indicative of Horsegirl’s early days—a very ’90s sound, a random, jokey title unrelated to the song, and vocals buried in grainy effects. No band starts out in their prime, but I’d say that Horsegirl started out damn near close—”Sea Life Sandwich Boy” could have easily been a standout on Versions of Modern Performance. Swimming in airy harmonies and precise riffs that make each note flicker like stars cut out of paper, “Sea Life Sandwich Boy” was an ambitious single for the band, but one that pays off to this day.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Amelia, If Only – Becky Albertalli – this is a very high school roadtrip playlist kind of song—exactly what this novel is.

“While I’ll Keep Writing Songs for You” (feat. St. Vincent) – Mon Laferte

Sure, this is Mon Laferte’s song, but it seems like a sign that St. Vincent is almost done ripping holes her tights and setting things on fire. Laferte and St. Vincent collaborated on “Tiempos Violentos” (“Violent Times“) off of Todos Nacen Gritando, her Spanish translation of All Born Screaming; There, Laferte delivers a visceral scream that rivals Annie Clark’s, but “While I’ll Keep Writing Songs For You” is worlds away from the battered rage of Todos Nacen Gritando. Instead, Laferte and Clark’s voices form harmonies that are nothing short of soul-warming—they’re seriously such a match made in heaven. “While I’ll Keep Writing Songs For You” is a somber, sleepless ballad about trying to cling to a static, depressed lover who barely seems to respond to her affection. Clark and Laferte’s wordless preludes almost say more than the lyrics, purely plaintive as though they’re trying to get the last word out in the emptiness of space. Laferte’s music video feels laser-attuned to the feel of the song—her she is, all dolled up and surrounded by flowers in her shopping cart, but the world beyond her borders on colorless.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Our Wives Under the Sea – Julia Armfield – “Will we ever be ok?/You left hair in the shower again/Why don’t we laugh instead/There is no need/To argue over stupid things/You are still depressed/While I’ll keep writing songs for you…”

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!