drains – The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: getting emotional about Björk, queerness in the ’70s, and a delightful little critter living in the sewers somewhere in England.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 6/8/25

“drains” – mary in the junkyard

THEY’RE BACK!! Well, mary in the junkyard haven’t been gone for long, but nonetheless, I’m always excited about whatever new music they’ve got going. In fact, they’ve already had a fruitful year: a great feature on Richard Russell is Temporary, a shoutout on 2D’s Gorillaz G Mix 22, and a spot as one of the opening acts on Wet Leg’s UK and North American tours. I can only hope that their debut album is in the near future, but for now, they finally seem to be on the way to getting the attention they deserve!

“drains” continues the trajectory of their debut EP, this old house, which contained four songs full of ghosts, flies, rot, and angst dug out of the graveyard, living up to the description in their Instagram bio as “angry weepy chaos rock.” This time, the grime and goop they’re examining comes from the sewer; in the great music video, it’s personified as a tiny little clay creature that really does look quite innocent, but ends up wreaking some accidental havoc. With electric guitars that ring in a strangely plaintive way, “drains” stumbles about, written in a frustrated daze as the narrator struggles to put names to feelings—and to how her lover makes her feel. Not good, if the lyrics are any indication, and yet “drains” gets scratchier and more jagged as the truth becomes ever more apparent that they’re trapped in this cycle with them: “But if you bury yourself, I will dig you out again/That’s what lovers do/If you hurt yourself, I will take you under my wing/I’m your lover and I’m loving you.” Culminating in an exorcism of a scream, the chaos of the frustration is finally let loose and given form, like the clay critter clambering through the grime-coated pipes.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

I Am the Ghost in Your House – Mar Romasco-Moore – “But I only came here to feel my body/I am a ghost, where are my bones?/How can you blame me for not being sorry?”

“Oceania” – Björk

Damn…Medúlla has me feeling all kinds of things. It was next in line in my scattered Björk deep-dive and I was highly anticipating it after Björk’s episode about it on Sonic Symbolism. I listened to it while knitting a scarf, and I thought of everything she described about the album, about prehistory and family and sitting around the fire and braids and ropes and weaving…and that hit me while I was knitting, doing the same activities that my ancestors, namely women, have done for thousands of years before me, and, and, and…yeah. Medúlla is very nearly a no-skip album (“Submarine” wasn’t my favorite). It’s one of those albums where you feel a pit opening in your stomach, but it seems to be opening up room for the energy to integrate itself into you. A good Björk album does that to a gal. And so many people think this is her worst album because it’s inaccessible? Sure, maybe her first three albums are more accessible (relatively), but do you really listen to Björk for accessible music?

I kind of agonized over which song I’d pick for this week (because you will be hearing more), but between this, “Who Is It (Carry My Joy on the Left, Carry My Pain on the Right)”, and “Desired Constellation,” this was the winner. Originally composed on pianos before Björk realized the sound she envisioned weren’t possible on pianos, “Oceania” imagines the all-encompassing consciousness of the ocean. Connecting the ocean to the album’s larger theme of motherhood is a no-brainer, because who was the mother of every life-form on the planet? Taking the nurturing spirit to the personal to the universal, Björk embodies an ocean full of love, but namely full of pride: “You have done good for yourselves/Since you left my wet embrace/And crawled ashore.” Despite her all-encompassing knowledge and reach (“You count centuries/I blink my eyes”), she retains an eye on every organism that has emerged from her waters, nurturing all of them and reminding them of where they came from; as the vocals temporarily drop out, she reminds us of the connection we all have: “Your sweat is salty/I am why.” AAAAUGH, excuse me for a moment…sorry, I just get overexcited about the wonder about how everything on Earth is intimately connected and that denying it is the root of pretty much every problem we have today…but what a song. Composed entirely of the human voice, a choir creates a rising chorus that seems to bubble to the surface like the trails made by dolphins as they race through the water. The ethereal clicks and hums compose a melody that really does feel primal, glittering as light dappling across the surface of the sea. Leave it to Björk to get so close to how water feels, in both the calmness of it enveloping your body and the delicate movements of invertebrates as they drift through the waves. I can hear both plankton and megafauna, all cradled in the arms of Mother Oceania.

