Tag: April

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 4/21/24

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: bright green to match the verdant buds sprouting on the tre—oh, god, not again, WHY IS IT SNOWING…

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 4/21/24

“Questions and Answers” – The Apples in Stereo

Note: this isn’t the official music video (there isn’t one), but it is in my eyes. Somebody just put this song in the background of videos of their cats in 2009. And they’re some friggin’ cute cats. I miss the days when YouTube used to be a simple, wholesome place…

I would have talked about this album…oh, a good three weeks ago, but I stubbornly made several color palettes that didn’t match Her Wallpaper Reverie at all, so I’ve regretfully withheld from it until now. Somehow, it was only the second Apples in Stereo album that I’ve listened to all the way through (the first was Travellers in Space and Time, but that was ages ago, so this felt like the first), and it’s just about the jangliest, summeriest (glad that’s actually a word) album I’ve heard in ages. By then, Robert Schneider and company had carefully chiseled their craft so that everything sounded like either a lost Beach Boys demo, some kind of space-age, robot dance break, or somewhere in between. (You’d be surprised at the commonalities between the two. They make it work.) You’ve got the cut-and-dry indie, almost Pavement-like “Benefits of Lying (With Your Friend)” on one end, and “Drifting Patterns,” a thicket-dense, borderline anxiety-inducing instrumental that sounds like it should be playing in the entry hallway to the space exhibit in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on the other, but there’s no sense that either are out of place; strung together by a sprinkling of instrumental bites that clock in at less than a minute long, Her Wallpaper Reverie just feels like a showcase of the exact range that The Apples in Stereo are all about.

“Questions and Answers” stood out as a favorite for me—it’s squarely on the “we’re making the jangliest jangle-pop song known to man and we cannot be stopped” side of The Apples in Stereo, but you know me. I’m eating it up. It’s such a shame that Hilarie Sidney, their longtime drummer, left the band in the first place (but it’s understandable, given that she’d just recently divorced Schneider), but I find myself wishing that they’d lent her more opportunities for her to have lead vocals (see also: “Sunndal Song” and “Stay Gold”). She has a command of her voice in such a similar way to Schneider that they both could fit into any song he wrote; they both have a nasally quality that never grates—it just would feel weird for an Apples in Stereo song to not be nasally sung, somehow. But in this case, Sidney was the better choice to lead “Questions and Answers”; as much as I love Schneider, I can’t quite see him getting quite the same vocal sway and tightness that Sidney brings here. Maybe that’s because I’m having trouble envisioning him singing in the same key that Sidney is singing in, but I swear that “Questions and Answers” wouldn’t be the same without the way that she stretches the vowels in “moon” out like taffy in the hot sun or her unrelenting devotion to this song’s impressively airtight rhythm.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet – Becky Chambers – the bounciness of “Questions and Answers,” plus all of the references to moons and star maps, would fit right into Chambers’ cozy galaxy.

“Yesterday’s World” – Circulatory System

Yup. Sorry. Get ready for some more Elephant 6-posting this week. Sometimes the urge just overcomes me.

Elephant 6, in terms of its bands, tended to cross-pollinate quite a bit: chances are, if you take any given band from there, at least three members of said band will have been in or formed other bands on their own, also in Elephant 6. Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel fame was, for a time, in The Apples in Stereo, as was Bill Doss (rest easy), who was half of the brains behind The Olivia Tremor Control. It branches inwards infinitely. Circulatory System was an offshoot of The Olivia Tremor Control, fronted by Will Cullen Hart, and…I hesitate to outright call it Olivia Tremor Control 2: Electric Boogaloo (2 Tremor 2 Control), because that really isn’t a complaint on my part. We need more bands like The Olivia Tremor Control, and we need more of their sense of…well, fun. “Yesterday’s World” is glee cleverly disguised as a serious, psychedelic shredder. Yes, you’ve got the churning guitars, but woven in between them is a chorus of young kids (who faintly go off-script in the background), a quivering assembly of woodwinds, and marching band-like drums towards the end. With the lyrics factored in, I can’t help but think that these childlike elements were stirred in to nail in this desire: “Yesterday feels/Feels just so far away/From these days.” At the age that I’m at, I’ve been frequently grappling with the same thing; now, more than ever, I am both physically and chronologically distanced from the freedom of youth, but there’s also the growing “get a job/move out/etc.” pressure of age and capitalism. Such a fun age. Time moved too quickly for me to grasp that those days wouldn’t last forever. I’m glad I tried to train myself at 18 into knowing that age doesn’t mean that the joy gets sledgehammered out of you the minute you become an adult, but it’s an ongoing process, and I’d be lying if I said that I’d mastered it. For now, all I can do is the same of what Circulatory System are doing: integrate those moments of childhood and freedom into my newly adult life. They have their chorus of smiling, jumping kids within their music, and I’ve got the battered copies of my favorite book series from elementary school on my dorm bookshelf. Yesterday’s world isn’t always out of reach, even as we must live in the world of the present. Keep the kiddo alive.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Psychology of Time Travel – Kate Mascarenhas – yesterday’s world has been reached…

“Jesus Came from Outta Space” – Supergrass

Seems that rock n’ roll, as a collective, has come to the conclusion that this is where Jesus has been chilling out all this time: as Robyn Hitchcock put it, “out on the rim of space.” Seems that Supergrass also came to the appropriate conclusion about how Jesus would feel if he were to see the state of the world as it is now: disappointed. (Remind me again of which part of the Bible told you to harass trans kids? Oh, you can’t find it? How strange…) At least, if anything, we can take this message with us, whether or not it’s delivered from Jesus or Gaz Coombes: “Love is all, love is tall, love is older than you/Love’ll talk, love’ll walk, love’ll speak up for you/Love’ll shake, love’ll wake, love’ll wake up with you.”

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The First Sister – Linden A. Lewis – I raise you: Jesus in outta space? (Sort of?)

“Kill Me” – Indigo de Souza

Through only a handful of songs, it seems to me that Indigo De Souza has mastered the art of being really, truly, messy. It’s not just messy through a few sparing, self-deprecating lyrics about how far you’ve dug yourself into a sinkhole of misery. No—there’s some of that, but if there’s anything that her music does, it’s drag you right along with it, in all of its exhausted, cake-smushing glory. Riddled with aftershocks of a breakup, “Kill Me” crawls along the floor on its hands and knees, snuffling for scraps amongst the rubble, searching for something to hold onto. Oscillating between said “kill me” refrain in its handful of variations and a poisoned urge to crawl straight back to the person who caused all this strife, it’s a song, like “What Are We Gonna Do Now,” that feels like a frozen time capsule: minutes after the phone call that ended things, tear stained, dirty-clothed, and desperate—for answers, for comfort, and for reciprocation. It’s a raw-throated kind of desperation, but one that replicates the feeling of looking down at yourself in your grease-stained shirt and asking yourself what the hell happened to me? There’s a sardonic humor in the way that De Souza declares: “No one asked me/To feel this fucked up/But here I am, fucked up,” an exhausted chorus barking out the final “fucked up” along with her. “Kill Me” moves along like paint spilled on the floor, seeping into the floorboards no matter how much you try to scrape it out, muddying into an ugly mess of what used to be good colors into the woodgrain.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Something Like Possible – Miel Moreland – post-breakup exhaustion and misery that leads to blossoming growth—and new love.

“I Miss You(r Dog)” – Addison Grace

Following on my unintentional train from Lisa Hannigan’s “What’ll I Do” last week, here’s another lighthearted breakup song. Unlike Hannigan, it’s not so much laughing through the pain, but this one laughs more at an aspect of breakups that not enough songs talk about—the pets that get dragged into it. It’s a fact of life: sometimes toxic people have really lovable pets. They’re innocent. They didn’t have to get into this mess, but here we are. Granted, it is slightly weird that Addison Grace basically treats said dog like it’s a child that he’s battling for custody over, but it adds to the humor. It’s just a silly song through and through, from the bait-and-switch parentheses in the title to the purposefully placed sound effects (“I’m sure you told all your friends that you think I’m a [dog bark]”…ba-dum tsssss). And for all of the breakup songs wallowing in self-pity, sometimes all you can do in that situation is laugh and fixate on the silly parts. Or, if you’re Addison Grace, get it through to said ex that their dog deserves a birthday befitting a king.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Radio Silence – Alice Oseman – this one isn’t specific to this book, but more Oseman’s larger universe—given how much music seems to inform her creative process, this song is just begging to be included somewhere in it. Feels in line with her penchant for cheery but emotional indie pop.

