Tag: cover

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 11/2/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: In which I study the sudden occurrence of British men writing diss tracks about God in 1987.

Enjoy this week’s review!

SUNDAY SONGS: 11/2/25

“Decora” – Yo La Tengo

My Yo La Tengo knowledge is limited, considering how they theoretically line up with quite a bit of my music taste. They definitely seem to fit into my indie music sensibilities, and I even share a name with one of their songs, though they pronounce it differently than my name. (You win some, you lose some.) I do, however, know drummer and vocalist Georgia Hubley from the infectiously catchy and delightful 6ths track “Movies in My Head.” It’s a song about dreaming up fantastical scenarios and real life never measuring up, and Hubley’s airy vocals really do give it the feel like she’s never quite looking at the camera and never quite there, at least not fully. (Surely I don’t relate to that at all. Nah…)

That same dreamy quality of Hubley’s vocals blooms here, but in nearly the opposite environment. It feels like an adaptable houseplant to me: plant it in wildly different-shaped pots, and it still blooms just the same, and just as bright and healthy. I suppose that’s what you’d call versatility, but bear with me, I’m an English major. Let me have a metaphor or two…either way, this is just about the opposite end of the spectrum as Stephin Merritt’s sparkling indie pop. “Decora” is far noisier and grungier in the background, laden with crunching, distorted guitars that sound like the squealing of rusted machinery. It’s all rough edges and pockmarks, much like the collaged album cover of Electr-O-Pura. Yet Hubley’s voice drifts like a pastel balloon above a junkyard, sailing effortlessly through the clouds amidst the grime and squealing of the instrumentals. It’s beyond a perfect pairing—such disparate sounds meld together so seamlessly, and that’s magical to me.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Skyhunter – Marie Lu – “It’s not the first time you’ll take a fall/Act like you’ve never seen double before/We tie deep into the past/Take this chance with me ’cause it’s the last…”

“Saint Julian” – Julian Cope

British men in 1987, for whatever reason: “I absolutely need to write a diss track about God RIGHT THIS SECOND” (see also: the more well known “Dear God”)

So. Saint Julian! Severely underrated album, right? It just reeks of this jangly, proto-Britpop sound that I can’t get enough of. I’d already listened to about half of the album by virtue of it being on heavy rotation in my dad’s car throughout my childhood, but the familiarity of it didn’t dull the sheen at all. It’s very much a pop album, but it’s a clever, horny, dramatic, literate, and downright catchy one—”Eve’s Volcano” has been on repeat for me since June.

Past the first half, the album takes a turn from literately horny to just literate, but the sound is just as consistent. Where he was just singing about how you need to hold onto his special feature (wink wink), he applies the same instrumentals to his personal beef with God. Which…entirely understandable, and given the rest of Cope’s discography, is actually much more common for him than the former, given his penchant for philosophy and the ideas of Jungian psychoanalysis. Amidst almost medieval-sounding woodwinds and an otherwise ’80s band, he characterizes God as deliberately smug, a God that all but slapped him in the face when he tried to seek him out for solace: “‘I’ve been looking around this world I created/It’s going so well!’/I looked, I stared, I said, ‘I think I’ve lost you!'” Cope’s got a lot of snark to spare, but it’s all leveled in such a sly, clever way—he feels almost like a kind of trickster deity with a smirk aimed at the camera knowing that he’s had God himself. And like a lot of tricksters, the narrative ends in Cope getting imprisoned by God for mouthing off, not knowing that he’s given him even more proof that God’s not all that: “Remind me not to pray to you!”

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Agnes at the End of the World – Kelly McWilliams – “I stared into your face, the waves so deep and strong/Your fall from grace—a God so far gone/Remind me not to pray to you…”

“I Feel Free” (Cream cover) – David Bowie

Last week, I got into some David Bowie covers, so why not get into David Bowie covering other bands this week? A little switcheroo…

And talk about covers that sound eons away from the original! I didn’t even know it was a cover until a few days ago, but the original version by Cream from 1967 sounds worlds apart from Bowie’s interpretation in 1992. As Bowie tells it, in the early days of The Spiders from Mars, he and Mick Ronson would frequently cover this song—according to him, it didn’t sound very good, but I swear their ’70s sound would suit this cover perfectly. (It was also the final track that Bowie and Ronson recorded together before Ronson’s tragic, early death from cancer at age 46.) Instead of the peppy, very distinctly ’60s swagger of Cream, Bowie’s version of “I Feel Free” all but sounds like it was fast-tracked into the ’90s at startling speeds. It almost sounds more like the Pet Shop Boys than Bowie. It feels like his slicker, more commercial ’80s sound dialed up to a dizzying degree, complete with chrome-shininess abound, fluttering and frenetic saxophones, and soaring guitars, thanks to Ronson. And can we talk about his vocal range? Those low notes are just intoxicating.

There’s a very distinctly hippie flavor to Cream’s version, so it feels like a small wonder (or perhaps, a little wonder? Thank you, thank you, I’m here all night), and that feeling naturally lends itself to lyrics of carefree and ecstatic nature. Here, Bowie translates that feeling to something akin to cruising through the city in an expensive, silvery car, watching the city lights reflect off of the freshly-waxed doors, glimmering and luxurious. Just as easily as Bowie could shift personas and musical styles, he could also place that almost alchemical property onto any cover he touched, while still retaining the heart of the original—the core of the mouth percussion in the beginning remains fairly similar. But it just goes to show how deeply creative of a musician Bowie was, not just in interpreting his own work, but the work of others.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

How to Steal a Galaxy (Chaotic Orbits, #2) – Beth Revis – this would be right at home in a glitzy, high society gala…in the middle of space, of course!

“Harvest Moon” – Neil Young

Everybody seems to have this heartwarming, cinematic experience of listening to this song the first time. Me, on the other hand? Found it in an edit of Kermit and Miss Piggy…how could I not immediately download it after that?

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMJcQu3yfFP/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Unironically got misty watching this, which should probably tell you exactly the kind of person I am, but I’m not ashamed of it.

I really don’t know a ton of Neil Young (though “Cinnamon Girl” is an obvious classic), but sometimes…yeah, I can’t resist a good ballad sometimes. There was just this warmth to it the instant I heard it, the kind of warmth you only get when leaning next to the fireplace as you watch the sun fade into the clouds at night. Those sporadic, plucked notes on the dobro feel like they’re drifting skyward; who’s to say if they’re fireflies or embers from a campfire, but either way, they glow to me. And despite the slightly corny music video (the dude sweeping to the beat in front of the restaurant nearly ruined the vibe, I’m sorry), “Harvest Moon” has this autumnal comfort to me, tinged with the last colors of the sunset and the warm of somebody in your arms.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

You Sexy Thing – Cat Rambo – look, I know the cover has the polar opposite vibe of this song, but stay with me here…

“You’re My Thrill” – Billie Holiday

This was one of those songs that was tucked into the absolute deepest, dustiest archives in my brain. I remember hearing it a lot in my parents’ cars when I was little—really little, there was always a big, bulky car seat in these hazy memories. I don’t know if I fabricated this memory, but I swear I remember hearing it as we passed down a run-down storefront somewhere along a highway in Denver. Maybe that strange, lingering feeling is why I can’t shake the feeling that “You’re My Thrill” has always come off a little bit eerie to me. I suppose it’s just the shifting standard of what’s considered the “right” way for a love song to sound and the more creeping tone of the song. With this instrumentation, Holiday’s crooning of “Where’s my will?” certainly feels a bit more like succumbing to something against her will than it does just being lovesick. And yet, still, still, it’s such a classic love song—it’s no wonder that Holiday’s legacy has become so solidly set in music history. Her voice is, without a doubt, one of the most captivating. It’s difficult for me to describe the exact cocktail of emotions that it evokes—enchantment, seduction, and in some cases, dread—but that’s the mark of an iconic vocalist.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Monsters We Defy – Leslye Penelope – I…whoops. The Venn diagram of when Billie Holiday had a career and the year this book is set is off by a few years, but I still feel like the jazz in this novel fits.

BONUS: it’s been a great week for indie rockers on late night TV. Here are some standouts:

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

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 10/26/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: I think you’ve all been getting too comfortable with the lack of Björk in the past month or so…WOE, BJÖRK BE UPON YE

Enjoy this week’s review!

SUNDAY SONGS: 10/26/25

“Anemone” – The Brian Jonestown Massacre

I love a song that just envelops me. “Anemone” is one of those tracks were there’s nothing in the lyrics remotely related to anemones (or even the sea), but it just happens to be the right title, just from the feel of it. The production and instrumentation sound like the lazy swirl of a temperate ocean around you, like footage of Planet Earth with a shot panning over gentle waves making anemones’ tentacles wave in the wind like branches on a tree. “You should be picking me up/Instead you’re dragging me down,” in that frame of mind, feels like being pulled under by a rogue wave and surrendering to the current.

Anton Newcombe’s voice feels like a backup instrument and not the lead vocal, somehow just as ethereal and misty as the faintly distorted rhythm guitar. That’s probably because the lead guitar, also played by Newcombe, is so distinct that it feels more like the voice of the song. From the beginning, it makes intricate loops and twists, like an animation of yarn curling in on itself—or the tendrils of an anemone slowly reaching out to you. It starts off almost uneasy, as if trying not to intrude on the melody, but once it expands, it takes the song from dewy cobwebs to a fully-defined spiderweb of dreamlike sound.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Two Lies of Faven Sythe – Megan E. O’Keefe – a twisty, surreal world of crystals and secrets—befitting of a dreamlike song like this.

“Fame” (David Bowie cover) – Eurhythmics

The other day, a good friend of mine (and one of the only people I know who’s just as obsessed with David Bowie as me, which is really saying something) and I were volleying back and forth about David Bowie covers. I wish I were as open-minded like them, but I think I was just burned by the aftermath of Bowie’s death when every single radio station decided that it was the right time to play nothing but the shittiest Bowie covers known to man. You can’t blame me for being a little suspicious at first. If you have that seismic of an impact on music, you’re bound to spawn a ton of bad covers. Plenty of good ones too, though! (For your perusal, and also the ones I sent said friend: Warpaint’s cover of “Ashes to Ashes,” TV on the Radio’s cover of “Heroes,” Lisa Hannigan’s cover of “Oh! You Pretty Things,” and Karen O and Willie Nelson’s cover of “Under Pressure.”)

But when they said that Eurhythmics had done a cover of “Fame” back in the early ’80s, I knew it was going to be good. (So thank you, said friend!) After all, Annie Lennox did take up the mantle of resident British, orange-haired, androgynous pop star from Bowie after Ziggy Stardust had been put to bed. I knew she was going to be cooking something. Bold, daring covers are few and far between, but if anyone can do it, it’s Eurhythmics. Lennox and Stewart transmuted Bowie’s plastic soul into a wholly different sound. It’s slicker than chrome, and so, so ’80s in the best way. Sped up and dominated by synths that sound like liquid mercury, Lennox’s vocal take on “Fame” turns the meditation into a song that feels like it belongs in a movie montage, walking through a crowded ballroom full of shallow, Hollywood types. Her mocking laugh echoes through the repetition of “Fame” in the chorus, hammering down Bowie’s original message of fame and the mercurial music industry wringing creative talents dry.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Monstrous Misses Mai – Van Hoang – “Fame (fame)/What you like is in the limo/Fame (fame) what you get is no tomorrow/Fame (fame) what you need, you have to borrow…”

“The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing” – The Magnetic Fields

Dammit…I almost slipped into my usual “I need to set aside 3 hours to listen to 69 Love Songs in its entirety” intro for yet another song from 69 Love Songs. 3 hours? In this economy? With my Instagram-rotted goldfish attention span? Kidding, kidding…only partly. I need to shut up and just listen to the album.