It is a kind of primal universalism, but it came out of trying to write a song for the 2004 Olympics: they reportedly asked her “to do a kind of ‘Ebony and Ivory’ or ‘We Are the World’ type song…those are smashing tunes and all that, but I thought, ‘Maybe there’s another angle to this.'” And what’s more unifying than how we all come from the ocean? In the end, even technical difficulties couldn’t dull Björk’s stirring performance of Oceania at the 2004 Olympics in Athens:

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Mountain in the Sea – Ray Nayler – unexpected connections between the most intelligent creatures on land and the most intelligent creatures in the sea.

“CPR” – Wet Leg

The last time I talked about Wet Leg, I mentioned that, as much as I like them, they’ve only written about two, three songs tops. I was expecting about the same from “CPR,” and…they delivered. I say this with affection, because I mostly like this song, but they pretty much have every lyrical cliche in the book. Usually, they’ve got at least one little quirk that’s wryly funny against the normalcy of the other lyrics. This one has [checks notes] calling 911—sorry, 999, forgot that I’m in the colonies—because you’re in love. I feel a little mean saying that, but they’ve usually got something more. But for the most part, Wet Leg aren’t necessarily about the lyrics for me. The reason that “CPR” succeeds is all in the delivery—Rhian Teasdale’s sultry spoken word and the growling guitars in the background, mixed with siren-like synths make it worth listening to over and over. There’s a Britpop callback to their whole sound on this song (it feels both ’90s and a bit “St. Charles Square” to me), and listen, if there’s anything I’m always here for, it’s Graham Coxon-sounding guitars. Along with the creeping bassline, “CPR” is a hooky song on its own, but as the opening to moisturizer, I’m interested to see the direction it goes in, a trajectory that Teasdale speak-sings of, propelling herself off a cliff and into the unknown.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Tempest of Tea – Hafsah Faizal – “Try to run/Head for the hills/If you’re a ghost, then oh my God/How can you give me the chills?”

“Two Legs” (Snail Mail Version) – This Is Lorelei

It feels so strange that I’ve only sparingly talked about Snail Mail on these posts since she’s played such a critical part in my musical lineage. I discovered her at the tail end of 8th grade, and through that weird summer before high school where I was questioning my sexuality, I listened to Lush, it became a favorite of mine, and I even met Lindsey Jordan after a show at the tiniest little club. She thought I was in college, somehow…I was 14. I left that show with the guitar pick she’d given me, a desire to pick up the guitar, and a bit more starstruck courage to come out. I followed her on another tour in my sophomore year of college, and caught her touring for Valentine a few years after.

I guess the part she plays in my life now is diminished since she hasn’t done a whole lot album-wise in almost four years. Other than that, though, she has technically done a lot: an EP of Valentine demos, an acting role in I Saw the TV Glow (that I still haven’t seen…oops), a Smashing Pumpkins cover, and a gig singing with Weezer back in 2023. One of the more recent singles she’s done is another cover—this time, a reworked version of This Is Lorelei (the solo project of Nate Amos from Water From Your Eyes)’s “Two Legs.” She’s switched up the key and added a sprinkling of Lush-sounding guitar flourishes. Since her vocal surgery several years ago, Jordan’s seemed to struggle with fitting her older catalogue into a reasonable range for her. But the easygoing tones of “Two Legs,” with its gentle twang and tenderly spoken lyrics are a sweetly comfortable fit for her. I doubt this is indicative of whatever new direction she’s taking, but this reworking was almost made for her.

Gwen & Art Are Not in Love – Lex Croucher – “If you said you wanted two weeks/You know I’d give you nine/And they’d be yours and mine/Ain’t nothing gonna make us cry, we will not cry, love/If it made life easy for you, I would say goodbye/And love, if you said you needed two legs/I’d give you mine…”

“Lola” – The Kinks

I didn’t line this song up for pride month, but I might as well talk about it since it came back to me, in the way that a classic always does.