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 Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (4/16/24) – Happy and You Know It

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Happy & You Know It was a book that’s outside of my usual reading comfort zone—I’m not usually a realistic fiction person, and it seemed literary, though it didn’t end up being very much so. Either way, the premise was enough to grab me out of my sci-fi/fantasy stint, and though it wasn’t executed the way I wanted it to be, Happy & You Know It was still a biting and entertaining piece of satire.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Happy and You Know It – Laura Hankin

Claire Martin has been unceremoniously thrown into the lowest point in her life. After her band, Vagabond, replaces her and rockets to stardom not long after, she’s left with fewer and fewer options to keep a job—and pay the rent in New York City. But when the opportunity presents itself to become a playgroup musician for a cohort of rich, Manhattan moms, Claire jumps at the chance—she’ll be paid for music again, even if it’s just singing nursery rhymes, and they’ll surely pay her exorbitantly. Claire is thrust into a world of mommy influencers, babies that are too well-dressed for their own good, and a multitude of secrets. This playgroup isn’t what it seems—and Claire may have been sucked into their whirlwind of lies too late…

TW/CW: substance abuse, cheating/affairs

Given the first page, I was expecting for Happy & You Know It to be a wilder ride than it actually was, but that’s not to say that it was a bad novel. Though I feel like the plot didn’t reach its full potential, it was still a fantastic piece of satire—biting, timely, and hilarious at all the right times.

The gauntlet you always have to run when writing satire—or any genre, honestly—that’s somehow involved with social media is making it sound realistic. Too often, authors heavily force a hand of making sure the characters use all of the right slang and terminology, and end up falling headfirst into what looks like a boomer’s distorted vision of the internet and how it operates. I was bracing myself for Happy & You Know It to have some of those trappings, but thankfully, none of that was to be found! Hankin’s depiction of this inner circle of rich, Manhattan mommy influencers felt scarily true to how such figures act, from the curation of every little aspect of their lives down to the tone-deaf, over-the-top names for their babies. It was ridiculous, but that was precisely the point—those kinds of influencers who treat their growing babies like playthings for them to dress up so they can get more likes is ridiculous, and Hankin clearly understood how twisted it gets when these behaviors are pushed to the extreme.

Claire was a perfect protagonist for Happy & You Know It: an outsider who is morbidly enchanted by this world of kale smoothies and sponsorships, but is so desperate that she falls in too deep just when she realizes how right her instincts were about the morbid part. Hankin did a fantastic job of detailing all of her motivations—given the care that was put into crafting her extensive backstory with her former band and the constant, emotional reminders she gets from their stardom, almost all of what she did made sense. She’s just the kind of person who thinks that she’s smart enough to run from a dangerous situation, but cornered enough to convince herself that she can make it out unscathed. I almost with that this novel was entirely from her perspective, and we didn’t get the POV shifts from most of the playgroup mom—I guess we wouldn’t have explicitly seen the details about Whitney and Christopher’s affair, but I’m sure there’s a way that it could have been revealed. The less we knew about the moms, I think, the better.

Perhaps that was part of what made the initial reveal about the true nature of the TrueMommy supplements (no spoilers) fall slightly flat—part of it may have been that it was a bit predictable, but part of it was that we knew too much about the rest of the moms. By the time that this reveal kicks in past the halfway point, my Spider-sense was already tingling—too much for how far into the novel it was. This amount of time should’ve been enough to ramp up the suspense, but I feel like I saw too much into their heads, and therefore, had a good guess of what the first twist was going to be. Especially since we only got some of the moms’ perspectives (Whitney, Gwen, and Amara), I feel like the balance was off. With Claire as an “outsider looking in” protagonist, it would have worked so much better if that secrecy was also confined to her POV—and nailed in that feel of the novel.

On that subject, given how gloriously over-the-top the introduction was, I expected the culmination of said twist to be a lot more dramatic than it was. It looked so messy from the start, and yet the ending felt wrapped up far too neatly—just a moment of confrontation, and then a time skip where everyone is (mostly) living happily ever after in wake of this supposedly drastic revelation. The one red herring we sort of got felt too obvious, and so it was easy to point to the real perpetrator, which dampened the effect. The setup didn’t match the end result—I guess I did want more of a disastrous downfall for almost all parties involved (can you tell I like Fargo?), but if you specifically have an introduction to hint at some spectacle of corruption and ruin, it needs to deliver—and unfortunately, Happy & You Know It missed the mark on that front.

All in all, a slightly disappointing mystery, but a deeply fulfilling and sharp satire. 3.5 stars!

Happy & You Know It is a standalone, but Laura Hankin is also the author of The Daydreams, A Special Place for Women, and the forthcoming One-Star Romance.

Today’s song:

aaaaaaaaaaand that’s another album added straight to my bucket list

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 4/14/24

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

This week: only one question remains…can you dig it?

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 4/14/24

“What’ll I Do” – Lisa Hannigan

A small but vibrant joy of life: songs coming back to you when you least expect them to. Not long ago, I just had a fleeting memory of the chorus, and so I went back through Passenger to try and find the exact song (because I was not about to google “Lisa Hannigan song that goes oh oh oh oh eh eh ah ah ah eh eh”). Luckily, it didn’t take much digging, and now I have this parcel of dancing happiness.

One of the top YouTube comments on the music video for “What’ll I Do” calls this song “the happiest sad song ever,” and there’s really no other way to describe it. Lisa Hannigan does have a penchant for belting out her melancholy, but this one somehow feels happy, even though it’s about a breakup; the lyrics are like watching an slapstick comedy where miserable event after comically miserable event starts crashing down on the protagonist (“What’ll I do now that you’re gone?/My boat won’t row, my bus doesn’t come/And I have the fingers, you’ve got the thumb”), but somehow, they’re smiling through the pain, and clicking their heels for the heck of it. “What’ll I Do” sits squarely at the point where so many bad things have happened to you that you just have to laugh—there’s no use in being miserable anymore, so why not just have a laugh at yourself and do a silly little dance? And Hannigan has juiced that emotion out in barrels, making this circus of bad luck into a full-on show, a folksy singalong that’s begging for a line of cheerful dancers. I wouldn’t complain about that for the music video, but the one that we do have is hilariously fitting as well—seemingly filmed from a phone, the whole video is Hannigan singing the song while on a rollercoaster; the camera shakes incessantly, and she has to break the lip sync at least twice just so she can grab her hat before it flies away. (I get it. We’ve all been there. Currently thinking about this Hello Kitty baseball cap that fell off while I went to Legoland that one time. I never forgot about you…) Like the lyrics, it’s a rollercoaster that’s already dragged you around and thrown you up in the air, making you want to puke, but there’s nothing left to do but have a laugh until the ordeal is over.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling – Elise Bryant – the story of a distant crush told through holidays, all while reconciling with current relationships gone stale and grappling with changing feelings.

“Dust Bunny” – Crumb

Crumb? Making somewhat uptempo music? It’s more likely than you think.

…I actually mean that seriously, for once. Other than a handful of songs off of their last album, Ice Melt, Crumb has been known for their calm—gentle, electronic dream-pop melodies that drifted along like the bubbles in a can of soda, and tasted of that same sweetness. At least, that’s how I think of their music—in the past few years, they’ve been the band that my mom puts on when she needs to focus on her (incredible!) art, or just do some cleaning—any task that necessitates some calming of the brain. Crumb have recently announced the release of their third album, AMAMA, which is set to release just over a month from now (!!)—May 17. I initially missed “Dust Bunny” when it was released as a single last year, but now that I’ve listened to it alongside “AMAMA” and “Crushxd,” it seems like some sort of shift is on the way for the band…even if it is just the tempo. “Dust Bunny” has picked up the pace, letting the drums take the wheel as the frantic energy blossoms from the (always plentiful) synths. As evidenced by the underwater-sounding effects on both the instrumentation and Lila Ramani’s voice, they’ve never lost that wooziness that coated their earlier songs like syrup (see “Locket”), but the molasses has melted enough to allow for their constant wiggling to speed up. The lyrics, too, feel like a far cry from “I don’t have class/Got a lot of time on my hands/To sit, wait around…”; just as with the music, Ramani recalls a vignette of panic and guilt: “You’re seeing a ghost/Can’t undo what’s been done/Forever no more/Stacks of clothing fill your room, you/Can’t find one thing to return.” Despite the spaciness of the synths, there’s no doubt that it’s morphed from danceable upbeat to the kind of upbeat that’s only so because it soundtracks the search for your sprinting around the house to try and find your keys 5 minutes after you were supposed to leave for work; or, if we’re sticking to the metaphor, trying to get that one dust bunny out of your dorm before your RA comes to do a room inspection so that they don’t think you’ve been living in a pigsty this whole time. But that panic never overwhelms the music—being so cloaked in color-changing mist and melting shapes as it is, it’s still the same ol’ Crumb deep down.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

And Other Mistakes – Erika Turner – reconciling with the weight of your past actions and other people’s perceptions takes center stage in this novel.

“Can U Dig It?” – Pop Will Eat Itself

Yet another infectious earworm that I have my dad to thank for, and also, I can definitively say that I’ve found it: my favorite band name. I mean, come on. Pop Will Eat Itself? How true is that? And doesn’t it just sound so cool as a name?

If you’re expecting their songs to be a meditation on the nature of pop, as their band name is, I’m not entirely sure if you’d be satisfied. Granted, I’ve only heard two of their songs (including this one—check out “X, Y, & Zee” for more), and neither of them concern their lyrics with such things. What they’ve got is something far superior: four and a half minutes of listing off comics, movies, TV shows, and bands that they like—sorry, dig. And it’s a blast. Aside from the fact that I never anticipated Alan Moore ever being directly referenced in a song, it’s just a catchy, synthy, fandom-fest—I’m surprised that this hasn’t been accepted as some kind of comic con anthem. Plus, there’s the enhancement of the music video, in all of its terrible ’80s CGI glory—lots of old TV sets floating around in the ether and the band members superimposed over panels from Watchmen and The Killing Joke. It’s the nerdiest club banger I’ve ever heard. What else is there to say? It slaps. Glad we can formally acknowledge that Alan Moore knows the score.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

…well, pretty much anything that they mention in this song: The song is basically a reading list in and of itself, so…

“Poo Pants” – Cyriak

It’s a metaphor for capitalism.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The YouTube description: Marx who?

“Somebody Up There Likes Me” – David Bowie

And that’s another Bowie album for the books! As…incapacitated as he was during that period, Young Americans feels like the first album of proof of how easily it came to Bowie to slither in and out of genres as easily as most people stroll through an open door. It oozes with slickness—somewhere in my mental periphery, this album exists solely in a smoky nightclub as midnight ticks by, clammy with warmth and blasting with saxophones. Personally, sometimes the sax went on a little too long for my liking (see “Win”), but for the most part, Bowie knew exactly how much to smear about—and make it sound deliciously raw and sultry.

But sultry isn’t all that the album boasts—Bowie always has something clever and meditative up his sleeve. Fresh off of Diamond Dogs, which was full of the proposed contents for a musical version of George Orwell’s 1984 which he never got to make, Bowie had Big Brother on the brain; the kind of theatricality that what I’ve listened to of Diamond Dogs suits a musical well, but as he turned his genre gaze to soul, it almost feels like he had that sultry quality in mind and turned it into deliberate deception. The subject of “Somebody Up There Likes Me” is the sleaziest of the sleazy—a politician who seems to float amongst his subjects without any fear of retribution: “He’s everybody’s token, on everybody’s wall/Blessing all the papers, thanking one and all/Hugging all the babies, kissing all the ladies/Knowing all that you think about from writing on the wall.” As the saxophone howls, Bowie’s fictional figure struts through the street, stopping once in a while to sweep a woman up into his arms and plant a kiss on her cheek. But every act of generosity is an empty one—this is someone grooming the public along with his own image, putting on a show of authenticity just to get them to cough up the spare change from their pockets. Bowie sums it up in the bridge: “Was a way when we were young, that/Any man was judged by what he’d done, but/Now you’ve pick them on the screen (What they look like).” Fresh off the heels of Nixon, I’m sure this was already closer to the political climate than most people wanted to admit, but I can’t help but think of how this has only been exacerbated—and not just in the 21st century. We got Reagan only a handful of years after Young Americans was released (there’s a “savage son of the TV tube” for you), and the cycle has only repeated itself in the years since. But for me, the genius in this song isn’t necessarily about the message, timely as it continues to be; this song could have been put in any of his albums, but having it on Young Americans makes the sleaze glow like neon. Setting this politician against the backdrop of a distinctly American sound, something that comes off so howling and genuine, encapsulates that political climate disturbingly well—a façade of a clean-cut, American man of the people with charm and sex appeal, but with all manner of evils stowed just out of reach of the cameras. The soundscape of Young Americans begs for some kind of old Hollywood love story, and Bowie knew it—and he took that atmosphere to its most perverse extreme just to make it ring true.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Some Desperate Glory – Emily Tesh – skeevy politicians persist into the future…

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

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (4/9/24) – A Tempest of Tea

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I enjoyed Hafsah Faizal’s Sands of Arawiya duology when it came out, but when I heard that she was doing a fantasy heist novel with vampires and tea involved…yep. I’m in. No questions asked. And like her previous books, A Tempest of Tea was full of heart, humor, and more than a little blood.

Enjoy this week’s review!

A Tempest of Tea (Blood and Tea, #1) – Hafsah Faizal

Arthie Casimir runs a tight ship. By day, she runs a tearoom, but as soon as night falls, it’s a hub for vampires. It’s her only livelihood, and the one thing keeping her off the streets. But her secret is slowly spilling out—and the only way to keep it under wraps—and running in the first place—is to make a deal with some of the most dangerous vampires in the city. And infiltrating their inner circles isn’t a job for just one person. With a ragtag crew at her back, Arthie finally has an in—but will they be able to get out in one piece?

TW/CW: loss of loved ones (past), blood, gore, violence, themes of colonialism, racism, human trafficking/kidnapping (past), fire

Everybody, say it with me: every YA fantasy novel with an ensemble cast and a heist plot isn’t ripping off Six of Crows! Every YA fantasy novel with an ensemble cast and a heist plot isn’t ripping off Six of Crows!

Sure, the inspiration is there (it’s hard not to be inspired by Leigh Bardugo, after all), but like The Gilded Wolves or Into the Crooked Place, the similarities end with a fantasy heist plot with multiple POVs. (The same cannot be said for Among Thieves. BOOOOOO.) I already had high hopes that Hafsah Faizal had the skill to pull off a fantasy heist of her own, and she more than delivered—A Tempest of Tea was nothing short of a delight from start to finish.

Hafsah Faizal has a knack for creating lovable characters, the kind that easily bounce off one another and produce no shortage of genuinely clever banter. I’m glad to say that this quality carried over tenfold into A Tempest of Tea! Arthie was such a compelling protagonist to follow; her wit and determination made her the perfect mastermind for the Athereum heist, and her charm made every line of dialogue a treat. Her relationship with the equally charming Jin made for a pair with instant chemistry—they were similar enough that they meshed with each other excellently, but different enough to make them unique assets to the team that they were building. Flick, though the least developed of the three, was just as compelling—I find myself wanting so much more of her backstory! I imagine we’ll get more of that in book 2, but having that part of her somewhat hidden gave her so much more appeal, especially given that she was instrumental to the heist.

The setting was equally lovable in all of its lush descriptions! Already, it’s just pure fun to begin with—a historical, London-like setting with vampires embedded in the culture—what’s not to like? There’s really not a whole lot of magic, but just by introducing vampires and having them affect Arthie’s world in the ways that they did made A Tempest of Tea so much fun to pick apart. A lot of those shifts were evident in the changes Arthie made to her teahouse (and bloodhouse) when night fell—subtle hints like those made the world feel so much more real—and under a very palpable strain. The vampires themselves weren’t the most original take on vampires I’ve ever seen (not really much to distinguish them from any other vampire), but Faizal’s way of writing them is what made them stand out—they were often alluring, but in a way where the predatory side of them was transparent, but their influence of the characters was as well.

Part of why I was so excited for Faizal to do a heist novel was that her style seems like it was made for that all along. She has such a cinematic, action-packed writing style that made the Sands of Arawiya books such an adventure. It seems like more years of writing experience under her belt have benefitted her greatly—all that time honing her writing made A Tempest of Tea a finely crafted heist novel! All of the beats were there, and though they were familiar, Faizal’s writing practically jumps off the page, making the atmosphere seep through the ink and drag you right along with Arthie and her band of outcasts and criminals. There’s tons of well-choreographed action, but just the right amount that it didn’t overwhelm the narrative. Up until the ending (more on that later), the pacing was similarly excellent—the balance of character development/backstory, worldbuilding, and delicately constructing the plot made for a book that I had to force myself to not read in one sitting.

However, my only major issue—and the only thing keeping me from giving it the full four stars—is how the culmination of the heist was executed. We got all of the tension of sneaking into the Athereum and some of the confrontation, but the execution of it felt incredibly rushed. I could almost stretch my suspense of disbelief enough to side with Faizal and say that it was supposed to feel like a blur, but that’s reaching, even for me. There were far too many twists and turns crammed into a single scene, and for all of the somewhat quiet scenes that went on earlier in the novel, I could have used some more page space to spread all of these events out. It was discombobulating, but not in a way that felt stylistic or intentional in any way. It also dampened the emotional impact of the ending—we’d been going so fast that I barely registered that the book had actually ended when it did.

All in all, an action-packed heist fantasy that faltered in some execution at the end, but flourished in its cinematic writing and characters. 3.75 stars, rounded up to 4!

A Tempest of Tea is the first book in the Blood and Tea duology, with an untitled sequel tentatively slated for release in 2025. Hafsah Faizal is also the author of the Sands of Arawiya duology (We Hunt the Flame and We Free the Stars), and has contributed short stories to the anthologies Eternally Yours and The Grimoire of Grave Fates.

Today’s song:

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 4/7/24

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week:

Choose the best answer: You can blow with:

a) This

b) That

c) Us

d) All of the above

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 4/7/24

“Flea” – St. Vincent

Affirmation of the week: I have listened to this song a healthy amount of times. At least I didn’t pull the “listen but nothing but this song for almost four hours straight” stunt that I did with “Broken Man.” See? I’m better now. I’m savoring this one, and by “savoring,” I mean “listening to it slightly less, but still putting it on repeat for at least half an hour when it comes on shuffle.” What new St. Vincent does to an mf.

“Broken Man” is shining proof that All Born Screaming has a good chance of being my album of the year, but somehow, Annie Clark outdid herself even more with this latest single. I’m glad that “Broken Man” and “Flea” are tracks three and four on the album, respectively; even past the fact that they fit so slickly together, I like the idea that the title and closing tracks are a secret—she’s got something insane up her sleeve. I can just tell. After “Broken Man”‘s torrent of fury, vengeance, and Dave Grohl’s drumming, “Flea” makes the transition into the outright bloody—not bloody in the sense of the trail of destruction that “Broken Man” left, but in the sense of parasitism. Clark described the upcoming All Born Screaming as being bred in “That kind of isolation [that] breeds paranoia and loneliness…loneliness can breed violence.” Now I can see exactly where the whole “post-plague pop” label she stuck on it comes from. “Flea” slinks along on tiny, pointed legs, thrumming with a racing heartbeat and an insatiable thirst for blood; the repetition of “Once I’m in, you can’t get rid of me” is sung lower and raspier, a threat paired with a predatory lick of the lips. The kind of loneliness and violence Clark described seems to be exactly where this kind of sinister lust comes from—being isolated for so long could easily make love turn to lust, and lust consequently to hunger, so drained of human touch that what was once affection has become leeching for nutrients at the other person’s expense. And everything about “Flea” sounds frighteningly hungry, down to the parched-throat rasp with which Clark delivers the verses. When she ends verse two with a dried-out confession of “I look at you, and all I see is meat,” followed by a faint belch in the background, I suddenly got the feeling that I was being watched by something waiting to tear me limb from limb and suck me dry. It’s intense, but it’s the kind of intoxicating thrill ride that I’ve taken with Clark for nearly ten years. And the chorus finds the narrator covered in someone else’s blood, begging for just one more bite; the desperation sloughs off like a second skin, every blood-soaked belt starved and howling. It’s a kind of visceral musicianship that I haven’t seen from St. Vincent in years; although Daddy’s Home was certainly raw, it was the kind of raw you get from getting someone enough wine to spill about their childhood trauma and laugh it off. All Born Screaming is about as raw as flesh itself—it’s all the clearer that Clark has no intention of pulling punches, and that’s exactly what makes a St. Vincent song so iconic. “Rattlesnake” and “Severed Crossed Fingers” don’t illicit waves of emotion in me for nothing—they’re hearts laid bare in the street. In other words: Clark is at her best when she’s herself. Should be a given, but it’s more evident in some albums than others.

God, April 26th can’t come any sooner…

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Hell Followed With Us – Andrew Joseph White – depending on how All Born Screaming goes, I might preemptively merge this with “Hell Is Here”…

“Tonight” – TV on the Radio

Aaaaaaaaaand, that’s one more album on the Sisyphean Album Bucket List. Between the “Wolf Like Me” (the best song there is about werewolves after this), the deeply moving “Province” with its David Bowie feature (YOU HEARD ME!!), and this, I now know that Return to Cookie Mountain has to make its way into the rotation. I have Chelsea Wolfe to thank for this one; at her fantastic show at the Gothic Theater in March, she played this before the show—I wouldn’t be surprised if she was a fan before, but I suspect that it’s a kind of thank you to the fantastic Dave Sitek, who produced her truly fantastic new album, She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She. Also, with a title like Return to Cookie Mountain, I feel like I just have to listen.

What “Tonight” made me realize about TV on the Radio is how effectively—and quickly—they can craft an atmosphere. Some of the most layered ones I can think of are from their early career, namely the first version of “Staring at the Sun” that appeared on their debut EP, Young Liars. Instead of the shorter version that made the cut for Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes, this one has a thirty second intro (that feels longer, honestly) that consists of just the a cappella vocals of the band, interspersed with an excerpt from a Spanish-speaking radio station. Even though the chatter on the radio station seems cheerful and singsong, the drawn-out gives it a prolonged air of foreboding and sorrow to come, like the next thing we hear will be the somber announcement of someone’s death. Thankfully, that doesn’t happen, but the first lyrics we hear on the heels of that are “Cross the street from your storefront cemetery,” which, bam. That’s how you start a song. When it comes to both of those aspects, “Tonight” operates in a similar way, creating an atmosphere that’s haunting before the instruments even kick in. With the whine of a distant siren and the ever-so-slightly distorted collision of wind chimes, “Tonight” instantly transports you to a place of brown grass and barren vastness, pockmarked by dead trees strung with glass bottles and the faint sounds of the road in the distance. The music seems to lumber with every step, a beleaguered creature that lurches with every step, as if its limbs are tied down with the wind chimes you hear tinkling throughout the song. Hollow whistles harmonize with a moaning clarinet and Tunde Adebimpe’s clarion call of a voice, all at once ragged and brimming with vitality. A fair amount of the buzz surrounding TV on the Radio when they got their start were vocals comparisons of his to Peter Gabriel, and it’s an apt one—they have a similar quality of being roughly visceral, but booming with emotion. Dave Sitek is also credited with “magic” on this song, which I cannot find a musical definition for the life of me, but if there’s anything that you would credit the man for, it’s that. He has the touch.

I often get so caught up in the atmosphere that I only mine the lyrics later, but the lyrics in “Tonight” pop out so prominently on the first listen; as the wind chimes huddle for warmth, Tunde Adebimpe’s voice cuts through them like a steak knife through fabric—”My mind is like an orchard/Clustered in frozen portraits.” How does this man do it? Every single line in this song is a literary gem in and of itself, and it’s not just because of the repeated references to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Telltale Heart”—like heartbeats rumbling through flimsy floorboards, the lyrics never fail to send chills up my spine: “Her rusty heart starts to whine/In its tell tale time.” My rusty heart sure does whine whenever those lyrics wash over me. And like the sparse nature of the atmosphere, the lyrics tell of a spare mental space, one so full of sorrow and unpleasant memories that, like the telltale heart, cannot be pushed from the mind. The song still haunts me in a largely melancholy way, but it has an uplifting sentiment at its heart. I can’t help but think of Soundgarden’s “The Day I Tried to Live” and its similar atmosphere of doom, but its lyrical heart being the fact that despite all of the horrible things crashing down around you, there will always be something left to live for, so all you can do is push through. Adebimpe’s sentiment feels like wading through a slurry of unpleasantness that never seems to end (“Blossoms that bloom so fine, just to drop from the vine/I’ve seen them all tonight), but he makes the light at the end of the tunnel shine as bright as it can: “The time that you’ve been afforded/May go unsolved, unrewarded/Some nameless you cannot know, may be coming to show you/Unbridled love and light.” No matter how much you have to push down and wade through, never doubt that good things are coming. It’s something I struggle to hold to heart, but I’ve added this song as an unexpected guiding light. I can never know the future. It scares me. But there is certainty in the love lingering beyond my current time. There is always love.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Bad Ones – Melissa Albert – a similarly haunting atmosphere woven from swirling memories.

“the rot” – Dean Blunt

Contrary to my graphic, this is not, in fact, that well-intentioned but ultimately regrettable black square everybody posted back in 2020. My text box accidentally cut out the 2 on Black Metal 2, the only thing distinguishing it from the cover of Black Metal, which is…also just a black square. Gotta admire Dean Blunt for committing to the bit.

I stumbled across this song thanks to Arlo Parks, who chose Black Metal 2 as one of her picks on her episode of Amoeba Records’ series What’s In My Bag?, where she also talks about my bloody valentine and happens to be wearing one of the coolest Radiohead shirts I’ve ever seen. The songs she discusses there—“VIGIL” and “the rot”—serve as bookends, the opener and closer of Black Metal 2, respectively. Both of them have the atmosphere of a massive curtain thrown over your eyes—you’re immediately thrown somewhere else in a space that Blunt has created; no time is wasted in transporting you into his world. While “VIGIL” has the tidal-wave mounting tension of strings to prop it up, “the rot” is the last, gentle minutes of a plane ride home. It’s a distinctly sunset song: you’re slumped back in your seat, golden light is spilling through the window, and you have the sense, more than ever, that a chapter is closing, but not necessarily in a negative way. You can tell that there’s a myriad of different instruments, but all of them are toned down to a faint crawl, strings gently winding, acoustic guitars drifting away like insects in the early evening. “the rot” in particular has such a gorgeous vocal contrast between Blunt and guest artist Joanne Robertson; like Phoebe Bridgers and Jeroen Vrijhoef on “Garden Song,” what grounds the song is the stark difference, although that of Blunt and Robertson feels much more natural and less jarring than the latter. Where Blunt has the warmth and thickness of the ocean lapping over a volcanic shore, Robertson’s words float like the breeze stirring the water. Both of them drift like motes of dust into the air, closing out Black Metal 2. Without even having listened to the whole album, I can tell how successful “the rot” is as a gentle closer.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Echo North – Joanna Ruth Meyer – the frost, like the rot, lures you into the woods and makes you chase after old dreams.

“Weapon of Choice” – Fatboy Slim

Me when I walk without rhythm (I didn’t attract the worm):

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Dune – Frank Herbert – as is written.

“Satellite of Love” – Lou Reed

Ugh, I’m so glad this song came back intro my regular rotation recently. The outro did wonders for amping me up for my astronomy midterm.

It’s been about four years since I’ve consciously started listening to this song, but I’m sure my dad played it in the car long before that. But I’ll always love this era of Lou Reed, and you know who I’ll also always love? David Bowie. And Bowie, along with Mick Ronson (Bowie’s guitarist in the Spiders from Mars) co-produced Transformer, which has spent a woefully long time on my album bucket list. It’s smack dab in that early-’70s sound that I just live for, and I’ve already heard a handful of the classics from the album already—“Walk On the Wild Side” and “Perfect Day,” to name a few. But “Satellite of Love” remains my favorite thus far, and it’s not just because I collect space-related songs like a bower bird collects shiny rocks and trinkets. As with…well, almost every Lou Reed song, “Satellite of Love” is tinged with melancholy; it tells of love watched from a distance, the aftermath of a breakup watched from below like a stargazer looking at a meteor shower. The offbeat admission of “I love to watch things on TV” feels like an admission of what Reed thought that the relationship had turned into—just something to pass the time and make the eyes go limp. I can’t help but think of Lisa Hannigan—I can’t be sure if this was her exact inspiration, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the chorus of “Passenger” came from a similar metaphor of distant love adrift in the sky—”Oh, my satellite/Oh, my passenger.” For once, Lou Reed is the one that doesn’t sound abjectly in mourning—wistful, sure, but there’s still some light shining in the corner of his eyes, even if it’s just the reflection of a star. For me, the outro is what pumps just the barest pulse of hope into “Satellite of Love”—the piano begins to gallop, clapping and snapping dominates the percussion, and Reed begins a harmony with a wailing, angel-voiced Bowie. Reed remains anchored to the ground, but Bowie, naturally, ascends skyward with every note. There’s something about it that feels like he’s extending a hand from somewhere in the night sky, inviting us to join in the chorus.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1) – Martha Wells – the detached observation of love (and humanity in general) is much more humorous than wistful in nature here, but we can’t deny that Murderbot likes to watch things on TV.

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 Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (4/2/24) – Drunk on All Your Strange New Words

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Ever since it came out, Drunk on All Your Strange New Words has been on my radar; beforehand, I hadn’t even heard of Eddie Robson, but the premise was so fascinating that I just had to get my hands on it. After several trips to several bookstores with no luck in finding it, my hold finally came on Kindle—and it was a delight to read!

Enjoy this week’s review!

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words – Eddie Robson

For Lydia, First Contact started in the mind. The aliens we greeted were called the Logi, and they communicated entirely telepathically. Lydia works as a translator for a Logi cultural attaché named Fitz. It’s a pleasant job—Fitz is good-natured, and together, they pick apart plays and literature to determine if they are suited for intergalactic sales to the Logi. The unfortunate side effect is that translating the Logi’s telepathic language into English makes her feel drunk, earning her a less-than-stellar reputation on the job. But when Fitz is murdered and all eyes land on her as the suspect, Lydia must keep the police and Logi ambassadors off of her tail—and get to the bottom of Fitz’s murder.

TW/CW: xenophobia (fictional), murder/assassination, mild violence, death threats

I am on my hands and knees trying to find sci-fi with aliens that really feel alien. The quest is ongoing. But if you’re on that same quest with me (let us join hands, sisters in disappointed with humanoid aliens), Drunk on All Your Strange New Worlds is the cure for all that ails—all that and a dose of some good ol’ British humor.

I get to go off about aliens!! I GET TO GO OFF ABOUT ALIENS!! ALIENS WOOOOOOOOOOO THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR

First off: the Logi! Drunk on All Your Strange New Words boasts some incredible alien design and culture, and I had so much fun exploring it throughout the novel. The whole concept of telepathic aliens whose speech makes the act of translation make humans feel drunk was already fascinating to me; it was so out of left field, and a concept I’d never really considered before; the only other instance I’ve seen of alien speech having unintended physical effects on the human body or brain was in A Desolation Called Peace (though that was arguably more drastic), but it still felt truly weird, which a lot of sci-fi doesn’t touch on, strangely. I loved getting such a complex, multilayered picture of the Logi beyond that, from the head coverings they wear to protect from Earth’s atmosphere to their unexpected strength; some of the elements of them almost veered into the supernatural (technically not much of a spoiler since it happens early on, but the reveal was so cool to me that I’ll keep my mouth shut for your enjoyment), but even that felt like a marker of an alien well done—so outlandish that the only explanation that humans can come up with is paranormal.

Creating all of that excellent background for the Logi is one thing, but it wasn’t all left as a lofty concept to puff up the worldbuilding—it had real, tangible effects on the characters and the plot, which I was so grateful for. Robson executed the real-time effects of humans interacting with a lot of these alien behaviors exceedingly well! It isn’t just that Lydia feels like she’s had a few too many after a long translation job—the feeling of drunkenness extends to drunken behaviors, the consequences of which had unfortunate implications for keeping said job. Having that was also a great device to start putting Lydia under suspicion for the other characters—there were enough instances of perceived instability or unprofessional attitudes that the authorities had all the more evidence to implicate her in Fitz’s murder. This is all to say that Robson really left no stone unturned when it came to the worldbuilding, and my enjoyment skyrocketed because of that!

The cultural environment around First Contact and the integration of the Logi into human culture also felt a little too real, in the best and worst way possible. At this point, the world has advanced into an undefined point in the future, and enough time has passed between now and First Contact that there aren’t just bigots and zealots with xenophobic intention, but organizations targeting aliens and professors giving whole lectures on what they perceive as a Logi encroachment into human culture, literature, and media. Paired with the faulty software that scores the truthfulness of the news that Lydia consumes (that aspect felt very “three days from now”), it felt like a more realistic depiction of alien contact and communication than we usually get; at heart, we still fear what we don’t understand, but it’s neither all-out annihilation of the aliens nor a global, complete hippie kumbaya event of unity. It’s demonstrative of human nature in the face of what we don’t understand: the bad and the very ugly, but enough good to keep us afloat and on good terms with the visitors from another world.

For most of the novel, I was really into the mystery surrounding Fitz’s murder. (I knew it was gonna happen from the start, since, y’know, in the blurb, but I didn’t want for him to die. I just wanna see the little alien guys!! Let them vibe!!) The slow burn of it kept me turning page after page, and for most of the novel, felt appropriately paced. It didn’t feel like we were jumping from place to place for no reason—every outing had a motive and revelation that added to the mystery in a way that made sense. However, though I enjoyed much of it, I feel like it got a little too slow-burn. The subtlety was good for most of the novel, but it got to a point where I was 90% of the way through the book and we still had no idea who the killer was and who the prime suspect was, now that most of the others had been eliminated by that point. Said killer was also introduced very late into the novel and quite sparingly, which made the reveal feel unearned—if we’ve spent all this time poring through suspects and barely touched on the actual killer, then what was the point? For such a clever novel, that felt like such an amateurish move—the only reason that we didn’t suspect them was because we had no idea who they even were for almost the entire novel.

All in all, a delightful combination of sci-fi and murder mystery that boasted some of my favorite aliens that I’ve read in a while. 4 stars!

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words is a standalone, but Eddie Robson is also the author of Hearts of Oak.

Today’s song:

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

Posted in Monthly Wrap-Ups

April Wrap-Up 💻

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This monthly wrap-up was brought to you by the letter ‘S.’

Let’s begin, shall we?

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

Well, here we are. It’s nice and warm outside, I’m only about a week and a half away from finishing my first year of college, and “Cool About It” is my most-listened-to song of the year so far, according to Apple Music. Yeah, I’m fine.

Somehow, I’m finally at the stage in the school year where everything is starting to wind down. My really stressful finals finals moment ended up happening…a good two weeks before I really should’ve been doing all that, but there’s something to be said for starting projects early and finishing them before everything is supposed to get stressful. (My secret? Overthinking and overestimating how close due dates are. Works like a charm.) Now that finals are right around the corner, I really don’t have a whole lot to do, blissfully. All is quiet. No stats tests to bomb at 7 am in a building I’ve never even set foot in before. I have achieved inner peace (becoming a humanities major).

That being said, working on all of these projects did eat up a good amount of time that I’d normally be reading, or blogging, and all of my other silly little activities, so my reading did take a relative hit. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t find some great books—I got to some anticipated releases, and I have another 5-star read to tick off the list! There were several non-review/Sunday Songs posts that I was eager to get to (see below), and I managed to get them all written, so I’m glad about that. Also, finally finished the Broken Earth trilogy…[incoherent, muffled screams intensify]

Other than that, I finished Dark (CORRECTION: IT FINISHED ME. GO WATCH DARK), watched Beau Is Afraid (forget Beau, dude, I’m afraid…also very overwhelmed…), had some fun on Easter, got a nasty cough (just now getting over it 😭), and started packing up my dorm. Time…time is a thing, huh?

READING AND BLOGGING:

I read 16 books this month! I wasn’t able to read as much because of finals season, but it’s been a decent, if slightly more on the “miss” side of hit or miss, bunch. I did get a 5-star read, but said book was Thom Yorke’s lyrics and poetry combined with Stanley Donwood’s older Radiohead art, so that was bound to happen.

Also, I unintentionally read an abnormal amount of books that start with the letter ‘S’…do with that what you will.

2 – 2.75 stars:

Unseelie

3 – 3.75 stars:

Star Splitter

4 – 4.75 stars:

The Stone Sky

5 stars:

Fear Stalks the Land!

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: Fear Stalks the Land! – 5 stars

POSTS I’M PROUD OF:

POSTS FROM OTHER WONDERFUL PEOPLE THAT I ENJOYED:

SONGS/ALBUMS THAT I’VE BEEN ENJOYING:

this song has taken up far too much space in my brain but I’m not complaining at all
this song sounds so sparkly I love it
we love First Band on the Moon in this house
another favorite of mine from this album
I wish you could still make custom ringtones out of songs bc this would absolutely be my pick
what is April if not Dark and boygenius taking up all my brain space
no thoughts only the one happy Radiohead song in existence

Today’s song:

in which Peter Gabriel gets into those Danny Elfman shenanigans

That’s it for this month in blogging! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 4/30/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

Here we are at the end of April, and my cough finally seems to be letting up. The weather’s consistently warm again, the trees are starting to bloom, and I’m doing my best to ignore the fact that the latter will definitely trigger some allergies in a few weeks, because hey, the trees are starting to look beautiful. All is green and new!

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 4/30/23

“Ride a White Swan” – T. Rex

there has never been a better visual descriptor for how this song makes me feel

PACK YOUR BAGS, FELLAS, WE’RE GONNA GO WEAR EXCESSIVELY LONG DRESSES AND DANCE IN THE WOODS

T. Rex, Marc Bolan’s self-titled debut, was the last hurrah of his hippie roots (you really can’t go back from album titles like My People were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair…But Now They’re Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows, huh) before going full-on glam rock, as well as the first album under his newly shortened name (no longer the full Tyrannosaurus Rex). But even as he’d gotten a crisper, cleaner name to call himself, he hadn’t fully abandoned the original, psychedelic fantasy that was Tyrannosaurus Rex, and this song—and, judging from most of the song titles on the rest of the album, everything else—is proof. It’s got everything—druids, spell casting, black cats, tall hats. What else does one really need in life? It’s whimsical. It’s lovely. It’s light. It’s a classic. Revel in the joyous whimsy!

And it seems like it was the perfect storm—for a short time, anyway. Arriving in 1970, right at the end of the sixties when the world was still clinging to the flower-child mentality, this was the perfect piece of escapist hippie music. It was Bolan’s first hit as T. Rex, and it was what launched him into stardom in the early seventies. From what I can tell, most of his career after his (excellent) third album, The Slider, was an attempt to rekindle some sort of hit, both in the U.K. and in the U.S., and despite his efforts and his complicated relationship with fame, never ended up being fruitful. Especially knowing that he died so prematurely and that most of his efforts were in vain, it always makes me sad to think about that stage of his life. Bolan was obviously such a creative soul at heart, a skilled frontman and a master of oddball wordplay, and thinking about he wasted so much of that talent by trying to please other audiences really seems to me like one of the great tragedies of rock music history. It doesn’t feel right to reduce Marc Bolan to a lesson to all of us creatives intending to make a living, but I think his story speaks more to the music (and any creative) industry as a whole; he’d gotten a taste of fame, and this fame pressured him to try and crank out hit after hit. It’s not so much an issue of Bolan as a person, as flawed as some of his fame-induced decisions were, but the way that the music industry has shaped people to behave in that way. Art should be art for art’s sake, not a pursuit of money or stardom. The music industry did Marc Bolan an unforgivable disservice, and I’ll die on that hill.

Anyways, listen to The Slider. God-tier album.

“A Love of Some Kind” – Adrianne Lenker

Alright, I’ll step off my Marc Bolan soapbox for a moment. Let’s cool down a little.

This lovely spring weather has made me feel the same way that this song does. Even if the album cover for Hours Were the Birds wasn’t set against a backdrop of dewy pine branches, I have no doubt that it would still sound the same. Adrianne Lenker seems to have captured the art of making an unrelated smell like petrichor and gently rock about like a wooden boat on a lake. There’s a slight melancholy to it (nothing quite compared to “Disappear,” another track I love from this album—I need to listen to the whole thing), but it’s undeniably hopeful; it’s a plea for reciprocation and love after a rocky period, a star-staring hope and yearning: “I know we’re strangers, so it’s okay/ You don’t have to say it/Strange is better anyway/And I think that we can make it.” There’s a certain talent that the best singer-songwriter artists, in my experience, have: the ability to hinge an entire song with a single instrument and their voice. Most of the time, it’s an acoustic guitar, and Lenker hits the nail right on the head. With just her gentle, misty voice, and the strums of her guitar, she evokes all of those sensations I mentioned earlier with such relatively little material. Even her birdlike whistles bring to mind the feeling of plants stretching their feelers after the snow melts away. I really need to listen to more Adrianne Lenker.

“House of Jealous Lovers” – The Rapture

The beginning of “House of Jealous Lovers” functions to me like the sound engineering of the screams in Jordan Peele’s Nope: are they screams of ecstasy? Are they screams of fear? Who knows. They’re all shrouded in a deliberately-placed layer of fuzz that makes it impossible to tell. And by the time you’ve started to contemplate if it’s one or the other, it’s too late: it’s Uptight White Boy Music Time.

And even without knowing much about said Uptight White Boys, it’s clear how “House of Jealous Lovers” took its place in the early 2000’s post-punk-revival movement in New York City, sliding right next to the likes of The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and others. There’s not much going on lyrically, but there’s a frantic urgency to the hoarse scream that Luke Jenner (no relation to…any other infamous Jenners, luckily) delivers every line in that makes every word feel like a command. Cloaked in endlessly delayed guitars, it feels like it’s hiding something the whole time, even if part of the bridge just consists of the band counting to eight in unpredictable, wavering tones. Throw in some cowbell (as one does), and you’ve got such a strangely suspended moment in time: shaky and uptight, but somehow still self-assured in a way that makes this song hold up after almost 20 years. It feels like the world’s most neurotic club jam. I love it.

“The Cradle” – Colour Revolt

I stole this one from the great Julien Baker, who named it on boygenius’ episode of Pitchfork’s Pass the Aux series, as her hype music when she was a senior in high school, right next to…Drake? I can’t forgive the Drake, but…we all did questionable things in high school, I guess.

Drake aside, I’m so glad that Julien Baker introduced me to this song. Just like that, I’ve got another album on the Sisyphean list of albums on my notes app. Just like “House of Jealous Lovers,” we’ve got another hoarse white guy (I’ve got cough drops for everybody, take your pick) who somehow makes it work. Wonderfully. There’s so much that “The Cradle” does in such a short amount of time. It seems to invert the formula of musical buildup. Apart from the first few guitar chords, the first seconds of the song explode into delightfully crunchy guitars, letting the music take center stage, making the quiet, abrasive vocals linger in the background like a sinister afterthought. There’s something sinister about this song that I can’t quite pin down—maybe it’s that inversion, the way that the song explodes in the beginning, and only goes quiet and plodding during the last 30 seconds, as if you’re in a horror movie, waiting for something to drop from the rafters. There’s something compellingly intricate about this song, even more impressive that The Cradle was an album made in the aftermath of Colour Revolt getting dropped by their former label and three of their five original band members jumping ship. Even if this is my only exposure to Colour Revolt right now, I can still say how impressive of a feat that is.

“Sunshine” – The Arcs

Inside of you there are two wolves. One of them wants to listen to “Sunshine” by The Arcs. The other wants to listen to “Sunshine” by Sparklehorse. You are incredibly pretentious, and you also probably need a nap.

When I first heard this song, I seriously thought that the light, tinny piano intro was going to be the start of a sample. To any artists reading this (I doubt there are, but still): THIS HERE. SAMPLE THIS. WHAT ARE YOU DOING.

I’m not up to date on any of my Arcs lore, but the jump from the songs that I heard on heavy rotation on Alt Nation back when I was in middle school to this is nothing short of gutsy. But somehow, it makes complete sense. Just like the animations in the music video, it’s vibrant and polished to a shine, bursting with neon color. From the backing vocals to the smooth piano intro, it’s clearly a song that’s been in the studio for extensive amounts of time, a piece of art being chiseled out of stone. And what came out when the dust settled was an irresistibly pop-sounding indie tune of a perfect length. Every move feels exceedingly deliberate, from when the backing vocals kick in with the “sha-la-la-la-la-la”s in the last third to the quiet explosion of different instruments in the background. The only other song I can think of called “Sunshine” is an exceedingly melancholy one (as with pretty much any Sparklehorse song…sorry, Mark), but if anything, this is a song that more than lives up to its title.

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 Uncategorized

Sunday Songs: 4/23/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

I may be slightly sick, but I did not lose my lack of coherence, so today, I give you a very famous banana, Wall-E, and the only band that can make a Black Sabbath song sound dainty. Have fun trying to bring it all together. I certainly did.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 4/23/23

“Heavy Bend” – Big Thief

With full sincerity, I mean this in the absolute nicest way possible: the beginning of this song sounds like an Apple ringtone. An Apple ringtone, but the kind that has no business being as much of a banger as it is. Like the Piano one. Did any of that make any sense? I need a Taskmaster-style choreography to this one now. Would this give Noel Fielding shrew vibes?

My Big Thief/Adrianne Lenker conversion has begun, thanks to my brother and his girlfriend, and every day I’m inching closer to listening to Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You. But this song is unique—everything, from the echo of Adrianne Lenker’s sighing into the microphone to the hypnotic, harp-like strums that feel like the auditory answer to dew-covered spiderwebs in the early morning. That hypnotic quality reminds me a lot of “Bicycle,” another song that I raved about a few months ago, that shares the quality of feeling enchantingly impressionistic, like a painting imbued with motion. And as much of a cliche as this is, “Heavy Bend”‘s biggest crime is being too short. Some songs work as short and snappy (see “We’ve Got a File on You,” “Pam Berry,” “A Little Bit of Soap,” etc.), but this song feels like it’s begging for a key change, a bridge, just something to propel it beyond a minute and 36 seconds. On the other hand, that makes it tantalizingly easy to play on repeat. If you play it enough times on loop, you can just pretend that it’s longer. Denial is the first stage of grief.

“All Tomorrow’s Parties” – The Velvet Underground & Nico

nothing like cackling at niche jokes alone in your dorm, amirite?

I’ve finally got around to listening to another classic album—one that I’d heard about half of beforehand anyway, but still enjoyed, for all of its legend, discomfort, and strange beauty. A classic story of a disaster and a sales flop becoming a tried-and-true classic, every song feels like its own world—a very seedy, eerie, and hazy world, but a world all the same. I doubt anybody will ever describe Nico’s voice better than the journalist Richard Goldstein, who described it as “something like a cello getting up in the morning.” I wouldn’t automatically put it on my top 10, but it’s clear that its lasting legacy isn’t without reason.

“All Tomorrow’s Parties” is one of the songs that was relatively new to me, and it quickly became my favorite of the album. There are so many layers to it, more than the peelable, bruised, Andy Warhol banana on the album cover. It chugs along like a great machine, elephantine in its size, slow in its looming progress. Nico’s distinct voice, thick, resonant and cavernous, plows it along, drawing a long shadow over the music. Each piano chord seems to plod along, even with how rapid each chord is. It almost feels like a dirge in the way it seems to crawl, certainly for the fate of said “poor girl” that the song describes. Unlike “Heavy Bend,” this song is the perfect length—the typical 3 minutes doesn’t give it enough time to loom over the listener, but just over six minutes gives it all the time in the world.

“I/0” – Peter Gabriel

“gay rights” – Peter Gabriel 2023

Oof, another beautiful one…I’m just glad this one is easier to swallow than “Playing for Time,” but it’s just as powerful.

Peter Gabriel’s had his fair share of movie involvement, from writing various film soundtracks to providing the tearjerking end-credits song “Down to Earth” for Pixar’s Wall-E. So it’s not surprising how easily he can slip into that cinematic smoothness with such ease. Certainly helps that the Soweto Gospel Choir, the same choir that performed with him on “Down to Earth,” provided backing vocals for “I/O” as well. Even though every song from the forthcoming i/o (stop trying to capitalize the i STOP TRYING TO CAPITALIZE THE i) has been paired with a visual so far, this one is practically begging for its own Pixar movie, or even just some animated music video. You can feel every bit of nature creeping through this song, from every creature mentioned in the lyrics to running water and green hills.

was this another gateway to sci-fi for baby Madeline? probably.

If we’re keeping with the Pixar theme, that would be two Pixar movies that he would hypothetically contribute to with a deeply environmentalist message. I’ve never been a die-hard Disney or Pixar fan, but Wall-E is special to me in so many ways—it was one of the first movies that I ever saw in theaters as a kid, and 15 years later (Jesus, I feel old), it reflects on humanity’s disconnect from nature, and the dangers of thinking that we’re the masters of everything that we can grab at. The scene where Wall-E reaches up to touch the stars still fills me with incredible awe. But, as with everything, we didn’t listen, and now we’re in the landscape where a handful of corporations are responsible for polluting a large part of our planet. And that is why we’ve become disconnected: as soon as we forget that we’re as much a part of the Earth as every other plant, animal, and other entity, we think that we can get away with all of this. And that’s what Wall-E tried to tell us in 2008, and it’s what “I/O” is telling us now: “So we think we live apart/because we’ve got two legs, a brain and a heart/we all belong to everything/to the octopus suckers and the buzzard’s wing.” Here and now, I’m glad that at least one other old white guy besides David Attenborough recognizes this. Happy belated Earth Day.

“Step On Me” – The Cardigans

I can’t pull the “I LiKEd tHiS sOnG bEFoRe IT wAS a tIKtOk sONG” card because I technically didn’t know this song in particular, but with David Bowie as my witness, I can swear that I did grow up listening to The Cardigans in the car quite a bit. I’ve had the luck of having very few songs I know become “tiktok songs,” but I’ve found that it’s no use griping over it and insisting that “[you] liked it before it was cool.” People are just going to assume that you got a song from some popular place, and that is the case sometimes, as much of a pretentious hipster I am. I vehemently despise tiktok’s obsession with speeding up every song that gets popular (WHY), but either way, it led me back to The Cardigans and to First Band on the Moon, and I’m happy with that—and happy that everybody else seems to be enjoying it.

(Does anybody know if this song was attached to a certain trend? I know that it’s vaguely trending, but I’m not sure how or why—I’ve just seen it with a few unrelated art videos…)

“Step On Me” is one of many lovely bites of pop on First Band on the Moon, and one of the best—certainly my favorite track on the album. Nina Persson casually just created the national anthem for people-pleasers with this one—a song about dodging your own needs, letting people walk (sorry, step) all over you: “go on and step on me,” even as the object of the song stands on her left foot and breaks it. With a crunching, muted intro that continues to punctuate the end of every chorus, everything about this song is proof that The Cardigans. got the recipe for a good pop song down to a science back in the 90’s—Nina Persson’s deceptively delicate, ringing voice, no shortage of hooks and catchy lyrics, and radio friendliness without over-simplicity. Every time the scratchy, muted intro comes on shuffle, I can’t help but drop everything and turn up the volume. Like I said—The Cardigans had pop music down to a science. No wonder they’re trending again. If you can make a Black Sabbath cover sound dainty (MULTIPLE TIMES), you can pretty much do anything.

“New York City Cops” – The Strokes

Like Jack White, Julian Casablancas is just one of those musicians who I really want to hate, but then I hear songs like this that are just so undeniably catchy that I just can’t hate him all the way. That being said, the thought of him still makes me want to roll my eyes all the way back in my head, mainly because of flashbacks of him taking over Sirius XMU and saying something along the lines of “now, this next song is from a 60’s punk band from Peru…oh, you don’t know them?” I really wish I was kidding.

Even though the beginning feels a little manufactured to me (the staged-feeling quality of Casablancas screaming, then going back on it: “ahahaha………didn’t mean that at all 🫦”…oh, please), the rest of the song is a masterfully tight piece of post-punk (oh, post-punk revival…okay, fine). It’s delightfully uptight—it all feels boxed in a cramped room, but it takes the confines of that room runs with it, never once loses momentum after the first drumbeat. The rough edges of Casablancas’ voice contrast perfectly with each scratchy guitar chord, a constant buffet of sound that never loses its sandpapery texture. I mean that as a compliment—it’s not a grating sandpaper, but more of the hard-edge, punk sandpaper that makes The Strokes sound the way they do. And although this song was subject to some abysmally bad timing in the U.S. (the song was initially removed from the U.S. release because the album was released so close to 9/11—the chorus of “New York City cops/but they ain’t too smart” was, understandably, a massive no-no so close to such a tragedy, even if it was completely unintentional), I’m glad “New York City Cops” ended up seeing the light of day a significant amount of time after the fact.

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 Books

The Bookish Mutant’s Books for Autism Acceptance Month ∞

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Thursday, bibliophiles!

As some of you may know, April is Autism Acceptance Month here in the U.S.! I don’t think I’ve highlighted a book list for the occasion, but in my ongoing quest for disability rep in general, I’ve come across many great books with Autistic protagonists and stories. If you’re looking to diversify your reading, it’s always important to uplift every kind of marginalized voice, and disability rep in general often gets left in the dust. So I’ve compiled a list of books by Autistic (with one exception—the author is still neurodivergent, just not Autistic) for this month.

NOTE: some of the older books on this list may still use the term Asperger’s, but in recent years, the term has since been renamed to Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in the DSM-5, in part because of its association with Hans Asperger, who was involved with Nazism. Some people still use the term, but it is still important to acknowledge the history behind the term.

Enjoy these book recs!

THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S BOOKS FOR AUTISM ACCEPTANCE MONTH

READ:

ON MY TBR:

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, did you like them? What are your favorite books with Autistic rep? Let me know in the comments!

Today’s song:

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