In the meantime, I seem to have gathered a stash of assorted songs from 69 Love Songs like a squirrel gathering acorns for the winter and hiding them in the most random places. Yet I do not have the uncanny acorn memory of a squirrel, so I’m fully surprised every time the Magnetic Fields Instagram account soundtracks one of their posts from the 69 Love Songs 25th Anniversary Tour with one of these songs. “The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing” was a recent favorite from the start. I fully mean this as a compliment, but there’s something about the production that makes the song sound like it’s been played on toy instruments. You can’t tell me that those clacks in the background aren’t plastic. Given the absolute laundry list of instruments listed under Stephin Merrit’s name on the Wikipedia page for 69 Love Songs, it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for him to have thrown some in for fun. Another fun fact: Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket (yes, that Lemony Snicket) played several instruments on the album and arranged “Asleep and Dreaming.” I feel like it’d take an archaeologist to deconstruct the sheer amount of lore that this album has.

And yet that toylike quality makes the rusty charm of this song, from the thin mandolin strums and the hollow, clinking percussion. It’s uncharacteristically devoid of the usual lovelorn frustrations that Merritt usually displays—it’s nothing but breathless, dizzy joy. “The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing” is a snapshot in motion of rapidly twirling lovers careening across a dim dancefloor, relishing in the warm glow of the lights. It’s the faint smell of the night air as you squeeze someone’s clammy hand, a leap of faith into someone else’s arms. The beat seems to all but gallop like a trained pony with a collar adorned with jingle bells, brushed to perfection but nothing but happy about it.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Heartstopper, vol. 1 – Alice Oseman – don’t tell me that this song isn’t befitting of some little animated leaves and fireworks.

“Play Dead” – Björk

There’s something so singularly admirable about Björk that makes even her more commercial songs feel so uproariously her. Even a relatively sparse music video, not directed by her and interspersed with clips from the film it was from, The Young Americans, couldn’t tamp down the raw power of her voice. Even when given a formula, Björk played around with it in every way that she could—from all accounts, the opportunity was an experiment for her. On writing “Play Dead,” Björk said that writing the song was “fun because the character in the film was suffering and going through hardcore tough times and at the time I was at my happiest. It was quite liberating to sit down after writing a whole album to write from someone else’s point of view.”

Aided by David Arnold, who composed the film’s score, and Jah Wobble (of Public Image Ltd) contributing the (gloriously slick) bass, “Play Dead” reminds me, at best, of what I like so much about trip-hop. It’s so seductive and slick, and even with the lyrics aching with numbness, it’s so brimming with life. Sure, that’s in no small part due to the cinematic orchestral swells that punctuate the background, but Björk’s voice makes it from a song into a true performance on every listen—even the most melancholy lyrics from her are blood vessels full of life. Nothing could ever suck the energy out of her performances, much less this one.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Red City – Marie Lu – “I belong to here where/No one cares, and no one loves/No light, no air to live in/A place called hate/The city of fear…”

“Overkill” – Colin Hay

[BANGING FIST ON THE TABLE, IN TEARS]

HE JUST LIKE ME FR

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Forever is Now – Mariama J. Lockington – a poignant, honest depiction of a young Black girl dealing with chronic anxiety.

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

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 10/19/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: the chances of being pursued by Brian Eno wielding chopsticks are low…but never zero.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 10/14/25

“Lay My Love” – Brian Eno & John Cale

While digging a bit about a song that I’m not even mentioning until next week, I stumbled upon something entirely different. All of those Pitchfork Best Songs of [insert decade] lists (this was from the ’90s one) are very subjective, but sometimes I appreciate looking at them simply by virtue of finding out about something new. Last week, it happened to be a collaboration between Brian Eno and John Cale from 1990, Wrong Way Up, and “Lay My Love” in particular. I was excited by the prospect of Brian Eno already, but man…I have been sucked in. I’ve listened to this one an unhealthy amount of time. It just swallows you whole in the best way possible!

By the ’80s, Brian Eno had built a decade’s worth of entirely ambient music, and there seemed to be no return for him to the more conventional (if you can call it that) rock of his earlier career, abandoning his own vocals almost entirely: in 1989, he told an interviewer that “I’m sure I could, if someone held a gun to my head, crank out a record of songs, but at this point in time I know it wouldn’t be any good.” And given the intensely argument-fraught recording of Wrong Way Up (Cale alleges that Eno once came at him wielding chopsticks, but Eno has insisted that Cale fabricated this), there’s a good chance that in another timeline, this album may not have seen the light of day after all. And yet there they were in 1990: Eno and Cale, frequent collaborators since the 1970’s, making an album consisting of just that.

You’d think that after abandoning singing for so long, Eno would appear rusty. In fact, he’s the exact opposite. “Lay My Love” feels like the distillation of the best qualities of his off-kilter vocals. Even though he’s known for his more removed, uptight vocal quality, this track presents him as warmer than he’s ever come across. It’s a song that makes you believe every word: as he sings “I am the yearning,” you can hear the pleading in his vocals, layered upon themselves ad infinitum. Cale’s rousing violins add an upbeat swing amongst the dizzyingly layered instrumentals. It’s an all-consuming slurry of glimmering sediment and flotsam, all warmed by the sun’s rays, equal parts hymn and experimental electronic music. Eno peppers in some of his most delightfully surreal, offbeat lyrics (“I am the termite of temptation”) with ones that make sense in some unarticulated part of your soul (“I am the wheel/I am the turning”). Above all, you really do feel as though this love is being laid around you like a blanket. It feels like the kind of song to soundtrack a quiet montage in a film of a house being built, or moss growing on a log: gradual, and yet hopeful in its certainty. You know that the love is coming around to you, and when it does, it will be as joyous as every note bursting from this track.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Psalm for the Wild-Built – Becky Chambers – this seems precisely the kind of song that would soundtrack Sibling Dex and Mosscap’s quiet adventures through the woods.

“New Generation” – The London Suede

As far as the Britpop Big Four goes, The London Suede (known as just Suede in the UK) is the last frontier for me to explore; I’ve heard some of their songs sporadically and loved them (see: “Metal Mickey”), but reading The Last Party: Britpop, Blair, and the Demise of English Rock sparked some more interest in them. Add that to Neko Case’s episode of What’s in My Bag? and I was instantly hooked on “New Generation.” Along with “Lay My Love,” this song’s up there with the songs that I’ve been listening to an unhealthy amount of times. Who am I to deny my Britpop girlie urges?

I really should be a huge fan of The London Suede, given how influenced they were by David Bowie, but then again, not everybody influenced by Bowie is automatically good, of course. Brett Anderson and company seemed to worship the ground he walked on, which resulted in their melodramatic style and soaring vocals. Dog Man Star, which I’ve heard is an excellent album, was said to be inspired by a lot of Bowie’s early ’70s material, which makes perfect sense—”New Generation” feels like fanfiction set in the Hunger City of Diamond Dogs, and I fully mean that as a compliment. If Anderson’s vocals and just-so placed swoop didn’t tip you off, “New Generation” is high on the drama, but that’s part of why it works so well—it’s a strangely dystopian song that’s fit for draping yourself dramatically across the bed, full of distance and yearning. Anderson’s really doing some vocal somersaults here—he said himself that it’s one of the most difficult songs for him to sing—and amidst sepia-toned lyrics of disaffection and substance abuse, his vocals are outstretched arms beckoning for someone to swoop in and extricate him from it all.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Shamshine Blind – Paz Pardo – “‘Cause like all the boys in all the cities/I take the poison, take the pity/But she and I would soon discover/We take the pills to find each other…”

“Wreck” – Neko Case

Today on incredibly specific comparisons: “Wreck” by Neko Case sounds almost exactly like this meme to me:

Maybe I do need to listen to more Neko Case after all. I’m a fan of the New Pornographers, but I really haven’t dived into any of her solo work, save for the misfire that was her cover of “Madonna of the Wasps.” You win some, you lose some. But this song, off of her new album Neon Grey Midnight Green (that’s got to be one of the better album titles I’ve heard in a while, for sure), easily falls into the win category.

For a beat, the a cappella intro lulls you into a false sense of security before dropping you headfirst into a churning, breathless whirlpool of head-over-heels romance. I can’t deny a love song that feels like you’re gleefully sprinting through a verdant field at full speed—there’s a bit of Hounds of Love Kate Bush in there somewhere in the unabashed drama that Case peddles: “I’m a meteor shattering around you/And I’m sorry/I’ve become a solar system/Since I found you/I’m an eruption/A wreck of possibilities/A volatility of stars/My clothes can’t hold together.” (Another shoutout is due to “Do I look like the sun to you?/Do I blaze freckles onto your face?”) And right after this, she breathlessly cries “And I know I can’t burn this bright forever!”—right about there, I imagine her smile splitting with reckless glee, a princess dress ballooning into endless layers of silk and tulle, a cry of nothing but sheer joy. It’s an easily addictive ode to absolutely drowning in yearning, and desperately wanting the echo to have an answer.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Stars Too Fondly – Emily Hamilton – “Do I look like the sun to you?/Do I blaze freckles onto your face/I bet I, bet I, bet I do/I’m a meteor shattering around you/And I’m sorry…”

“Alien Being” – The Magnetic Fields

There’s something truly beautiful about the fact that this song only has 10 likes on YouTube and a single comment that reads “being gay is awesome and you gotta try it!!!” Amen, brother.

The House of Tomorrow EP was released very early on in The Magnetic Fields’ career, and from 3/5 songs that I’ve listened to from it (this, “Either You Don’t Love Me Or I Don’t Love You” and “Love Goes Home to Paris in the Spring”), it’s clear that they’d all honed their talents very early. I suppose it helped that Stephin Merritt was in several bands before this, but it’s still very indicative of what a masterful songwriter he’s come to be. It’s also clear from the start that he’d started dissecting unhappy relationships very early on. The lyrics of “Alien Being” aren’t quite as laden with metaphor as they usually are, but they’re monotonous and repetitive—which feels like precisely the point. Almost all of them end with “nothing at all” (“You talk a lot about nothing at all/”Watch TV shows about nothing at all”), adding to the layered, grainy drone of the synths in the background. It’s a perfect encapsulation of being around someone who makes you feel like you’re talking to a wall—no feelings, no opinions, no independent thoughts, no nothing. Good thing Merritt has a lot of those things.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Here Beside the Rising Tide – Emily Jane – “You have no feelings/I think you are an alien being/You won’t let me in/I think you are an alien being…”

“Time in a Bottle” (Jim Croce cover) – Lucy Dacus

The X-Men fan in me and the Lucy Dacus fan in me were both screaming when I found out that this was a thing…I don’t even have any sentimental feelings towards the original, but I just saw the title and got activated like a sleeper agent. Say what you want about the later Fox X-Men movies, but there’s one thing that they did best, and that was make immaculate slo-mo Quicksilver sequences with great needle drops.

I maintain that Forever is a Feeling bordered on being a disappointment, but I’m softening to some of it—especially now that we’ve gotten an expanded edition: Forever is a Feeling: The Archives. It’s mainly demos and live versions, but it had the poignant track “Losing” (should’ve been in the album, that’s my two cents) and this Jim Croce cover. Dacus’ tender, delicate fingerpicking style was practically made for this cover, as was the overall aesthetic of the album, combining acoustic guitar with gently swelling strings. I just can’t get enough of how she treats the guitar as an instrument—the way she plays on “Time in a Bottle” makes it feel like it’s not simply an instrument but a waltz partner. Her rich voice is on full display with this cover, making every note ring out with the yearning I’ve come to love her for. It’s tender in its sparing instrumentation, but her voice fills out all the empty spaces, creating a cover steeped in love and longing, just like the best parts of Forever is a Feeling.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

When the Tides Held the Moon – Venessa Vida Kelley – the tender feeling of this cover would fit right in with this heartfelt, moonlit romance.

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

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 9/21/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

Since I’ve been gone for a little while, here are the graphics for the weeks I was absent, because I am nothing if not a creature who lives for making little graphics:

8/24/25:

8/31/25:

9/7/25:

9/14/25:

This week: you’ve been fooled. This is just a front for me yapping about Alien: Earth! BLAH! IT’S ME, THE ALIEN! I’M GONNA GETCHA! I’M THE ALIEN!!

(but really, minor spoilers ahead.)

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 9/21/25

“Killer Crane” – TV on the Radio

You guys…Alien: Earth, right???? Oh my god??? Admittedly, the last two episodes have faltered, but I’d say the first five episodes made me remember why I love Noah Hawley so much. Toss him into another franchise and genre, and he adapts to the environment as swiftly as a frog tossed from the land into a freshwater pond. His take on Alien has sprawled into Fargo’s riddled dialogue and character building and Legion’s avant-garde aesthetics, yet easily stays true to Ridley Scott and Dan O’Bannon’s visions. No notes on the acting (Timothy Olyphant is top tier, Wendy and the Lost Boys are eerily good at playing children in adult bodies, and Babou Ceesay is both a worthy successor to Malvo AND a compelling character on his own). It’s…pushing my limits as far as body horror, for sure (had to knit in silence for an hour after episode 2), but that’s Alien for you.

But one of the more minor aspects of the prospect of new Noah Hawley content that got me going was the needle drops. I joked with my family that I couldn’t wait for the inevitable, devastating Lisa Hannigan cover song to come into the soundtrack, and while that hasn’t happened, I’m more desperate than ever to see this man’s playlist, because my god. For me, nothing’s come close to the pair of needle drops in episode 1 (though “Ocean Size” at the end of episode 4 comes close)—my brother, who has much more metalhead street cred than me, said that “you know Noah Hawley’s a real one because he included ‘E5150’ with ‘The Mob Rules.’”

But “Killer Crane?” Even though it wasn’t a TV on the Radio song that I was initially familiar with, I was instantly just giddy. The whole episode made me giddy, to be honest—with a few minor flaws, it felt like such a stunning, comprehensive intro to the show. GOD!! I already knew that Hawley was a fellow fan after he used “Quartz” in the trailer for season 3 of Legion, but I’m just happy to see it shine in a full-fledged show. I still think it’s one of my favorite needle drops in the show so far. It’s amongst one of the many spectacularly-shot scenes throughout the episode: soon after Marcy’s consciousness is transferred into Wendy’s robot body, we see her performing superhuman cliff-diving feats in the idyllic jungle paradise of Neverland. As a scene, it’s just so luscious with the visual metaphor of Wendy leaping off of a literal precipice, paired with the mental precipice of her transition into a new body. Paired with the glimmering, dewy production of “Killer Crane,” it makes for a perfect scene, as does these lyrics: “Her grace’s glide/Across the sea/Across creation/And over time/Her gracious life/Escapes its station.” But the song belies something much more somber; it was written as a tribute to Gerard Smith, their original bassist, who died of lung cancer nine days after the release of Nine Types of Light at the age of 36. Given the hybrid’s consciousnesses, taken from terminally ill children, it’s a grim, apt introduction for their states of being: “Sunshine, I saw you through the hanging vine/A memory of what was mine fading away.” It’s a bittersweet ode to the simultaneous beauty and impermanence of life; the final line of “I could leave suddenly unafraid” could mean both how death could come at any moment for anyone, or leaving the constantly fearful state of mind that comes with grappling with the transience of all things. Damn you, Noah Hawley!! These needle drops are too good, leave some for the rest of us!!

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Arrival of Someday – Jen Malone – grappling with imminent death and soaking up life while one can forms the emotional core of this novel.

“Leaning Against the Wall” – Wolf Alice

I confess that I haven’t been following Wolf Alice too closely, but if my dear friend’s assessment is worth anything (which it obviously is), they’re still going strong. They released a fourth album, The Clearing, in late August. From the snippets I’ve heard, they’ve certainly polished up their sound, but it’s no less candid beneath the sheen. Their indie pop is as hooky as ever. But I can’t shake the feeling that they’re deliberately just making music for Heartstopper at this point. I mean…c’mon. When that moment kicks in at 1:11? Specifically engineered for a shot of Nick and Charlie gazing longingly into each other’s eyes under a string of fairy lights. But as an earnest, bubbly indie love song, “Leaning Against the Wall” perfectly captures that balance of wanting to run and tell everybody about love, but relishing the private moments in tucked-away corners the most. And as a closing track for The Clearing, it eases the listener into a gentle, artfully rearranged outro that leaves you with lingering butterflies in the stomach.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Heartstopper, vol. 1 – Alice Oseman – see above.

“Soft Sounds from Another Planet” – Japanese Breakfast

So…Japanese Breakfast! One of the highlights of my brief hiatus was seeing Japanese Breakfast with a wonderful, dear friend of mine. For an artist touring for an album called For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), I couldn’t have imagined a more joyful show—even without the amazing lighting team, Michelle Zauner and co. truly lit up the room, from the sweeping, romantic new songs to the ecstatic rendition of “Everybody Wants To Love You” with the help of Ginger Root. The sets? Truly a spectacle. The setlist? A perfect balance of her whole career. And Zauner just seemed like such a comforting, joyful presence—concerts are always enhanced when the artist actually feels like they want to be there. She played a deep cut solely because she overheard somebody humming it before the show, and that should give you an idea of her presence. And yes, I fucking lost it when she whipped out the gong for “Paprika.” 100% the highlight of my night.

So without further ado, let’s talk about…a song that wasn’t even on the setlist. Oopsie. Either way, the setlist from the show inspired me to dig into more songs from Soft Sounds from Another Planet, an album with one of the best album titles in Japanese Breakfast’s career (though For Melancholy Brunettes is probably tied for the title). Zauner was initially going to make a sci-fi concept album, and though this vision never came to fruition, the atmosphere remains; the album is shrouded in shoegazey, drifting instrumentals that airily swirl around you (see: “Jimmy Fallon Big!”). With a hushed, dreamy tone, Zauner yearns into a starry abyss, longing for an escape: “In search of a soft sound from another planet/In search of a quiet place to put this to rest/Striving for goodness while the cruel men win…” Ow…yeah. If that hasn’t been what life has been like for me since I was a teenager. I don’t have all the answers, but as far as I know, all you can do is look to people like Zauner: make art, spread joy.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Library of Broken Worlds – Alaya Dawn Johnson – “That’s not the way to hurt me/I’ll show you the way to hurt me/In search of a soft sound from another planet/In search of a quiet place to lay this to rest/Striving for goodness while the cruel men win…”

“How Could I Have Known” – Big Thief

This just in: I’m a total Big Thief poser. Well, maybe not since I’ve actually listened to a full album now, but Double Infinity did turn out to be the first album of theirs that I listened to it in full. There’s something so comforting about it; though it has its weak moments here and there, at its best, it feels like the caress of a warm, woolen sweater, secure and fuzzy. It’s got the feel of Christmas music, but not in the way that you might think; not in the sense of the actual structure of most Christmas songs, but in way that the harmonization feels warm, like the feeling of being curled up by the fire as night fades into he falling snow in late December. “Incomprehensible” remains the pinnacle of the album for me (but how can you top “Incomprehensible,” really?), but the tearjerking closing track comes close.

Talking to my brother and his girlfriend (both much more dedicated fans than me…bigger thieves, if you will) about the album made me realize something about songwriting that’s very contradictory to me, specifically. They were lamenting that some of Adrianne Lenker’s more poetic language had gotten lost in the more plainly spoken lyrics on Double Infinity, and having heard an album like songs, I would honestly agree. If this series has proven anything to you all, it’s that I am an absolute sucker for some good ol’ poetic lyricism. Yet sometimes, things are best said so plainly, affirmations or words of comfort. I can think of ways that the themes of “How Could I Have Known” have been sung more poetically—Wilco’s “Say You Love Me” comes to mind. But sometimes words as simply stated as these can be just as impactful: “They say time is the fourth dimension/They say everything lives and dies/But our love will live forever/Though today we said goodbye.” For me, it’s all in the delivery. Lenker and co. have readily embraced their Grateful Dead jam band era, and honestly, it really isn’t a complaint. The mixing makes it so that the instruments sound truly harmonious, warm and blurred at the edges like snow melting into dirt. The harmonies of the singers themselves not only mesh together beautifully, but they’re just ever so slightly out of sync that it feels like “How Could I Have Known” is being sung around a campfire. And that tight-knit feeling of togetherness is all the better for a song about gratitude for the small, improbable miracles that stacked up that allowed us to meet the people we love.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Last Gifts of the Universe – Riley August – “And they say time’s the fourth dimension/They say everything lives and dies/But our love will live forever/Though, today, we said goodbye…”

“Strange Brew” (Cream cover) – Noah Hawley & Jeff Russo

“Strange brew/killing what’s inside of you” that would be the water bottle full of alien ticks ❤

And I thought that Legion meant that we were done with Noah Hawley and Jeff Russo making deeply eerie covers of ’60s-’70s songs…no devastating Lisa Hannigan cover yet, but “if you don’t watch out/it’ll stick to you” really does kinda sum up the entire Alien franchise. As always, Noah Hawley continues to impress me by not just being an accomplished author/television writer, but also by having genuinely great pipes…they put too much talent in that man!! I’ve reached my Alien: Earth yap quota for the week, but god, what a great theme song, complete with some subtle creaky spaceship sounds.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Eartheater – Dolores Reyes – “She’s a witch of trouble in electric blue/In her own mad mind, she’s in love with you/With you/Now, what you gonna do?/Strange brew/Killing what’s inside of you…”

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: 8/17/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: this semblance of a color scheme is hanging on for dear life, but I needed to talk about Biophilia IMMEDIATELY you must understand…

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 8/17/25

“Virus” – Björk

Another Björk album down! I was highly anticipating listening to Biophilia from the sheer conceptual layers of it; though the original app is now defunct, it still exists as a glittering piece of music and science education, reuniting our understanding of the sciences with the emotion that was always inherent to it. Whether it’s the structure of our genes (“Hollow”) to the phases of the moon (“Moon”), the ability Björk has to weave personal narratives of the rocky parts of healing with the natural processes of the world never ceases to astound me. Admittedly, Biophilia took me another listen around to fully get with it, but that’s mostly because being stuffy and lethargic from a nasty cold whilst the Amen break comes hurtling at you at 90 mph isn’t ideal. The artistry of…well, every single music video of the album never ceases to astound me. It would be easy for the concept to supersede the actual contents of Biophilia, but Björk never fails to pull the rug out from under me every single time. GOD.

“Virus” was one of the most delightful tracks from the album, so gentle, yet carrying a sinister undertone. Wreathed in tinkling chimes and gameleste, it uses a virus as a metaphor for a parasitic, one-sided relationship: “Like a virus needs a body/As soft tissue feeds on blood/Someday I’ll find you.” The virus motif sings sweetly, with Björk’s vocals as delicate and crystalline (no pun intended) as the icy instrumentals surrounding her, reminiscent of Vespertine. It makes itself indispensable (“Like a flame that seeks explosives/Like gunpowder needs a war”) as it sucks the life from its host, but never betrays its true intentions. Everything is hidden under the sweetness—as things tend to be in parasitic, codependent relationships, if we’re taking the more literal route with it. Even when she takes on the persona of a virus slowly killing a host, Björk’s vocals have never sounded more emotive and warm, only getting richer with age, something that time has proven since 2011. Though she uses that same voice to portray much more genuine and non-parasitic feelings throughout Biophilia, the beauty of her voice never ceases to entrance me, no matter the narrative delivery and what it’s hiding—which is exactly the point. It’s intoxicatingly sinister.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Someone You Can Build a Nest In – John Wiswell – “Like a mushroom on a tree trunk/As the protein transmutates/I knock on your skin/And I am in…”

“Bus Back to Richmond” – Lucy Dacus

Nearly five months after Forever Is a Feeling came out (and about a month after Lucy Dacus got a license to start marrying people onstage…what a queen), I’ve cooled down slightly from the initial disappointment, even if only a few degrees. I still hold that it’s her weakest and most commercial album, but at the end of the day, it’s a Lucy Dacus album, and knock on wood, I’ve never encountered a bad Lucy Dacus album. I’ve warmed up much more to “Bullseye,” but most of the other tracks I wasn’t a fan of on the first listen have remained the same for me.

But not long ago, Dacus released two extra tracks that were meant for Forever Is a Feeling but were ultimately cut from the album. REJOICE!! She said that “Bus Back to Richmond” didn’t fit with the rest of the album, but to me, replace some of the weaker tracks with this one, and the album would’ve been more memorable. Though it falls instrumentally into the more introspective, acoustic side of her discography, “Bus Back to Richmond” is a soft, wintry ramble through missed opportunities and sparkling promises of the future. Dacus’ poetically observational lyrics shine in this one, from her descriptions of the “watercolor fireworks” bursting on New Year’s Eve and “eight of us left to the floor and the bed/and the futon that sunk in the middle.” In Christmas light-dappled vignettes, she paints with startling tenderness the coalescing of a future romance, the moments that slowly merged together to form something gleaming in the not-too-distant distance. Even in the heat of August, it feels like a woolen blanket wrapped around you as you stare at the embers of a crackling fire—the perfect winter song for summer.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Whiteout – anthology – intertwining love stories that all converge in a record-breaking blizzard.

“Rabbit Run” – IDLES

New music from IDLES is always a welcome thing, but granted, it was quite disappointing that it was from the soundtrack for, of all things, Caught Stealing. I saw the trailer before seeing Superman (which was as wonderful as everybody has been saying it is. HOPE IS PUNK ROCK! I think Superman would love IDLES), and it basically just looked like a vague “punk rock” pastiche involving a slightly terrifying looking Matt Smith and a vague plot involving Austin Butler battling a bunch of ethnic stereotypes for…uh, reasons, I guess. Regrettably, the punk aesthetic fits with IDLES’ sound, and I hate to see them involved with something that looks so downright stupid, but…they do kind of fit the vibe.

“Rabbit Run” is one of four songs that will eventually appear on the soundtrack of Caught Stealing. Though it doesn’t seem to fall into the Arcane curse of “movie/TV soundtrack songs whose lyrics blatantly regurgitate whatever plot points they’re paired with,” it still feels restrained for IDLES; despite how cagey the lyrics are, it feels relatively free-flowing until the chorus kicks in. But the layers of Nigel Godrich-sounding production give it the perfect middle ground between slick and gritty, as do Joe Talbot’s vocals. The lyrics are certainly weaker than the typical IDLES far (“Beat you slow like your padre/Got you running like a jailbreak”), but when “Rabbit Run” hits the spot, it feels like the perfect score for high-octane chase scene, and a worthy display of Talbot’s vocal range.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Fortuna – Kristyn Merbeth – “Make way for collateral damage when I’m bored/Pick the scab on the arm of the beast til it’s ravaged when I’m bored/Oh so many things to do or not do when I’m bored…”

“Third Uncle” – Brian Eno

Today on “Madeline won’t shut the fuck up about Brian Eno,” we’re going back to the glammier days of the early ’70s. But in the case of this song, “glammier” feels like a misnomer, even though it’s placed both directly in the heyday of glam rock and Eno’s own heyday of his brand of glam rock. If it’s glam, it’s the zenith of uptight glam—it has the texture of touching guitar strings that are one wrong move away from snapping in half. It’s been wound up so severely that for all of nearly five minutes, it remains in the liminal space milliseconds before the tension breaks. With a thrumming bassline from Brian Turrington being the most freeform part of the song, every other part of “Third Uncle” is the music equivalent of squishing as many objects as possible into a box that will barely fit all of them—everything’s under the lid, but the seams are bulging. In the right mood, it’s energizing, and in the wrong mood, it’s borderline anxiety-inducing. To me, though, that’s proof that Eno’s rock experiment worked exactly as he calculated it: it’s an exercise in tension without release, only hints of freedom once the guitar swerves in one direction or the other. Even Eno’s nonsensical lyrics—a laundry list of items, some of which are burned—are uttered with the urgency of someone passing a secret code along through a burner phone.

Through this song, it’s easy to see just how much Eno’s influence spread. We mostly hear of Eno’s pioneering influence in the fields of glam rock, post-punk, and ambient music, but “Third Uncle” practically had a shockwave effect when it came to the early goth bands of the ’80s, starting in earnest after Bauhaus covered the track in 1982. It feels looser and less claustrophobic than the original, but it contains all of the trademark roughness around the edges carried over from Eno and into the grimier catacombs of what had just become goth. They achieve a balance of being hurriedly frantic (weirdly, I can hear the urgency of “It’s The End of the World As We Know It [And I Feel Fine]” in Peter Murphy’s vocal delivery) and yet mistier than looser than their forefather (or fore-uncle?), resulting in a rare cover that reinterprets the original way that somehow feels true to its original spirit.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The People Who Report More Stress – Alejandro Varela – a series of interconnected stories who are as tightly-wound as the instrumentals of this song.

“mangetout” – Wet Leg

“mangetout” starts at about 3:59 in this video, but the whole Tiny Desk Concert is worth a watch!

I’m late to writing about moisturizer in whole by about a month; for me, it’s not making my hypothetical 2025 best-of list, but god, it’s such a fun album! Wet Leg have gotten even more energetic with their sound, never quite pushing the boundaries of their previous musical landscape outwards all the way, but introducing enough novelty to it that it feels fresh. It’s a perfect summer album with its glistening production and shouted lyrics. And honestly, anyone who shoves Oasis out of the #1 spot on the charts has an immediate seal of approval from me. Somebody had to humble those clowns.

Even though I’d already had a preview of “mangetout” from their Tiny Desk Concert, released days before moisturizer came out, for me, it represents the melding of where Wet Leg once was and where they are today. The lyrics could’ve come straight out of their self-titled debut, and though, admittedly, they’ve written this song in some variation at least four times, they always manage to keep it fun, whether it’s with the gleefully shouted end of the song that snaps away just before devolving into chaos, or the blatantly obvious but still hilariously random inclusive of the name “Trevor” just to rhyme with “clever.” (It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.) Of course, I know maybe…ten words tops in French, so I fully just thought they’d mashed together “man get out” into a single word, but as one of the comments says on this Tiny Desk, “there was always going to be someone to be first on the moon, and there was always going to be someone to be first to realize that the French word for sugar peas was spelled ‘man, get out.'” If anyone was to be trusted to deliver this knowledge accordingly, it’s Wet Leg.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Not My Problem – Ciara Smyth – “You think I’m pretty cruel/You say I scare you?/I know, most people do/This is the real world, honey…”

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

Sunday Songs: 7/20/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: I get more heated than I ever expected to be about Edvard Grieg, my middle school sad bastard music comes out of its cave, and, uh…what’s that? LOVE SHACK, BABY! More at 6.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 7/20/25

“Love Shack” – The B-52’s

This one came late because of, once again, my insistence on sticking to these (loose) color palettes. But god, I was having a blast listening to this on repeat during Pride Month. I couldn’t go to any pride parades or anything because of a) preexisting plans and b) it was, quite literally, as hot as an oven. But the amount of times I listened to “Love Shack” honestly made up for it.

Sure, this isn’t nearly as weird as some of The B-52s’ other songs—in fact, it’s probably their most accessible song—but it really is fitting as one of their signature songs. The pop joy isn’t just a product of them being upbeat for airplay—it really was a triumphant moment for them, their comeback after tragedy struck the band in 1985 after the death of Ricky Wilson from AIDS-related complications. It was them coming back from the brink and declaring that in spite of tragedy, they would stick to their mission of bringing gleefully weird pop music to the world. It’s a catchy pop song, sure, but it was also a commitment to celebrate togetherness in spite of the greatest hardship a band could possibly endure. And for a song that’s mainly just remembered as the product of a particularly weird party band, that’s such a beautiful legacy to leave. But beyond that…oh my god, it’s just so camp. It’s just so fun! How can you not grin constantly when you hear this song? Fred Schneider’s just being Fred Schneider, Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson are producing some of the best harmonies in pop music, and the whole “bang, bang, bang, on the door, baby” bridge? Who ISN’T shivering with antici……..pation at that? (And yes, that is RuPaul right there at 2:03 in the music video, as if this song couldn’t get any queerer.) I’m tempted to dismiss my instincts to get all women and gender studies with it about “Love Shack,” but if this isn’t queer joy—coming together in the face of a widespread tragedy that affected the LGBTQ+ community so fundamentally—then what is? LOVE SHACK, BABY!

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Like a Love Story – Abdi Nazemian – The B-52’s aren’t the focus of this book (Madonna is, though), but this novel is set in 1989—the same year “Love Shack” was released—and centers around similar themes of queer identity and togetherness in the face of tragedy.

“Cupid” (Sam Cooke cover) – Jim Noir

While we all wait for Jimmy’s Show 2 to come out, Jim Noir has released an EP of covers, available on his Patreon! (It also includes a mashup of Pink Floyd’s “Breathe” and Super Furry Animals’ “Northern Lites,” which is pretty amazing.) He posted this cover of Sam Cooke’s “Cupid” several months before hand, and I lamented that he hadn’t made it available for release, because unexpectedly, it was perfectly suited for him. Jim Noir’s music is full of ’60s influences, but until now, I mostly thought it was reserved for bands like The Beatles or the Beach Boys, which more readily come through in his sunnier, twinklier melodies. I should’ve known how easily that would translate to another part of the ’60s—Sam Cooke’s classic love song. It’s hard to touch any of his songs for me, not necessarily because they hold a particularly special place in my heart, but because they’re so ubiquitously him—Cooke’s songs have a quality about them that make them feel fully-formed, able to be made by nobody but him. The key to Jim Noir’s success with the cover is that he doesn’t overdo it—he’s just Jim Noir, not Sam Cooke. It’s an understated cover, but that quality makes it more intimate and calming to me—there’s a soothing quality about it, from his harmonies to the soft background strings. That’s what makes it such a genius cover—Jim’s not being anyone but him, but staying true to the spirit of the original.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Last Night at the Telegraph Club – Malinda Lo – I’m a few years off as far as the dates go, but give it a few years, and this would fit right in with the more tender, quiet moments of this novel.

“In The Hall of the Mountain King” (Edvard Grieg cover) – Erasure

I had no idea that this existed until a few days ago, and y’know what? It’s an absolutely wild pairing as far as covers go, but trust me, it sounds exactly how you’d picture it sounding. It’s just “In The Hall of the Mountain King” done entirely with synths. I do enjoy it, but I feel like it betrays the original song in a key way. The thing that most people remember about “In The Hall of the Mountain King” is that point (you know the one) where it goes absolutely, truly, off-the-wall bonkers, like they crammed chaos incarnate into whatever concert hall it was performed in. It’s about the gradual buildup!! The payoff!! It feels like a whole pack of firecrackers going off and ricocheting off the walls!! And Erasure…barely sped up the tempo? Which is a crazy move to pull when covering this…like, how does one cover “In The Hall of the Mountain King” and not go fucking nuts with it? You do you, Erasure, I guess, but…man, you already pulled the move of putting an Edvard Grieg cover as a bonus track, might as well go crazy with it!!

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Stars Undying – Emery Robin – …kinda hard to recommend a book to pair with a synth cover of classical music, but, uh…how about a sci-fi retelling based on the stories of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar? Will that suffice? Help me out here…

“Freakin’ Out” – Graham Coxon

So here’s what Graham Coxon was doing all that time when Blur was making Think Tank, which was…doing exactly what was barely on Think Tank: guitar freakouts (no pun intended). While his former bandmates were reveling in some of the more experimental sides of their musical taste and abilities, Coxon was sticking to what he loved and did best. Part of why I got so attached to Blur was his propulsive guitar playing, whether it was his bright, chugging melodies on Parklife or the darker, grungier sounds of their self-titled album or 13. “Freakin’ Out” isn’t his lyrically strongest song, but it’s got this driving, punk-inspired beat that never lets you go. Of course, in true Graham Coxon, he’s in a suit and glasses while playing all this—Weezer who? If there’s anything that Graham Coxon has committed to in the last few decades, after spending time with Blur during the height of Britpop and being pressured to conform to pop music standards, it’s being nothing but himself. We’re all better for him being a quiet, introspective person playing loud, upfront music.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Light Years from Home – Mike Chen – “Nothing to be, nothing to fear/Nothing to prove, nothing to say/Nothing to lose, nothing to gain/Nothing to feel, nothing to hate/Nothing is real, it’s all too late…”

“Happy News for Sadness” – Car Seat Headrest

The Car Seat Headrest I saw when I was 14 was a very different Car Seat Headrest than the one I saw last week. At one point in the show, Will Toledo opened up about how he didn’t like playing some of his older material, particularly that from Teens of Denial, because he was, as he said, “an angry young man of 23.” It struck me as so humble that he’s willing to admit that he’d moved on from that anger and strife and that he was committed to being in a stabler, happier place in his life. Teens of Denial remains one of my favorite albums of all time, an album that was at my side at my most lost and confused moments when I was a young teenager. Sure, I would’ve loved to hear “Cosmic Hero” (if not just to replace my video from 2018 where my off-key screeching drowned out the actual song) or something, but I’m happy that Will Toledo’s happy. And all of this was the preface for “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales,” which he played to a crowd that knew all the words. Myself included. It was one of those nights where I could feel my younger self peering out from my chest, wiping the smudge away from her glasses, and dancing. I felt her dancing with me. I danced as hard as I could that night. It’s one of those times where a concert has felt, more than anything, like a warm hug, a reassurance across time to that little girl that she would be okay.

Car Seat Headrest has a notoriously rabid fanbase, small but mighty, the kind of people who’d unironically go up to you and say something like “Oh, you haven’t listened to the absolutely crusty-sounding old recordings he put out on Bandcamp and labeled ‘just awful shit?’ Fuckin’ poser!” And…yeah, with the kind of discography that Will Toledo has, it does lend itself to the kind of Charlie Kelly conspiracy theory board types. But the other side of that coin is that you get people who will ardently do the wave to a song that’s only available on Patreon. And that’s what made the show so riotously fun—the fervor of the fans for songs old and new, whether it was the stirring intro of “CCF (I’m Gonna Stay With You)” or the extended medley of older songs. (I’ll admit to being awakened like a sleeper agent when they started playing “Something Soon.”)

“Happy News for Sadness” was one of the excerpts from medley of older songs that they did for the encore, one that somehow escaped my unending curiosity when I was in middle school. I’d already found “No Passion” and “Sunburned Shirts,” so who knows how this slipped through my fingers. I feel like it might’ve been for the best, because I have a feeling that earsplitting, lower-than-lo-fi “BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEARGH” at 1:52 would’ve killed my headphones. “Happy News For Sadness” is as clear a glimpse into the sadder, angrier young man that defined much of Will Toledo’s career—the central chorus of “You can never tell the truth/But you can tell something that sounds like it” speaks to a lingering depression that’s been ever-present throughout his catalogue. Meandering through malaise and expired food doesn’t seem like something Toledo would revisit, given the speech he gave about Teens of Denial, but the fact that he’s able to reconcile with different eras of his own art in different ways feels like a mode of communication with the past. His songwriting was his way of telling the truth, and that truth resonated with so many people. To bridge that connection, to be able to look back and sing altered versions of the same song, is likely his way of making peace with it. Healing that younger part of yourself is different with each angle you tackle it from, but committing to that seems to be Toledo’s ongoing mission. I’m just lucky to be able to heal along with him and alongside hundreds of people.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Bad Ones – Melissa Albert – “Nobody cares about/(But I’m still ugly on the inside)/Your life and the people in it/(But I’m still ugly on the inside)/So you can stop telling me it gets better…”

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: 6/15/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles, and more importantly, Happy Father’s Day!! I always end up writing one of these posts on Father’s Day, what with it landing on a Sunday and all, but it’s fitting, given that my amazing dad is the one who not only is responsible for a lot of my music taste, but was also the one to encourage me to write these posts and wanted to hear my thoughts. So thank you to him, for all of the gifts he’s given to me, and to my family. I love you. 🩵

This week: before I go radio silent for a week for a road trip, how about a random kick in the pants from 2019? Plus, new Cate Le Bon, old(ish) Shins, and others.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 6/15/25

“Jellybones” – The Unicorns

Chances are, given my proclivities for Car Seat Headrest and other like lo-fi, awkward white boys, I probably would’ve stumbled upon The Unicorns eventually. It was an inevitability. Either way, I was introduced to it via Black Country, New Road’s episode of What’s In My Bag?, and I can’t call it much else other than a delight in the many times that I’ve listened to it since. “Jellybones” is a whimsical title as it is, but the rest of the song stays true to that silliness, complete with bone-related puns (“Drove up in my bone-ca-marrow,” ba-dum tsss); the entire song revolves around jellybones (an obscure sort of expression for nervousness) being a genuine malady worthy of going to the hospital and getting limbs amputated for. Everything has a juddering, garagey sound to it, from the engine-like startup to the guitars to the keyboards, which the intro warps into the sounds I feel like I’d hear aboard a clunky, malfunctioning spaceship on the cover of a ’50’s pulp magazine. 2:43 feels simultaneously too short and the perfect length for “Jellybones”—I need more, and yet this song could only ever be a sputtering little firecracker, spurting out sparks and then gently slipping out of existence.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Madman Comics Yearbook ’95 – Mike Allred – Jellybones definitely seems like it could be a genuine illness in the Madman universe. (Least wacky Dr. Boiffard subplot, maybe?) Either way, the lyrics definitely fit with the kind of silliness in these comics.

“Heaven Is No Feeling” – Cate Le Bon

Getting the one-two punch (positive) of new Big Thief (to be discussed) and Cate Le Bon on the same day was almost too much…and just when I thought that we were finished with all of my most anticipated albums of the year! Cate Le Bon’s new album, Michelangelo Dying, comes out this September, and suffice to say, if it’s anything like this song, I’m all ears.

Taking cues from the synth-heavy sound of Pompeii, “Heaven Is No Feeling” opens with an intro too good for a track that’s right in the middle of the album: a murmur of “What does she want?” before launching into a flurry of rippling, watery synths and guitars slathered in enough effects to make them camouflage with the synths. In line with her very ’80s sound, there’s plenty of saxophone, but not enough that it overpowers any of the rest of the song. Gently groovy and keenly observational, Le Bon takes the position of a wallflower: there is a kind of emotional distance to it as she watches the subjects as they move like pawns across a chessboard: “I see you watch yourself/Walk the room/Stroking the air/Like this paint won’t dry.” As she observes the distant fallout of a failed love, the song feels like she’s watching someone through security camera footage, pretending to be distanced when she hasn’t fully gotten over the wreckage—much like the music video, where a buzzcutted Le Bon watches herself on an old TV. Every repetition of “I see you watch me” feels like a degree of separation from the body and from her feelings (surely that’ll end well…), and “heaven is no feeling” becomes a kind of blissful removal from one’s own emotions.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Infinity Particle – Wendy Xu – “I see you watch me watch you/Watch me move away/You occupy the space/Like a ribbon untied…”

“Chasing Shadows” – Santigold

Santigold, man. Nobody’s doing it like her. I often think of 99 Cents as being one of the only happy albums of 2016, but next to Blackstar, A Moon-Shaped Pool, and Teens of Denial, anything looks happy. But what makes me keep coming back to songs from 99 Cents is how she used the veneer of happy, bubblegum pop songs to further her message—they remain peppy pop songs, but they’re all armed with critiques about consumerism and the music industry. Santigold has often talked about her negative experiences in the music industry, whether it’s how unaccommodating the industry is to mothers, especially where touring is concerned, or how her music did not qualify to some critics as “Black music.” Despite how candid she’s been about the physical and mental toll it’s taken on her, Santigold has only used that to become even more herself than ever. Her last album, Spirituals, went fully into Afrofuturism and current politics, and she’s expanded her creativity into a podcast, Noble Champions, where she brings guests to talk about everything from said nebulous category of “Black music” to social media addiction. (From the episodes I’ve intermittently listened to, she’s also had a whole host of amazing guests, including Yasiin Bey, Questlove, Tunde Adebimpe, Mary Annaïse Heglar, and so many more. The only problem is that there’s not more Santigold, frankly.) I saw her perform live last August, and it’s one of the only concerts I can think of where a singer has been truly kind and candid with her audience; decades in the industry didn’t stop her from signing people’s records in between songs.

Like the album cover, where Santigold is shrink-wrapped and slapped with a price tag along with all manner of plastic junk, “Chasing Shadows” reckons with the human toll of commodifying artists. Contrary to Pitchfork’s assessment that the song “basically plods along inoffensively until it ends” (I’m sorry, the fuck?), it’s one of the more steadfast songs on the album, still fast-paced but providing a cooldown between some of the more in-your-face pop songs. Rostam Batmanglij (formerly of Vampire Weekend) produced the track, and knowing that, I can hear him all over the beat—I say this affectionately, but it’s the most 2016 pairing ever. I love it. Through rapidly-uttered lyrics, Santigold reflects on how quickly the industry moves on so quickly from artists once they’re out of fashion, summarized by one of the finals the second verse: “Why they eating they idols up now/Why they eating they idols up, dammit?” Reflecting on seemingly being left behind, her solution, as always, is to defy the standard, continuing to do what she’s doing. The video mirrors this back: she asserts herself in multiple places inside various houses: at the head of a table at a decadent Christmas feast, standing upright and fully clothed in a bathtub, and towering over a child-sized table with a child-sized tea set. No matter the location, she stands firm, defiantly staring the camera, returning the gaze—of the music industry who tried to put her in a box, to racist and misogynist detractors, or to anyone who has ever doubted her. No matter what, she’s looking directly at you, as though to cement her irreplaceable space of individuality that she’s created for herself.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Victories Greater Than Death – Charlie Jane Anders – “One thing about time, it waits for nobody, you told me, isn’t that what they say/Been batting ‘gainst it and getting nowhere, just racin’ got nothing to say to nobody…”

“Cut Your Bangs” (Radiator Hospital cover) – girlpool

What in the 2019 did my shuffle just pull? I hadn’t even thought of this song in years, and boom, suddenly I’m back in high school art class, diligently obeying the “only one earbud in if you want to listen to music” rule while drawing X-Men fanart because I blew through whatever I was actually assigned. God.

High school…and my first introduction to girlpool through Apple Music. Sure, I’m fully on board with the fact that streaming has harmed musicians more than it has helped them, but for a lot of people, myself included, it opened the floodgates for discovering so many musicians back when I was in high school. girlpool was one of the big ones, prominently soundtracking my sophomore year of high school, from their earlier work on Before the World Was Big (which turns 10 this year, Jesus) to their more current (at the time) What Chaos is Imaginary. Almost six years after I discovered them, girlpool since released one final (disappointing) album, Forgiveness, broken up shortly after, and then…Avery Tucker’s come back with a good solo single, but Harmony Tividad seems to have pulled a Gwen Stefani and now makes pop songs with the most chronically online lyrics you’ve ever heard. How the times have changed. But good for her, I guess? You do you…

Even though girlpool had moved past this inception of their music by the time I got into them, they fit too perfectly into the sad, acoustic indie that comprised most of my music taste, and still kinda does today. “Cut Your Bangs” is a cover, but to this day, it remains one of the best parts of this inception of girlpool. In contrast to the faster, more rock sound of the original by Radiator Hospital, girlpool take the chorus’ ending of “the small stuff” literally, slowing it to a crawl in order to wring the most out of the quietly introspective lyrics. I remember not liking the original when I first heard it, and on reflection, I don’t hate it, but I still think it’s a situation where girlpool knew exactly what to do with it. All of the lyrics need a gentler space to breathe, and the twin harmonies of Tividad and Tucker make them stand out. To this day, the way their voices know exactly which lyrics need a plaintive murmur and which ones need a higher-pitched belt feels almost telepathic—at their best, what made girlpool so successful is that they had such an instantaneous communication that allowed them to switch from gentle to jagged in the blink of an eye, but never once lose their synchronicity.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Some Girls Do – Jennifer Dugan – “You say you’ll cut your bangs, I’m calling your bluff/When you lie to me, it’s in the small stuff…”

“Young Pilgrims” – The Shins

James Mercer just has such a unique way with words. As music history (and my personal music library) proves, there’s practically a million ways to say a sentiment along the lines of “I’m dissatisfied with my life and it’s cold and wet outside and I’m also depressed.” Mercer saw that and gave us these iconic lines:

“A cold and wet November dawn/And there are no barking sparrows/Just emptiness to dwell upon/I fell into a winter slide/And ended up the kind of kid who goes down chutes too narrow…” HE SAID THE LINE! GUYS, HE SAID THE LINE! CHUTES TOO NARROW!

Said barking sparrows came back to me completely at random, in the way that especially sharp lyrics or melodies do. Although Mercer’s narrator envies the “eloquent young pilgrims” passing by him, I struggle to find words other than eloquent to describe how he articulates such a near-universal feeling, a mess of regret and stagnation and the emptiness that comes with control slipping through your fingers and wanting to regain it. In a simple duet of acoustic and electric guitars, Mercer wrings some absolute poetry out of such a stagnant state, drawing every possible image from ice melting on a train window and the desire to “grab the yoke from the pilot and just/fly the whole mess into the sea.” I love a good literary-minded songwriter, which I guess it’s no surprise that I latched onto The Shins from such a young age. But with age, I appreciate the lyrics even more—James Mercer is one of those songwriters who prove that, at its best, music is eloquent poetry set to music. It doesn’t need to be (and rarely is), but when it hits that spot, I can’t help but relish it.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Hammajang Luck – Makana Yamamoto – “But I learned fast how to keep my head up, ’cause I/Know there is this side of me that/Wants to grab the yoke from the pilot, and just/Fly the whole mess into the sea…”

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: 3/23/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

Since I haven’t been able to post in a few weeks, here are the Sunday Songs graphics from that time:

3/9/25:

3/16/25 (or, NEW CAR SEAT HEADREST IN MAY, WE ARE SO BACK):

This week: you thought this would be a quick post after I haven’t been able to write regularly for two weeks? WOE, TEN MINUTE SONG BE UPON YE!

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 3/23/25

“Love” – Hana Vu

One of the best surprises a concert can have in store is a good opener. There are infinite jokes about bad openers, half of which…well, might be dogging on perfectly fine artists trying to get their foot in the door, and half of them are true. I really do try to at least go into openers with an open (no pun intended) mind, because everybody has to start somewhere, no matter how big of an artist they’re opening for. But sometimes it’s just up to your taste. Even with some cringy performances, you can at least tell that they’re trying.

I saw Soccer Mommy about two weeks ago (stellar performance!!!! as always!! and the crowd had basic human decency this time, unlike the parasitic frat bros that populated her crowd last time) with Hana Vu as the opener. I kept my expectations low. I expected to just nod along and twiddle my thumbs, but I think I may have found an excellent artist! She came off quite shy, mumbling to the audience and asking us what we had for dinner, but once she started performing, it was clear that Soccer Mommy had a worthy match to her sound. However, if I had to compare Vu to anyone, it would be to Lucy Dacus—they have a similar brand of indie rock, both bearing warm, rich vocals and guitar-driven angst with no shortage of heart. Nothing can come close to “Night Shift,” but Vu clearly studied how that song goes supernova at the end. The closer to her most recent album, Romanticism, “Love,” like Vu’s performance before Soccer Mommy, starts out unassumingly, but quickly becomes a dramatic landslide aided with thundering drumbeats, strings, and Hana Vu bellowing as though into a cavern. The lyrics, as sparse as they are, come sung clutching a bleeding heart in both hands, staining everything within arm’s reach. It truly lives up to the drama of the album cover, with Vu draped in robes and with a sword pressed to her neck, modeled after Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Judith Slaying Holofernes.” Either way, Hana Vu has earned a tally in favor of the good opening bands I’ve seen—and a place in my more regular rotation of artists. A big thank you to Soccer Mommy for giving a platform to Vu’s talent, and thank you to Vu for the fantastic opening act!

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

To a Darker Shore – Leanne Schwartz – “I just want you to stay/You know I hate giving up/And oh, Well I guess it’s just me/Please don’t leave me alone/You know I can’t let you be…”

“Bad Timing” – Jim O’Rourke

Once my dad sent me this song, it was immediately relegated to my quiet instrumental study playlist. I shouldn’t say “relegated,” really. It’s a great song to peacefully study along with, but it keeps you on your toes. Ten minutes long and dense doesn’t make it sound appealing, but “Bad Timing” sounds like how those slow motion videos of flowers unfurling after the frost melts from their buds look. “Bad Timing” also proves my long song theory right with flying colors—the best ones have enough changes to keep you interested for ten minutes. This track in particular feels like two songs in one. The first is a homely, acoustic ditty, which peacefully bows out at the 2:50 mark, giving way to a chorus of plucked strings and, of all instruments that should sound shimmery, an accordion would be my last guess. Yet Jim O’Rourke pulls it off, making it shudder and glimmer along with the synths. You’re lured into a soft, ambient sense of security, but like rot climbing up the roots of a plant, O’Rourke tears away at the music, fiber by fiber, until the remnants are ablaze in distortion and ascending mayhem by the time you reach the eight and a half minute mark. It’s clear to me the magic O’Rourke made with producing almost all of Wilco’s albums—he has such a talent for taking a simple melody, stretching it out and contorting it as easily as a chef kneads dough. He put something entirely unassuming into the oven, and something wholly unexpected came out the other side once the experimental yeast rose.

On another note: I can’t for the life of me find who made the album art for Bad Timing, but it’s just so charming to me.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Annihilation – Jeff Vandermeer – everything becomes slowly, gradually unrecognizable and strange, just like the progression of “Bad Timing”

“Ends Meet” – Panda Bear

Brian Wilson is alive and well, but what I’ve listened to of Sinister Grift feels like a glimpse into an alternate universe where Brian Wilson got temporally airlifted from the ’60s into the 2020s and had to find his way around. That, and if he’d been given nothing but a knapsack full of various synths and electronic knickknacks to carry with him on his time-out-of-time journey. “Ends Meet” is the definition of psychedelic, constantly fading in and out of focus like ripples over sunlit water. Noah Lennox’s voice also feels piped in from beneath the shallows of a reef—released this February as it was, everything I’ve heard of Panda has been carefully crafted to be specifically summery and aquatic, at least in sound (see: “Comfy in Nautica,” “Ferry Lady”*).

The existential lyricism feels at odds with the music at first glance: Lennox is confronting what we all have to confront at some point in our lives: we’re all gonna die, so what else is there to do? His answer is as simple and as difficult as any: appreciate everything in it, bad and good: “And when it is my time/Dig it all.” It’s a lesson I’ve been chipping away at for the better part of last year, what with my difficulty in staying present and not projecting myself into possible futures (not the time traveling Brian Wilson ones, unfortunately), but the way that Panda Bear takes it musically seems different than most. Sonically, “Ends Meets” feels so daydreamy and almost dissociative—its head isn’t in the clouds, it practically is the clouds. Even the face on the album cover of Sinister Grift looks like their mind is somewhere else entirely. But that in and of itself is putting that sentiment of being un-anchored into music and into words. It’s a jarring pairing in concept, tackling this subject matter with such an acid-tinged, vacation-like musical landscape, but to me, it’s the feeling of letting go of that burden, of knowing that all you can do in life is appreciate every facet of it.

*the “Ferry Lady” music video is about as trippy as you’d expect, so if you’re sensitive to flashing images or eye strain, you’ve been warned.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Library of the Unwritten – A.J. Hackwith – “They got a spot to bury you/It’s not news, you’re tremblin’ for what?/Just keep it in the groovе (Don’t let up)/But keep the doorways shut…”

“La Vie en Rose” (Édith Piaf cover) – Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra

I was never much of a Disney kid, but Wall-E, one of the first movies I saw in theaters as a kid, will always unlock a particularly special place in my heart. Star Wars was my true introduction to sci-fi, but the more I think about it, Wall-E was right up there in conditioning me to fall headfirst into the genre. Even now, in my twenties and watching Wall-E for a grade to analyze the gender dynamics for a class on Disney and gender…it broke me. I knew it would. Sure, Mark Fisher cites it by name in Capitalist Realism when he talks about how Hollywood has subsumed anti-capitalist resistance and yada yada yada, but…god, how could even the most shriveled soul not be moved by an almost newborn race of humankind returning to the same earth, babies treading over barren ground as the giddy captain gleefully lists off all the plants that can be grown in it? And you’re already crying? And then they hit you with “Down to Earth?” Diabolical.

Part of my class’s discussion on the gender dynamics of Wall-E, beyond how we’re socialized to see Wall-E and Eve as boy and girl even though they’re…intelligent machines with no gender to speak of, was how the viewer is socialized to show their relationship as romantic (and traditionally heterosexual) from the markedly older, “classic” media surrounding them. Notable songs and clips from Hello, Dolly! do the heavy lifting there, but in the barest sense, Louis Armstrong’s cover of “La Vie En Rose,” one of the more ubiquitously recognized love songs of this century, which plays when Wall-E first becomes romantically interested in Eve, adds to this effect. And while I see the argument, as women and gender studies/queer theory-pilled as I am, I really don’t think Wall-E is nearly as guilty as a whole cadre of other Disney movies who have improperly shaped particularly women and young girls’ views on how gender and romance should be. For me, “La Vie En Rose” feels as pure as Wall-E and Eve, in all of their innocent, nonsexual romance. Even as a little kid, only knowing Louis Armstrong from “What A Wonderful World” (and thinking that Grover from Sesame Street was behind the vocals), something about those piano flourishes unfurled a kind of petal inside of me. It’s one of the first examples I can name of a melody really scratching an itch in my brain. I’m next to illiterate when it comes to jazz, but Armstrong was clearly one of those rare people who could give his trumpet such an individual voice—by the end of the song, you could call it just as much of a vocalist as he is. Paired with the cinematography of Wall-E’s tire treads tracing neat lines in the trash-laden dirt, something about it felt so neat, so meant to be, a puzzle piece shifting into place. Both of them are clean, and yet not sanitized—they’re sweet, earnest, pure. A part of childhood me is warmed every time I hear this song, obviously, but even outside of that context, the soothing spell of this rendition is undeniable. As is Wall-E.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Cybernetic Tea Shop – Meredith Katz – Louis Armstrong’s take on “La Vie En Rose” is obvious coffee/tea shop music, but combined with my Wall-E association, why not return to this cozy, tender tea shop in a distant future?

“Here Comes Your Man” – Pixies

The music video for “Here Comes Your Man” has to be one of the more uncomfortable music video experiences I can think of, not because of any particular content, but more because you get the overwhelming feeling that nobody wants to be there. Every time they pan to Frank Black or Kim Deal (or Joey Santiago, honestly), they look like they’re trying to telepathically kill the cameramen, Professor X style. They don’t want to be there, the camera crew doesn’t want to be there, and they don’t want you there either…oh, my bad, sorry for the intrusion. I’ll see myself out. For good reason, though—they were averse to making music videos, and when their label pressured them to do so, they famously decided to stick it to the man and gape their mouths open like fish while the lyrics were playing. Given…well, everything I’ve heard about Frank Black, it could easily just be them being petty, but for an underground band who were achieving success they didn’t seem to want, it’s understandable.

I always feel a kind of odd shame when I like That One Song/Album That Got Popular with a certain band that the band openly hates with a passion. If I’d had the time to write a post last week, I would’ve said the same thing for Julian Cope and “Someone Like Me”—My Nation Underground is one of his poppier albums, and one that he wasn’t satisfied with. (See also: “Me Myself & I,” a song I love, but that De La Soul inserts “we hate this song” into live performances of the lyrics…yeah, you get the picture.) For Pixies, they weren’t satisfied with this pop song to the point where they almost never performed it live. But…it’s so good. Sure, it’s simpler and more accessible than some of their work, but they knew how to make one of the most iconic alternative pop songs. Most alternative rock fans would probably be able to recognize that bassline immediately, all thanks to the timeless talent of Kim Deal. There’s layers to the genius of it—the harmonies of Deal and Black, the vague, surrealist lyrics about homeless people boarding a train before an earthquake, the faint comfort and hope in spite of that. The chorus of “here comes your man” was a last minute addition, but it’s always given a kind of solace for me, ever since I was a kid, before I understood the lyrics of the verse. Even with the bleak nature of the verse, it’s always implied a kind of salvation or relief to me. Bottom line: sometimes, even if That Song got popular, it’s obviously popular for a reason, but how talented a band’s craft is can often shine through in the charts.

Sometimes. We don’t talk about “Creep.”

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come – Jen St. Jude – a similar kind of disaster-oriented scenario to the song, of people scrambling to safety in the wake of a planet-destroying asteroid.

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: 1/12/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: in which being a DC comics fan and a fan of British alt-rock goes awry.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 1/12/25

“Can’t Help Falling in Love” (Elvis Presley cover) – Lick the Tins

Imagine going so hard on an Elvis cover that you have to add not one, not two, but THREE Irish polkas at the end just so that it reaches the three-minute mark…I don’t find myself saying this often, but that pennywhistle kinda goes crazy.

“Can’t Help Falling In Love” has been covered hundreds upon hundreds of times—it’s so simple and iconic that it’s an obvious go-to for anyone to wring some emotion from the audience. (Whether or not they’re always successful is debatable. At worst, it can be the easy way out.) I can’t definitively find just how many times it’s been covered since Presley’s original release, but it’s got a slew of big names parading behind it: Kacey Musgraves, Beck, Chris Isaak, U2, Erasure, Zayn of One Direction, and Christine McVie isn’t even scratching the surface. (Though this one isn’t technically a cover, Spiritualized’s “Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space,” one of my favorite songs of all time, adds the lyrics to J. Spaceman’s melody. It gets me every time…) And…well, as with any song that’s covered as numerously as this one, even the greats blend together sometimes. Rarely do they stray beyond the lazy, slow-danceable tempo. You can’t do much to a classic…

…unless you’re Lick the Tins. Their take on “Can’t Help Falling in Love” is one of the only takes that makes it sound lively. From the minute the drums kick in, you’re propelled by the spirited energy that the Irish band injected straight into the heart of this song. It’s considerably sped up, but beyond that, they make it so naturally celebratory. Alison Marr and the chorus behind her make every verse feel like a victory lap, a joyous sprint fueled by the essence of that feeling of falling in love. Of course, said speed meant that they had to add said three polkas at the end, all performed with the same Celtic inspiration that fueled the rest of the cover (and their very small body of work), but it makes it feel like the most triumphant of endings: the rickety car is driving into the sunset, the bouquet has been caught, the girl has been got. John Hughes clocked that quickly in his decision to put it at the end of Some Kind of Wonderful—this song couldn’t be any more ’80s rom-com if it tried. But long before I saw that movie, there was always a kind of purity to it—nothing could taint the memory of a song that so embodied the unbridled joy of running through a field, bathed in sunlight.

I haven’t sampled any of the Lick the Tins originals, but this song was released on their first and only album, Blind Man on a Flying Horse. Maybe there is some kind of shame to be only known for an Elvis cover and then disappearing from the face of the earth, but if I had a cover as near-perfect as this one…I dunno. I think I’d be happy.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Flowerheart – Catherine Bakewell – though I didn’t enjoy every aspect of this book, I do feel like this cover would suit the homely, comforting atmosphere that it boasted at its highest points.

“Little Spacey” – Cocteau Twins

It now the dead of Cocteau Twinter. It’s been in the 20-degree range for several days now, and I’ve had several…questionably fruitful sessions of attempting to learn to knit while listening to this album. My expectations were high after how consistently fantastic the albums I’ve listened to before this (Heaven or Las Vegas and Blue Bell Knoll) and how pleasantly “Oomingmak” has lingered with me for six months, but to this day, Elizabeth Fraser and co. have not failed me.

Take out the inspirations from David Attenborough’s The Living Planet: A Portrait of Life on Earth, and it would still be a distinctly winter album. With bass player Simon Raymonde absent for the recording of this album (he was recording for the This Mortal Coil record Filigree & Shadow), the sound is more delicate than a pointed icicle dripping from a rooftop; the album’s lack of a distinct bass gives its the delicacy it needs to feel as atmospherically Antarctic as it does. (A great playlist transition for you: “Lazy Calm,” the opening track, with David Bowie’s “V-2 Schneider”…what, you thought you could escape one of my posts without a mention of David Bowie?) “Little Spacey” in particular has to be one of the iciest songs on the album. Normally, that word has the connotation of being prickly or unfeeling, but in this case, I say icy in the sense of how winter sunlight reflects crystalline colors off of it, or how it begins to melt at the corners once that sunlight comes out, or how snowflakes cling to the toothy tip of an icicle during a snowstorm. Fraser arranges and layers her harmonies in such an otherworldly way that it sounds more like an overhead flock of cooing seabirds than anything human. It has the ice of an Antarctic winter, yet all of the comfort of watching it from a TV screen, in the same way I imagine the band gathering inspiration for the album.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Even the Darkest Stars – Heather Fawcett – frigid, windy, and wintry, but glittering with starlight.

“I Me Mine” – The Beatles

…yeah. It’s not like George Harrison wasn’t also a jerk during the Get Back sessions, but oh my god…being in the studio with the rest of The Beatles for that long would make me write a song about how the world is ruled by ego too. Being around John Lennon does that to a guy…and Paul McCartney bluntly correcting your grammar. Jesus. Without a doubt, it’s a bitter note for The Beatles—”I Me Mine” was the last new material recorded by them, depending on which criteria you’re going off of*—but even through the bitterness, you can of course count on George Harrison to weave something timeless from it. The oscillation from the boat-rocking-on-waves sway of the verses to the urgent clanging of the organ during the chorus seems like an accurate picture of the volatility of these sessions—sometimes, they made progress that would eventually become Let It Be and Abbey Road, but it would whip around into heated arguments (take a wild guess who started most of them) just as easily. Given the more charitable and spiritual person Harrison became as he departed from The Beatles, it’s hard to imagine him throwing any sort of truly mean-spirited shade—but I feel like “I Me Mine” could be argued as a diss track. No names named, but it’s about John and Paul. We know. Or a diss track on the concept of egoism. It’s both.

*there’s a considerable amount of debate over what counts as the last true Beatles song; “I Me Mine” had only 3/4 Beatles present for the recording.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Brightness Between Us (The Darkness Outside Us, #2) – Eliot Schrefer – in the less-far future side of this novel, there’s an awful lot of “I Me Mine” going on in the Cusk household…

“Good Blood Mexico City” – Elbow

Man…I love comics, but any given comic fandom is just so painfully full of contrarians. You’ve got a bunch of dudebros wasting away in basements whining about how none of the comic book movies coming out are actually comic accurate, but then the Superman trailer comes out, and those same people are whining about Guy Gardner and his glorious bowl cut? It’s pure campy comic perfection. IT’S COMIC ACCURATE. It was never about comic accuracy, was it—

Oh? What’s that you say?

…oh. Wrong guy. Wrong Guy. Garvey, not Gardner, I’ll see myself out…great song though, right?

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Aurora’s End (The Aurora Cycle, #3) – Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff – “This is the day for big decisions, you know/Follow your lodestar/Starry eyes, smoky eyes, urgent eyes/This is the surge of the good blood rising/If you’re running, I’m coming…”

“Love’s Ring of Fire” – Anita Carter

If I had a nickel for each time in music history that Johnny Cash became known and adored for a cover, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but in this instance, it’s really not weird that it happened twice. The man was supremely talented—he didn’t just cover said songs, but undeniably elevated them (the other, in this case, being his gut-wrenching rendition of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”). In this case, a fair amount of people know that “Hurt” is a cover. I can’t speak for the rest of you, but it hit me like a sack of bricks when I found out that “Ring of Fire” was a cover. (The one time I’ve actually learned something from YouTube shorts—specifically this one by Tommy Edison.) I was just so accustomed to hearing his version and nothing else; I assumed with his stature that he’d written it just the same.

Turns out that Anita Carter was responsible for the original version, sister of June Carter (who Cash eventually married), who wrote the song along with Merle Kilgore. Carter’s voice is a noteworthy contrast to Cash’s—the way she croons the iconic line “I believed you like a child/oh, but the fire went wild” tickles my brain in that special sort of way that only a handful of songs do—as does the way her high note fades into a sunset sky at the end of every repetition of the chorus. Yet despite, that, it’s rather subdued for a song comparing love to, y’know, a whole ring of fire; to quote my mom upon hearing it, she sounds “emotionally distanced from the ring of fire.” Yikes…but it is awfully slow for the metaphor at hand. It could be a consequence of being able to see clearly after being chucked through said ring of fire and coming out the other side with more than a few burns, but you don’t exactly get that fervor that’s inherent to the metaphor. Johnny Cash, being Johnny Cash, took that sign, sped up the chorus, tweaked some lyrics, and added some mariachi horns after dreaming about a rendition of the song backed by them, as the story goes. To me, it’s two observers’ perspectives on the same phenomenon, but distance is the key: maybe it’s because Cash sung his view directly from said ring of fire that his version became more enduring. Either way, seeing the first evolution behind an enduring country hit was a surprising journey.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Good Luck Girls – Charlotte Nicole Davis – Anita Carter’s specific version wouldn’t be out of place in the Western-inspired setting of this duology.

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: 1/5/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles, and happy near year!

First post and the first Sunday Songs of 2025! No pressure. This week: new verses on new songs, new(ish) takes on old(er) songs, and…oh, god, Eric, please put your shirt back on—

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 1/5/25

“POP POP POP (feat. Danny Brown)” – IDLES

Dread it…run from it…TANGK always arrives. One of the best albums of 2024, hands down. I already talked about “POP POP POP” back in March, but at the end of the year, IDLES added one more flourish to an already excellent track—a guest feature by Danny Brown. Of course, I say that knowing next to nothing about Danny Brown up until this point, but the spin he and IDLES put on one of the most prominent highlights of TANGK is an interesting one—and catchy, too. In places, the beat has been treated like an accordion, stretched out in some areas and compressed in others—the final, spoken-word monologue has been sped up, while the first five seconds are jumpstarted, recreating the static of plugging a guitar amp in. Meanwhile, Brown’s guest verse hurtles at breakneck speed; For me, there are some lines that come across rather corny (“On the surface/Looks like a circus/All these clowns around, pull the curtain”). However, at the very end, Brown’s lyrics align with the ethos of “POP POP POP” in the first place: an assertion of purpose, that purpose being staying true to yourself, spreading love, and being a source of protection for others. The final line sums it up nicely: “Took a couple wrong turns/Don’t know right from left/But found my way to the home that I strayed/And now I say everything is okay.” Can “POP POP POP” ever be improved? I highly doubt it, but I also doubt that this was meant to be an improvement—it’s more the kicking around with a preexisting idea with other collaborators, and in that experimentation, it creates an exciting take on one of the 2024’s best songs.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Forever Is Now – Mariama J. Lockington – “Searching for something you cannot hide/Looked in the wrong place, but should search inside/Relied on things that just let me down
But now I see what its really ’bout…”

“Sugar in the Tank” – Julien Baker & TORRES

Personally, I’ve never quite gotten on board with the queer cowboy aesthetic, but I can respect how queer people have been taking it back. In the first place, I think any kind of cowboy mythos attracts the kind of people who want to forge their own trails and make their own way without the constraints of society, a Venn diagram that seems to attract, strangely enough, both conservative people wanting to go back to “traditional values” and queer people who see an out from heteronormative culture. Growing up in the mountains, my association with much of it came from the former, even in our fairly liberal town (I say fairly liberal because there was the odd confederate flag or “if you’re reading this, you’re in range” sign on someone’s house). But I don’t mind seeing a bedazzled cowboy hat or a boygenius photoshoot out in the desert every now and then. Evidently, I’m too much of a city slicker.

The reclamation of country by queer people has gone in much the same way, and I’ve never been one for country in the first place (same association as above), but what I will give a try 8 or 9 times out of 10 is anything that Julien Baker is involved in. Now here’s an example of queer cowboy/country reclamation done right: nothing better than two lesbians making a song with a title referring to slang for an effeminate man and turning it into something positive and sensual. Musically, there’s twang aplenty, but at least for me, Baker’s talent screams at you like a neon sign—she’s whipped out the banjo once more, and it contrasts with the hazy overdrive that TORRES has applied to her excellent guitar work. The boygenius fan is me is more partial to how Baker’s harmonies fit with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, but it’s clear that she’s well-matched with TORRES, musically and vocally. I’m not 100% on board with the more country direction—it’s more on the alt-country side, but very much country-sounding—but I’ll give it a chance for Baker.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Road to Ruin – Hana Lee – will something close to post-apocalyptic, biker cowboys suffice?

“Man Research (Clapper)” – Gorillaz

I remembered this track after getting into “Bill Murray” a few weeks ago; as wonderful an album as Gorillaz is, I often find myself forgetting about some of the songs sandwiched in the middle; this one has the job of following up “Clint Eastwood,” and with how many tidal waves that classic made in the early 2000’s, any track following that up, like “Bill Murray” and “Feel Good, Inc.,” has an exceedingly hard act to follow. But in much the same way as “Bill Murray” brings down the tempo but keeps the creativity, “Man Research (Clapper)” provides a bridge between some of the more energetic heavy-hitters—“Punk” comes up right after it. Buoyed by a sample from Raymond Scott’s instrumental piece “In The Hall of the Mountain Queen” (delightful, honestly—feels like the title screen music for an ’80s video game and not in a cheesy way), it’s dominated by the rasping repetitions of Damon Albarn pushing his higher vocals to their limits—maybe there’s the excuse for why I forgot about it. A good portion is just him going “yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah,” but that’s the mark of a great musician—sure, he’s just going “yeah yeah yeah” in front of a sample and some record scratches, but I eat it up every time. There’s a smooth cohesion to his craft that makes every separate element seem as though this song is their final form, their ultimate destiny to be brought together.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Chameleon Moon – RoAnna Sylver – I picked this one more for the atmosphere than the lyrics—a similar kind of hazy and raspy energy, but with an undercurrent of vitality.

“The Slide” (Tall Dwarfs cover) – Shayne Carter

Some covers prove that the singer understands some part of the song more than the original creators. Not to front on Chris Knox, incredibly talented and oddball songwriters as he is, but Shayne Carter’s cover gets to the heart of what Knox and co. were going for as far as the tone and the emotion of the lyrics.

Tall Dwarfs aren’t going to be anything but jangly, and their original version of “The Slide” is no exception. It’s got a psychedelic, ’60s sway to it, faintly sunny…and then you get to the lyrics. And then you get the whiplash from hearing those upbeat guitars against the lyrics: “The doctors should kill/She’s terminally ill.” I’m sorry, WHAT? I’m not saying that songs can’t have lyrics that don’t match the mood of their music, but in this case, Shayne Carter’s interpretation does the song more justice. In contrast to Knox’s upbeat instrumentals, Carter employs solemn pianos, muted strums of an acoustic guitar, and an electronic drone that begins to circle around you at the 1:58 mark as you listen like vultures circling carrion. The acoustics sound like they were recorded at 3 a.m. in an abandoned gym with walls covered in mold. That atmosphere captures how disturbing the lyrics are—sparsely told, it recounts the experience of an 80-year-old, terminally ill woman wasting away in an institution. That cold, chilling echo gives the song a much more tangible setting and emotional depth; the spareness of it all makes the setting so much more unforgivable, with its featureless walls and constant chill in the air. That Radiohead-like, droning dread comes about as close as I would imagine to capturing that imprisoned, monotonous feeling of your mind slip away and being powerless to do anything about it, all the while surrounded by nurses who barely want to be there. It’s a tragedy of a song—it was written in the 1990’s, and while I’m sure conditions have somewhat improved for patients, these situations are a reality for so many people, whether or not they have control of their minds. The pen that Chris Knox and co. put to paper was a respectful and sympathetic one, but Shayne Carter deserves so much praise for how much his musical interpretation brought out the original sentiment—and made it even more emotional.

Sadly, it’s a story that partially came true for Chris Knox; he suffered a stroke in 2009, and has had a limited vocabulary ever since. He’s made a handful of public appearances and performances in the last decade or so, but he’s largely off the radar these days. However, “The Slide,” alongside many more of his covers from both his solo work and of Tall Dwarfs, were compiled on Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox in order to initially help his family pay the medical bills. I hoped that he hadn’t accidentally predicted his own fate with “The Slide,” but it seems that his family has been going to great lengths to make sure he’s taken care of. Even amidst the horrors he described, there are bright spots worth celebrating—namely, the love of family and friends during unpredictable situations such as his.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth – Andrew Joseph White – the institutions in this novel are different than the one in the song, but it’s just as oppressive—and deeply haunting and eerie.

“You’re Too Weird” – Fruit Bats

…okay! Going into this, I didn’t expect to be that well-acquainted with Eric Johnson’s chest hair while he stared longingly into my eyes, but here we are? 😀 Don’t think I needed all that…thank you Eric, very cool

Either way, it’s all part of the ’80s-parodying cheese of the music video, complete with mullets, long pearl necklaces, everyone’s hair being artfully blown by an invisible fan, and even a keytar. The best part is that every single band member is fully leaning into the cheese, with every band member hamming it up whenever the camera is on them. If I can erase the strategic view of said chest hair via Johnson’s unbuttoned shirt, “You’re Too Weird” is a great little indie track; Johnson has one of the more distinctive voices in indie music that I can think of, and he takes it to some of its extremes, hitting higher notes than I’d expect even from him. Like the ’80s music and videos that “You’re Too Weird” takes cues from, it’s an endlessly catchy love song, peppered by a tasteful guitar solo and tambourine here and there. I’ll have to bring this back once the weather gets warmer—it’s the perfect song for staring out the car window on a summer evening.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

If You Still Recognize Me – Cynthia So – “They say that I’m not supposed to be in love with you/They say that you’re too weird for me/And you’ll leave eventually/But then I’m the only one who ever believed in you…”

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

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