“Girls will be boys and boys will be girls/It’s a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world/Except for Lola.”

It still blows me away that this was a hit song all the way back in 1970. Of course, it wasn’t without controversy, but to have a band put out something so blatantly queer on the airwaves that long ago never ceases to amaze me. I can only imagine the reaction of some uptight conservatives listening to the radio when “Well I’m not the world’s most masculine man/But I know what I am in the bed, I’m a man/And so was Lola” came on. Pearl-clutching ensues. “Lola” wasn’t the first queer song of its kind, but what stands out to me is that Ray Davies never once makes a joke out of Lola; there’s been some speculation over the years about whether Lola is/was inspired by a drag queen or a transgender woman (Davies later confirmed the latter), but either way, it details the protagonist falling in love with a woman, getting confused about why she “walk[s] like a woman and talk[s] like a man,” and realizing the truth about her identity. Although the protagonist does express a great deal of shock, he doesn’t outright disrespect Lola or make her the butt of a joke—he just accepts that the world is weird and variable, and that it’s fine for Lola to be who she is.

Perhaps it was because The Kinks were a relatively popular, mainstream, and notably heterosexual band that they were able to get a queer message on the air easier than other artists. For me, that doesn’t diminish the effect that “Lola” has and continues to have, given how maligned queer people—especially trans people—were at the time, and continue to be today. They could’ve just as easily made a fool out of Lola, but in this situation, it’s the sheltered, inexperienced protagonist that gets a laugh out of the audience. Lola’s not overly fetishized, either—she’s described as being attractive and sensual, but she’s not an outright sex object. Sure, some of the language is outdated (namely that Lola is still referred to as a “man” even though she’s likely a trans woman), but this is 1970 we’re talking about, of course the language isn’t going to be completely analogous to 2025. None of it comes off maliciously—it was just the language they had to work with at the time, and all of it was just to say that Lola, a trans woman at the margins of society, was deserving of love. Radical concept, eh?

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Last Night at the Telegraph Club – Malinda Lo – not an exact match, but it’s a similar story of queer love against the odds of an oppressive era.

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!

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I’ve had several of Mike Chen’s novels floating around my TBR for quite some time. I’d forgotten that I’d read a short story of his in From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back, and I figured I’d give his novel-length writing a try. Plus, I was just in a sci-fi mood (as I always am). Despite the flaws that dragged down the premise, Light Years from Home was an ambitious novel that blended genres and didn’t shy away from being messy. Whether it successfully cleaned up its messes, however, is up for debate.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Light Years from Home – Mike Chen

15 years ago, the Shao family was thrown into disarray. Jakob, the only son, and their father disappeared. Their father later returned, dazed, disoriented, and convinced that he and Jakob were abducted by aliens. He died soon after.

Jakob has been missing for over a decade now. Sisters Evie and Kass haven’t spoken since the incident, with Evie diving into alien conspiracy theories and Kass throws herself into her work and caring for their aging mother. But when Jakob returns, parroting their late father’s theories about alien abduction, the sisters have no choice to bury the hatchet and reunite. As Jakob’s story grows wilder and the rift between the sisters widens, they must contend with the possibility that all of this may be true—but can Jakob be trusted? And if his story is true, what does it mean for the fate of Earth?

TW/CW: death of a parent, grief, dementia themes, substance abuse (smoking, drinking)

In the acknowledgments, Mike Chen says that this story was initially inspired by “Red” by Belly, and I’m tempted to give it another half a star just because I’ve never heard anyone outside of my immediate family or Pitchfork talk about them. The title also makes me think of The Rolling Stones’ “2000 Light Years from Home,” but that’s a vague enough title that it could be a reference to a lot of things. Although Belly didn’t save every flaw, Light Years from Home is a solid meld of science fiction and realistic fiction.

Light Years from Home has one of the most compelling beginnings of a book that I’ve read recently. You’re thrown right into the action aboard a Seven Bells spaceship in a classic space opera setting. Jakob cradles his alien comrade in his arms as they die, and thus begins his perilous quest back to Earth. But the reader and Jakob are the only people who know about this—the only other character who did (their dad) is notably dead. It would’ve been easy to just have the characters not believe him, but Jakob is already established as an unreliable person—his real life experience sounds suspiciously like an outrageous lie he would’ve told in his college days, which gives the characters both more obstacles to overcome, but more of their messy family dynamic to dissect. In terms of plot, Light Years from Home was a great study in not taking the easy way out—everything was messy and tangled, making for a book that had lots of drama and hurdles to pick apart.

Every single member of the Shao member was on the obnoxious, insufferable side (save for maybe Evie), but Chen did a great job of capturing the complicated family dynamic in the novel. Fifteen years after Jakob’s abduction, the wounds remain raw, and not a single member of the family has recovered from the fallout. Although I wasn’t satisfied at all with the character development of…well, any of the family (I’ll get to that later), Chen did an excellent job of weaving together all of the contrasting beliefs, motivations, and traumas that each family member had. All of them dealt with Jakob and their dad’s disappearance and death, respectively, in wildly different ways, and their coping mechanisms butted heads over the course of the novel. Even though this was ultimately handled poorly at the end, I did also appreciate the sensitive depiction of their mom’s dementia; Chen did a very respectful job of depicting the emotional impact of her memory loss and not being able to recognize her own children.

For all of the focus on the messy Shao family, the promised character development that their dynamic hinged on was not delivered on. There should’ve been plenty of conflict with Jakob reckoning with the man he was on Earth versus the man he was while serving in space with the Seven Bells, yet none of that happened. All of his character development happened off-page, resulting in a character that came off more flatly than I think was intended. Likewise, Kass and Evie were set up for significant development, but nothing happened with them either. Evie’s beliefs were reinforced and she and stayed static throughout the novel, not giving up her fantasies of aliens for the sake of the family. The closest Kass got, if you could call “okay, I guess aliens do exist” character development, was a brief revelation that even though she’s a therapist, that she doesn’t know everything about herself or her family, and that she shouldn’t pretend to know everything. That last half of my sentence amounted to about a paragraph around 50 pages before the novel ended, and it felt like entirely too little too soon. In the end, the character development was a jumble of unfulfilled promises—we got the shells of what could’ve been nuanced characters, but despite the bizarre journey they went on, they came out the exact same as they were before.

Also…I’m sorry, what the hell was that ending? Somehow, it was one of the most anticlimactic parts of the whole novel, and weird in ways that didn’t make sense. Jakob returns to the Seven Bells, but there’s hardly any fanfare or even extended moments of grief from the sisters, even though their brother has just decided to spend the rest of his life in space and never see them again. There wasn’t nearly enough emotion to it, and nor was there page time—this moment only gets around 4-6 pages tops. Instead of an emotional resolution with her daughters, the mom somehow un-dementias herself and remembers everything, and is also eerily content with her only son’s decision to spend the rest of his life in space. It all just felt so rushed and emotionally stunted compared to the rest of the novel, and not nearly as detailed as it needed to be. Weird is the only way to adequately describe it. I felt lost, but also robbed of what could’ve been something so bittersweet. I feel like it’s partially a side effect of none of the characters having any character development, but it felt like such a lack of a resolution. It was practically a non-ending.

All in all, a sci-fi/realistic fiction blend that embraced messiness in both plot and character, but had significant trouble with cleaning it up. 3.5 stars!

Light Years from Home is a standalone, but Mike Chen is the author of several novels. He has contributed short stories to From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and the full-length novel Brotherhood to the Star Wars universe. He is also the author of We Could Be Heroes, Vampire Weekend, Here and Now and Then, A Quantum Love Story, and many more novels for adults.

Today’s song: