Man, time to do wrap-ups? Barely, but I have some time on my hands and there’s nothing I love more than organizing my reading stats into bulleted lists, so why not? (The only reason I’ve been able to make this many posts this week is because most of them were started several weeks prior, but I digress.)
The past few months have been strangely calm, if you set aside…well, everything that’s been going on lately. I don’t think I have to explain. I’ve been working really hard to try and be as levelheaded as I can in the face of all of these crises. Levelheaded and hopeful. Neither of these mean ignorant bliss to me—I’m continuing to speak up when I can, read what they don’t want us to read, and put my money into places that respect my existence. (wink wink, nudge nudge…hope everybody who was financially able participated in the economic boycott today! 😉) Miraculously, this semester has given me the space to work at practicing that—I’ve had a lot more free time (almost an alien concept after last semester), so I’ve been working at putting my energy into what counts, mainly being creative and feeding my soul. I finished the first draft of book 3 in the sci-fi trilogy I’ve been working at since I was 16 (!!!!!!!!!!). I’ve tried to take up knitting. (Unsuccessful so far, but I’m trying to keep at it), and I’ve tried to draw and read when I’ve got the time. That, and getting on the mining grind in Minecraft and being paralyzed as Severance consumes every waking thought I have. GOD, what a show. All this is to say that this isn’t a straight journey—I’m by no means a master at being levelheaded and balancing work with creativity, but I’m trying to learn from my mistakes. All you can do is try.
JANUARY READING WRAP-UP
I read 15 books in January! In the gap between winter break and the start of the spring semester, I read some fantastic books, from whimsical graphic novels to classic sci-fi hijinks.
I read 13 books in February! This month was slightly slower (and shorter, obviously) than January, but I was able to read several books that I’ve been excited to get around to for months! As I usually do, I focused more on Black authors for Black History Month, and discovered some great books and authors as a result.
Happy Thursday, bibliophiles! Finally had time to do an album review…unprecedented…
I first fell in love with Horsegirl in my senior year of high school. Back then, they were afloat on a handful of singles and on the cusp of a debut album. By the time Versions of Modern Performance came out, it was the soundtrack to the summer before I went to college. Their clever, endlessly creative style, informed by the ’70s and the ’90s in equal measure, enchanted me—it felt like almost nothing like what many other musicians of their generation were putting out. Along came 2024, and the promise of something somehow even better was on the horizon: a new Horsegirl album, produced by Cate Le Bon and recorded in The Loft, the famous (at least to me) Chicago studio owned by Wilco. What could go wrong? Almost nothing, as it turns out—Phonetics On and On is proof that the playful, inventive spirit of Horsegirl lives on, and that it’s beginning to mature into something spectacular.
Enjoy this album review!
PHONETICS ON AND ON – HORSEGIRL
Release date: February 14, 2025 (Matador Records)
TRACK 1: “Where’d You Go?” – 8/10
Just shy of two minutes long, “Where’d You Go?” is a song that lives up to the band name—the propulsive beat has the urgency of a racehorse speeding down a track. Drenched in tight, Feelies-esque (crazy) rhythms, it kickstarts the album with a jolt of sparking energy. Gigi Reece’s drumming has the lightning-fast patter of rabbit’s feet against the dirt, while the dueling voices of Nora Cheng and Penelope Lowenstein tug the track in two directions, a short leash that snaps to allow for a crayon’s scribble of a guitar riff to burst in at the 1:12 mark. The frenetic energy is a remarkable bridge from their work on Versions of Modern Performance to this album—vestiges of their earlier compositions, but the beginnings of a divergence into musical maturity. That’s how you start an album.
TRACK 2: “Rock City” – 7.5/10
Reining in the freewheeling energy of “Where’d You Go?”, “Rock City” mellows the album into the pace that much of the rest of Phonetics On and On settles into. It’s odd to have a more transitional track by only track two, but that feels like the function of “Rock City” is to me—it’s one of the weaker songs on the album, but nonetheless great; it serves to weave together the fluctuations in energy from track one to many of the others. That being said, it’s not a bad song by any stretch of the imagination. With its pastoral imagery and catchy, upbeat stillness, it’s the perfect track to relax the unbridled momentum of the opener. Cheng’s lighter vocals give it a gentle levity, while the sudden jumpstart in structure at 3:16 ensures a recurring theme on the album—you can’t be lulled into a false sense of security, because Horsegirl always has something up their sleeves.
TRACK 3: “In Twos” – 8/10
Initially, “In Twos” wasn’t a standout track for me. The slow pace didn’t bother me, but it didn’t grab me like many of the other tracks did. Yet the more I listen to the lyrics, the better it gets. Horsegirl are masters of crafting emotion from simplicity; much of Phonetics On and On was inspired by their collective experience of uprooting from Chicago to New York City to go to school at NYU, and the isolation of coming of age and moving to a new city. You can feel that understated alienation all over “In Twos,” a slow, wistful recollection of how “every car that passes by drives to you” and “your footprints on the street, they walk in twos.” It’s almost resentment, but feels to me more like a familiar feeling: watching people live normal lives as an outsider. The Rolling Stones-like repetition of “and I try” reminds me of that aching, to want to be accepted and feel normal and live a traditional life, but knowing that you’ll never fully mesh with them, and that life has a different destiny for you, no matter how hard you try to fight it.
Oof. Definitely got me there. Horsegirl lures you in with the “dadadadadada”s and then boom. ALIENATION! Seriously, this is starting to become one of the more impactful tracks on the album.
Picking up the pace that “2468” jumpstarted, “Well I Know You’re Shy” is just about the most Velvet Underground love song I’ve heard since Lou Reed tapped Moe Tucker to sing “After Hours.” I realize it’s hyperbole, but I can’t help but see the DNA woven between the two. Composed of old-timey phone cords and shyly open windows, it presents a love song that could only happen between two sharply-dressed Wes Anderson characters. Punctuated by Nora Cheng’s clean guitar riffs, it talks of a romantic looking out their window wishing to “sing for you/I wanna sing like I do/out your window,” continually rueing the fact that “what happened out there/I wish it was me.” There’s no tormented confessions of love or on-your-knees begging for a kiss, but a precocious, simple wish: “What happened out there/Well I know you’re shy/If you’ll listen to me/You’ll know I want to say hi.” I hesitate to call it childlike, but it has a doe-eyed purity to it that makes it so charming.
This is one of the brightest songs on Phonetics On and On, and I don’t mean that in intelligence—listen and you’ll understand. “Information Content” glows with the blinking spirit of a glass lightbulb. The brightness comes in no small part from how jangly they go with the guitars on this one—in between Reece’s soft drumming and egg shakers, Cheng’s voice is allowed to be so cheerful and airy, even when the lyrics might as well be crossing items off a grocery list or striking a day from the calendar. That’s the power of Horsegirl to me (Horsepower?)—they dredge so much playful joy from the mundane and ordinary, making a trip to the kitchen into a spring-stepped skip. There’s something about “Information Content” that feels distinctly Wilco to me as well—it seems that the influence of The Loft rubbed off on them. (How could it not?) At 2:58, the guitar solo kicks in, but gets crumpled into tinfoil chaos just as quickly; it’s so prickly and collapses in the blink of an eye, and I can’t help but be reminded of Nels Cline’s improvisations and swift-fingered touch to his guitar playing, or even the way that Glenn Koche’s drumming descends into madness during “Via Chicago.” Of course, nobody can come close to that level of masterful insanity (especially on their second album), but I can hear the influence loud and clear—and I love it.
TRACK 9: “Frontrunner” – 8.5/10
The last single to be released beforethe entire album came out, “Frontrunner” lies in the same vein as “Julie”—a slow-paced, more instrospective side to Horsegirl that’s unafraid to strip down to more raw, spare elements. On the composition, the band said that this gentler track was born after “[I] had just had a really terrible, emotional day…and Nora and I were like, ‘OK, we should just play guitar today, you need to do something.’ And we wrote that song together.” It’s so simple, yet so heartwarming to me that such a tender song came out of ordinary moments that we’ve all shared with friends; Even before I knew the context behind it, “Frontrunner” rang proudly as such a distinctly friendship song to me, and I loved it for just that. For me, it embodies another kind of college feeling, the post-freshman feeling of realizing “oh my god, I’ve got friends?” and that realization powering you through the day that you have so many new, wonderful people to share your life with who are only an arm’s length away. The repetition of “I can’t wait/And I can’t wait/And I can’t wait” is filled with a wistful, anticipatory glee despite the slower tempo of the track, but the happiness on the horizon is what made it such a winner for me. A frontrunner, if you—[gets dragged off the stage by a comically large cane]
TRACK 10: “Sport Meets Sound” – 7/10
Horsegirl claimed that they’re mostly finished with the “joke titles” that composed most of Versions of Modern Performance (“Rock City” is allegedly the last of its kind), but…if this isn’t the most Versions of Modern Performance title I’ve ever laid eyes on…
Taking cues from the more laid-back tone of “Frontrunner,” “Sport Meets Sound,” contrary to the speed that the title implies, eases the album close to hitting the brakes. With a steady, marching band-like drumbeat from Reece and strings of “dadadadadada’s” aplenty, it doesn’t do a whole lot to distinguish itself from the other tracks, in the grand scheme of Phonetics On and On; like “In Twos” and “2468,” it’s lyrically twins with “Rock City” (see the “Young man sickened by the sight” refrain), but unlike those two, it doesn’t stand out as much as the former two do. But if that’s a weaker Horsegirl song…man, I’m so impressed with their output, because even at their weakest, they can make a truly catchy indie rock song, and that’s just what “Sport Meets Sound” is. It’s a transitional song to the end, and it works perfectly as such.
TRACK 11: “I Can’t Stand To See You” – 8/10
Sliding in to give Phonetics On and On a final spark of momentum, this track lifts the smile of the album at large, a peppy victory lap that unites all of the best aspects of the album at large. The jangle-o-meter has been calibrated so much that it’s broken, the spring in their metaphorical step is even springier, the “da-da-da-da-da’s” unfurl out before you like a promising scroll. The lyrics become playfully self-aware both of the song’s status as an album closer: “Do you want to go home now?/The night’s almost through.” Yet with a sly wink, they promise that they’ve got more up their sleeve: “Just another walk around the block now.” It feels more like a closing theme to a children’s TV show than a closing track to an album; It declares that there’s one more bout of carefree fun to have before Horsegirl has to say goodbye. In a way, it’s a thesis of the album’s spirit: so aware of itself that it becomes a blast, and so carefully constructed that the joy is an integral part of the process.
I averaged out all of the ratings for each track, and it came out to an 8.1! Without a doubt, Phonetics On and On is set to become one of my favorite albums of the year…and it’s only February. Horsegirl bring a welcome, much-needed dose of free-spirited yet tightly-constructed craft into their art and to the world, piling catchy melody after catchy melody for a record that sees them maturing into fledgling artists, yet never denies the play that is central to their ethos. I’d go so far as to say that we’re all better for the joy they bring to their music. I know I am.
Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of Phonetics On and On to be today’s song.
That’s it for this album review! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
I’ve had my eye on When No One Is Watching for a few years now. I’m not typically a thriller fan, but the concept intrigued me, despite the consistently mediocre to low ratings on Goodreads and The Storygraph. Alyssa Cole is a new-to-me author, and I figured I would give her book a try. However, I’ve come out of it with a mixed bag and uncertainty as to whether I’ll read more of her books in the future. When No One Is Watching had an excellent premise that it only halfway delivered on, but was still entertaining and timely in the end.
Sydney Green has called Brooklyn home for her entire life, yet her childhood is quickly slipping through her fingers. Her neighborhood, which was once home to a diverse group of homeowners, is quickly beginning to be gentrified. Condos are springing up where her neighbors once lived, and her Black and brown neighbors are being driven away one by one. Sydney suspects that something is amiss, and that there may be something more insidious to the gentrification of her neighborhood. With the help of Theo, her well-meaning neighbor, Sydney seeks to uncover the truth of her neighborhood’s fate, but what she finds may be even more sinister than she could have ever imagined.
TW/CW: racism, misogyny, gun violence, murder, loss of loved ones, police brutality, kidnapping
First off, When No One Is Watching is an incredibly timely thriller, and having a thriller surrounding the themes of gentrification is genius. When you strip past the apathy the general American population has of living not just on stolen land, but land that has driven its people of color into the worst possible conditions, it really is a frightening reality to live with. Even if the gentrification of neighborhoods itself isn’t some grand conspiracy, as it partially is in this novel, it’s a no-punches-pulled look at what’s happening to neighborhoods all over the country. Adding in snippets of social media doesn’t always work in books, but weaving in the neighborhood groupchat into When No One Is Watching also served to add a critical piece of the puzzle: that a lot of white people in such situations are so easily willing to dismiss any kind of racism if it doesn’t affect them, even if it’s happening in their own backyard. With an unflinching pen, Cole examines all of the aspects of gentrification, from its history to its current iterations, making for a thriller grounded in a real source of fright.
There are plenty of scary scenes in When No One Is Watching, but the fact that Cole mines the horror out of Syd being in an Uber and her driver driving her away from her destination should tell you something about where this novel lies. That particular scene is at the beginning of the book and isn’t the scariest thing that happens, but man…Cole is excellent at squeezing the horror from very grounded, real events. With the exception of the more sinister twist at the end, this novel creeped me out because almost everything that happened was real—its horror drawn from the realities of racism, misogyny, and gentrification. I can’t speak to this personally, but it felt like the inherent horror of being a marginalized person in the United States, but specifically of being a Black woman, a group that this country has historically done everything in its power to silence and oppress. It really gives weight to the expression “truth is stranger than fiction”—in this case, truth is scarier than fiction. That’s where Cole finds the fear, which made When No One Is Watching so effective in its brand of suspense.
However, a lot of the realism that came through in the suspense aspect of When No One Is Watching was deadened somewhat by the excessive use of modern internet lingo. I don’t mean the AAVE at all—that part was great, and I’m glad to see more of it integrated into literature, because there’s no need to cater to white audiences anymore at this point (and there’s many conversations to be had about how twitter/tiktok/etc. slang has subsumed AAVE so quickly and stripped it of its original meaning). No, I’m talking about the very millennial-sounding, tweet-ready one-liners that many of the characters dole out to make the story “funnier.” (Whew. Lots of hyphens in that sentence, even for me.) If I hadn’t seen the quote “I need you to channel the confidence of a mediocre white man” on at least 10 different t-shirts, stickers, and tweets, it would’ve been funny. About half of the humor in When No One Is Watching lands, but the other half is about the same as this: quips that have been circulated on the internet for at least a decade that could’ve been funny years ago, but have gone so stale that they’ve lost all novelty, originality, and more importantly humor. Again, I liked that When No One Is Watching was able to balance levity with some of the more thriller aspects, but it would’ve tipped the balance even more if more of the humor was original. Even five years after this book’s release, it was so easily dateable. Give it another five, and it’ll be painfully dated.
What hindered When No One Is Watching the most, however, wasn’t that: it was the pacing. It was just odd. When the suspenseful moments came, they were appropriately suspenseful, but there was so much middling around in between these moments for the first 75% of the novel that I started to question whether or not I was reading a thriller. But once the big twist comes in, it’s when I was about 80-85% of the way through the book—and the entirety of the big reveal, the climactic final battle, and the resolution were crammed into only about 15% of the book. It was whiplash-inducing, but not in a way that a thriller should be. Thrillers aren’t my go-to, but for more thriller/horror movies, I like when I have some breathing room between the suspenseful/scary moments (see: Alien, Nosferatu). When No One Is Watching theoretically had that down pat, but where it suffered was that the breathing room was rarely interesting. Other than the fantastic commentary on racism and gentrification, the plot between the suspense was just boring. I didn’t care much for Syd and Theo’s romantic subplot, I didn’t care for them randomly running around and ultimately discovering very little. So much of it could have been condensed in order for the climax to not feel like being chucked out of a bus window and onto the highway—not in a suspense way, but in a wild pacing way. Big reveal, shootout, resolution, and bam, it’s all over…in about 30 pages, tops. As with the humor, there needed to be balance with the plot—more suspense spread out through the novel, and more room to process and mine into the commentary of the climax.
All in all, a thriller with sharp, relevant commentary on racism and gentrification that excelled in its suspense, but was dragged down by uneven pacing and humor that dated itself far too quickly. 3 stars.
When No One Is Watching is a standalone, but Alyssa Cole is also the author of several other novels for adults, including the Reluctant Royals trilogy (A Princess in Theory, A Duke by Default, and A Prince on Paper), the Off the Grid trilogy (Radio Silence, Signal Boost, and Mixed Signals), The Loyal League trilogy (An Extraordinary Union, A Hope Divided, and An Unconventional Freedom), and many other novels.
Today’s song:
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
QUICK ANNOUNCEMENT: because I’m trying to divorce myself from Amazon as much as I can, I’m finally moving over from Goodreads to The Storygraph. From now on, my reviews will be available there @thebookishmutant.
I started the Sing Me to Sleep duology last year, and now that book 2 is out, I figured I would pick it up for Black History Month, but also so I could finally get some resolution! And I sure got a resolution…one that wasn’t as enjoyable as the first book, but nonetheless a twisty, romantic ending to a fantasy duology that balanced fun and social commentary.
Now, tread lightly! This review may contain spoilers for book one, Sing Me to Sleep. For my review of Sing Me to Sleep, click here!
Saoirse is on the run. Now that her siren identity has been exposed, she must flee to the other side of the wall that divides Keirdre from the rest of the world. Taking sanctuary with the budding Resistance, Saoirse discovers a world full of different species that Keirdre drove out of its kingdom, all waiting for the day that they can take back what is rightfully theirs. But tensions are brewing, and war is imminent. On the other side of the wall, King Hayes, her secret love, awaits, but do his loyalties remain with Saoirse? And will Saoirse be able to fend off the rising tides of war?
You would think that a book that’s over 400 pages would have plenty of time to work out all of the wrinkles in the plot and the worldbuilding…apparently not. In a perfect world, Drown Me with Dreams would be a great second book in a trilogy, but in this world, it was a duology concluder that tried to do far too much. That doesn’t mean that it was bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it was certainly a step below Sing Me to Sleep.
Oops. I end up stumbling into books with startling relevance to the current climate, and oh my god, am I sick of using that phrase. But. Drown Me with Dreams does an excellent job of expanding on its themes of resistance, racism, and misinformation! Saoirse has now figured out that there’s a wide world beyond the walls of Keirdre that has been obscured by the racist regime in her home kingdom; now that she knows the truth, she’s exposed to a myriad of perspectives and has to do the work herself to deconstruct the lies she’s been fed all of her life. She meets dozens of new mythical species that have been respectively discriminated against by Keirdre, and finds out firsthand how many falsehoods that the ruling powers have upheld for decades. The simultaneous revelations and discomfort of Saoirse discovering the truth is such a wonderful thing for a YA fantasy book like this to explore—in the end, it’s up to us, in our varying experiences in the real world, to discover the truth about how our governments can shape (and mis-shape) the narratives we grow up on. I also love the themes of solidarity present—fantasy or not, I love that the kind of feminism that Drown Me with Dreams champions is the kind that holds celebrating individual experience and solidarity under shared oppressions in equal regard. It’s the kind of unity that I believe will push feminism forward, and it made for a powerful statement in Drown Me with Dreams.
Even though Saoirse and King Hayes were kept apart for the first half of the novel, Drown Me with Dreams had a great resolution to their romance! Was it classic, YA fantasy romance cheese? Yes. Was it good cheese? Absolutely. To paraphrase one of my high school English teachers, there’s a difference between gourmet cheese and “American cheese-food.” I’ve been a YA reader for quite some time now, and there’s a difference between cringeworthy cheese and high-quality cheese. Drown Me with Dreams falls into the latter category, 100%. There’s angsty angry-kissing aplenty, but it’s written believably. If anyone is looking to do slow-burn, enemies-to-lovers romance right, look no further. Saoirse and Hayes weren’t just given enough time to have their romance develop—the stakes of their forbidden love were built up for the whole series, and their chemistry together made for some high quality smoldering. It’s not trying to be enemies-to-lovers in the way that most BookTok fantasy books try and fail to do—Burton’s given us a well-developed romance you can root for, and it made Drown Me with Dreams a standout read in that department.
In my review for Sing Me to Sleep, I mentioned that the book’s main flaw was that it was juggling far too many characters. In that same review, I commended Burton’s ability to craft a rich, layered fantasy world. Both of those aspects collided in Drown Me with Dreams with disappointing results. In Drown Me with Dreams, we finally see the world beyond Keirdre, and it’s full of all of the creatures that Keirdre drove out—dryads, goblins, sprites, you name it. On the surface, I was so excited to see this aspect of the world, but two main issues arose. The first was that we were introduced to a truckload of characters, almost 80% of which had barely anything memorable about them other than the fact that they were from a “new” species. Some of them were slightly consequential, but only just. I had so much trouble keeping track of all of them, which definitely muddied my reading experience. The second problem was that all of this worldbuilding was crammed into a single book—with a kingdom and world this expansive, it needed at least another book to develop fully, which hindered how fleshed out the world ended up being, after all of these promises of it being fascinating and new. (Also, I get the point about racist narratives being made with the goblins, but…what was the reason for making goblins into glorified elves? Why did they needto be conventionally attractive?)
Which brings me to my second major gripe: this series should not have been a duology. Not only are we introduced to a staggering amount of worldbuilding that only amounts to a single book, the same goes for the plot. A full resistance movement, the tensions within said resistance movement, the looming threat of war from multiple sides, and the fallout from said monumental war are crammed into 424 pages…should be enough, right? Most of what I described only happens in the last 2/3rds of the book, and nothing gets nearly the attention it deserves. We get dragged along with a pointless red herring of a love triangle (only for Saoirse to end up with her main romantic interest and for the other guy to just DIE GRUESOMELY? I didn’t really care about the guy, but pour one out for Carrik), and all of the interpersonal conflict rarely lasts, only providing detours on what should’ve been a rich plot on its own. As with the worldbuilding. Drown Me with Dreams should have had at least one more book to expand on everything. It’s a case of Burton biting off far more than she could chew, to unfulfilling results.
All in all, a duology-concluder that didn’t deliver on its epic worldbuilding promises and rushed its climax to a dizzying degree, but delivered on its past themes and promised romance. 3.5 stars!
Drown Me with Dreams is the second and final book in the Sing Me to Sleep duology, which begins with Sing Me to Sleep.
Today’s song:
so uh guess who’s obsessed with the apple tv+ björk concert film
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Michelle Zauner jokingly referenced this song when posting about her recent appearance on the Tonight Show to promote “Orlando in Love,” the first (excellent) single from her forthcoming album For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women). But before she got Jimmy Fallon Big, someone else tried to—Deven Craige, the bass player for her former band, Little Big League; Zauner wrote the song about how he split the band after his other band was, in his words, about to go “Jimmy Fallon big,” and decided to put his energy into that instead of Little Big League. The move left Zauner crushed: she told NPR in 2017 that “it felt like losing a brother, and there was this shame, feeling like I was never going to get there myself.” There’s truly something more than bittersweet about it—the passion she poured into every bit of the vocals shows a deep devotion to her former bandmate, and yet the resentment sloughs off of the chorus in relenting waves: “Why walk/When you can show up on time?” I mean, they’re on good terms now, but BURN.
I promise this segue will become relevant, but I recently listened to the first episode of Björk’s excellent Sonic Symbolism podcast, where she frequently refers to the history of music as a great tree with thousands of interspersed branches that connect and diverge from one another. Listening to “Jimmy Fallon Big!” is one of those 21st century moments where I can so clearly see the tree rings, the ancestry and lineage where an evolutionary branch broke off. Michelle Zauner has been crafting intricate, emotional dream pop for quite some time now (see: “Sit,” which I talked about back in July), but this track has the Cocteau Twins written all over it. It’s not just the warm, dreamlike drone of the instrumentals, but the way that said instrumentals obscure the meaning of the chorus almost completely. It makes the opening line of “We aren’t bound by law/We aren’t bound by anything at all” make all the more sense artistically. On the first few listens, I almost wondered if it was born from the same songwriting method that Fraser used to craft her nonsense miracles. Where they break off—besides having a clearer anchor tying the music down to earth, is how Zauner grounds the emotion; not many people can get to the level of Fraser, and I don’t think Zauner is one of them, but she’s got the clear talent of crafting the most elaborate musical smoke screen to cloak her misgivings.
Memes aside, shoutout to Paul McCartney and his joyous whimsy. I’m fully aware that I use the phrase “joyous whimsy” with the same frequency of congresspeople emailing you saying that you have a MIDNIGHT DONATION DEADLINE and it’s URGENT, and I don’t want to repeat myself, but I think the world needs more of it. And who’s got it? PAUL!
BUTTAH PIE!
BUTTAH PIE?
THE BUTTAH WOULDN’T MELT, SO I PUT IT IN THE PIE, ALRIGHT?
As far as Beatles lore goes, I feel like Ringo gets more of the credit for whimsy, and for good reason—the dude saw the other three tearing at each other’s necks and decided to write a song about an octopus. But as obnoxious as Paul got during a lot of those sessions, over the course of his career, he had a gentleness to his artistic soul too, and it showed in his songwriting.
“Admiral Halsey notified me/He had to have a berth or he couldn’t get to sea/I had another look and I had a cup of tea and butter pie?” C’mon. That sounds like something straight out of some 1940’s British children’s book with yellowing pages and inked illustrations. But uptight is the opposite of how McCartney and McCartney—Linda deserves the brunt of the credit for the sheer jubilation she brings to the “Hands across the water, Heads across the sky” refrain—delivers this song. Plus, the Admiral Halsey in question was loosely based off of an American admiral from World War II, and McCartney painted him as a stiff authoritarian who is “symbolic of authority and therefore not to be taken too seriously,” so it’s making him uptight just so you can stick your tongue in his face. It’s just so infectiously jolly. There’s an orange-hued, sunlit laughter to the whole bit. It’s got the warmth of reuniting with an old friend, or being back in some rose-tinted decade and sweeping your lover off their feet on the dance floor, particularly the “Admiral Halsey” section. It’s hard to think of a song so wonderfully carefree, in every sense of the word. Hands across the water, heads across the sky indeed.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Tidesong – Wendy Xu – hands across the water, as well as a hearty, healthy dose of childlike wonder.
Hoooooowhee. Going straight from Paul & Linda McCartney frolicking through a field to Faith No More…I don’t think whiplash even begins to describe that. Well. Welcome to my shuffle.
Faith No More seem to have been on the fringes, even where hard rock is concerned, and it’s easy to see why even the freakier people weren’t as willing to embrace them—Mike Patton’s voice and their mishmash of rock and early hip-hop influences stand out immediately. As does the goofy video. The lyrics and subject matter are standard fare for any kind of alternative music of the time (“Indecision clouds my vision/No one listens/Because I’m somewhere in between/My love and my agony”), but everything else is just off the walls. Directed by Ralph Ziman, the video is the last thing you’d expect to match the song’s aesthetic—neon colors aplenty, Mike Patton in a bowler hat and some kind of clown suit for half the video, and enough fish that I imagine the storyboarding process went something like this. Patton’s distinct vocals rangefrom a nasally standard to a hint of the heights he’d later reach on “Midlife Crisis,” and they stand behind a bassline that holds all of the instrument’s resentment for being in the background for decades. Even in a subgenre that’s already weird, this is real weird, unpredictable, unabashed weirdness. Somebody needs to bring back green-screen goldfish back into hard rock.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Shadow Speaker – Nnedi Okorafor – the lyrics are broad enough that I couldn’t narrow it down to a specific theme, so I added the mood—and came to this book, a bold, chaotic punch to the face.
On April 18th, I’ll have to show where my allegiance lies…Thee Black Boltz and Send A Prayer My Way come out on the same day. Well, okay. I’ve already decided. My allegiance is to Tunde Adebimpe, to the republic! But I’ll stagger my listening. The former has a priority over Julien Baker & TORRES, but I’ll give both a listen.
They recalled an experience of taking Sylvia on the road and feeling as though they were truly meant to be. There’s something special about holding a puppy when you’ve just brought them home, and not just in the warm-and-fuzzy way. There’s an immediacy you feel, the knowledge that you’ve got a little heartbeat next to yours, a furry, helpless body that you’re suddenly in charge of. It really is a new member of the family, and one that you have the responsibility to protect. Puppies are exhausting—the time my boy Ringo slipped out of his collar, ran down the street, and evaded me for a solid five minutes before showing up on my porch with a shit-eating grin comes to mind. But “Sylvia” taps into that feeling of knowing you have more than a companion: “Haunted by all the goodnights that I’ve missed/Every time your cheek goes unkissed/A day for me is a week for you/And my life’s already halfway through/Tomorrow, today’s worries might turn out to be regrets…” It taps in to being conscious of your pet as something you can keep around for amusement, but a deeply ingrained part of your life, while retaining the simultaneous fear and joy of giving them all the love you can in their short lives.
The Book of Lost Things – John Connolly – “Sylvia” had me thinking of fictional dogs—as far as books go, my first thought was of Boswell, David’s loyal dachshund that accompanies him on his adventures.
Really and truly Severance-pilled rn…CAN WE TALK ABOUT SEVERANCE? The deepening of existing friendships and yet also the storylines of corporations driving a wedge in their workers to discourage them from solidarity? Unity…unions, perhaps? HELLY WOULDN’T BE CRUEL? SHAMBOLIC RUE? THE WORST MELON PARTY YET? A CHILD? PAPERCLIPS? THE TENDENCY OF CORPORATIONS TO SHOW PROGRESS AS MARGINALIZED PEOPLE SIMPLY SWALLOWED INTO THEIR SYSTEM? GOATS? THE—
Oh, wait, there’s a song here? ALL THE BETTER TO PUT INTO SEVERANCE—
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
A Song of Salvation – Alechia Dow – “Let me put you in the picture/Let me show you what I mean/The messiah is my sister/Ain’t no king, man, she’s my queen…”
Since this posts 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!
I had a ton of fun with Jordan Ifueko’s Raybearer duology, but somehow I completely missed that she released a novel last August in the same universe! It was an absolute treat to be back in Ifueko’s world, and The Maid and the Crocodile proved a valuable asset to her fantasy universe.
Small Sade is desperate for any job that she can find. With her crooked foot and vitiligo, the people of her village think she is cursed and touched by spirits. Eventually, she finds work as a maid, but not before an act of desperation sees her bound to a powerful god, known only as the Crocodile. As she moves up in the ranks, she realizes that she is a Curse Eater—her profession as a maid not only cleans the houses of her clients, but changes their fates. Juggling her newfound ability and a world on the brink of revolution with only the Crocodile as her guide, Small Sade must learn to forge her own path before someone else decides it for her.
TW/CW: ableism, self-harm/mentions of suicide, descriptions of injuries, classism, mentions of sexual assault, abuse, loss of loved ones
I can excuse a handful of pop culture references here and there, but after that god-awful Minecraft trailer, if I hear “the children yearn for the mines” ONE MORE TIME, I’m gonna snap…Jordan Ifueko, this was a great book, but that tested me…especially with the climactic scene that it temporarily undercut.
That aside, it was an absolute treat to return to the world of Raybearer with The Maid and the Crocodile! I didn’t think to re-read the duology before going back into it (I never seem to do that unless it’s with a book I’m really invested in), but I was so easily immersed into the world nonetheless! For both casual and eagle-eyed readers, there are Easter eggs aplenty—several characters from the duology make cameo appearances (SANJEET!!! MY GUY!!!!), and the nuances of the world stay the same, for the most part. It was an easy transition, which isn’t always easy to do. I loved how The Maid and the Crocodile expanded on the world as well! Ifueko really has a strength in writing ordinary characters forced into extraordinary, powerful positions, and Small Sade is no exception. However, she’s much more different than Tarisai, which I appreciated—there’s much more of a sense of her having to work towards the top, and her humored yet determined tenacity was what made her so special of a character. Through her, we see Oluwan City from more ordinary eyes, which makes the themes of the story so much more clearer.
I couldn’t have read The Maid and the Crocodile at a better time, and not just because it was a fun read. Its themes about the nature of change and revolution are critical—IT’S ALL ABOUT LOVE! It’s so refreshing to see a character who wants to help society change for the better not out of revenge or a vague “evil government bad [does not elaborate]” motivation, but out of love. Small Sade’s motives stem from wanting to care for the people she loves and wanting to see that love reciprocated in the world around her. Change rooted from love is a perspective that I rarely see in YA, even though its plots have centered around dismantling governments and revolutionary change for decades. I’m so tired of saying “in times like these,” but I mean it—in times like these, narratives about radical change being rooted in love—for your people, for your country, and for your culture—are critical to understanding what change can truly do.
Whenever you have a disabled character in a non-modern setting, even if it’s fantasy, you always run the risk of amping up the internalized ableism. Small Sade, who is shunned and deemed “spirit-touched” because of her crooked foot (she uses a cane for mobility) and her vitiligo, faces a great deal of ableism. It’s not as though plots about overcoming ableism (NOT the disability, mind you) aren’t worth telling, but in non-modern and fantasy settings, it does get slightly tired to have all disabled characters in these settings go through versions of the same arc. I loved how Ifueko handled Small Sade’s character—she resists ableism, but most importantly, she is a person beyond her experiences of ableism. Her experience of discrimination informs her story, but it is not the entirety of her character. Small Sade is defiant, self-reliant, and deeply caring—she’s so fully-fleshed out, which is a rarity for disabled characters. So hats off to Ifueko for an excellently-written disabled character!
However, though it had its moments, I was never fully invested in the romance between Small Sade and Zuri. I got that they had a connection, but I feel like he showed up too few times for the relationship to really work. Small Sade had eons more character development than he ever had the chance to. I get that a curse slowly turning you into a crocodile tends to do this to a guy, but at times Zuri felt rather codependent—up until the last 50 pages or so, Small Sade felt more like a means to an end for him, and his redemption was too underdeveloped for me to be fully invested in it. I appreciated their mutual resolution, but it was too late for it to feel fully satisfying. Given how strongly written the relationship between Sanjeet and Tarisai was in the Raybearer duology, I really expected Ifueko to deliver more with The Maid and the Crocodile. Small Sade and Zuri had moments, but not enough for me to be invested in them romantically.
All in all, a worthy addition to Jordan Ifueko’s Raybearer universe, full of heart, curses, and hope. 3.75 stars, rounded up to 4!
The Maid and the Crocodile is a standalone, but is set in the world of the Raybearer duology (Raybearer and Redemptor). Jordan Ifueko is also the author of the 2022-2023 run of Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, and has also contributed to Jim Henson’s Storyteller: Tricksters.
Today’s song:
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
We now return to some much-needed mary in the junkyard-posting. I suspect it’ll become consistent…at some point. Not to pressure them, but hopefully this year (or the next) holds a full-length album in the future?
In the meantime, we have an excellent collaboration between them and Everything Is Recorded, the stage name of producer Richard Russell (also the founder of XL Records); he’s produced several albums under the name, often amassing a wide variety of musicians and songwriters to bolster them in a Gorillaz-like way, minus the cartoon characters. His forthcoming album, Richard Russell is Temporary, includes the likes of Florence Welch, Kamasi Washington, Noah Cyrus, Roses Gabor (a.k.a. the singing voice of Noodle on “DARE”), Bill Callahan, and mary in the junkyard! Granted, I hadn’t heard of Everything Is Recored until mary in the junkyard announced this single, but if this guy’s the owner of a record label, I could only hope this would introduce this fantastic, burgeoning gem of a band to a wider audience.
If “Swamp Dream #3” becomes the band’s ambassador, I wouldn’t mind either. Even though it’s more electronic than most of their catalogue, it’s got a naturalistic, moss-covered feel to it that you can’t scrape off of their sound no matter how many synths you paste onto it. It has the juddering thrum of rusted machines, all at once simple and a doorway into a hidden world; although I love the music video, “Swamp Dream #3” is begging for some kind of stop-motion treatment. I imagine it as an outside view of a termite’s mound or a rabbit’s warren, with the camera panning over clay worms poking out of the dirt and tiny insects, moles, and other underground rodents traversing the vast network of tunnels. (The real worms and beetles suffice, though.) Clari Freeman-Taylor’s vocals bring a kind of wonder to the song, a curiosity that isn’t quite childlike, but still seeks to shove its hands into the sand and the dirt, searching for hidden pathways and possibilities: “Mystery of my own flesh/I’ll never stop wondering/Never stop/Turning inside out.” Needless to say, the chorus, a repetition of “into the dirt” backed by looped vocals and a stuttering drum machine, could not be a better fit for a song with hands dirtied from looking for earthworms in the ground.
NEW TUNDE ADEBIMPE JUST DROPPED!! THEE BLACK BOLTZ!! OUT THIS APRIL!! I’m not sure if anything will ever cure the decade-long TV on the Radio drought, but man, a new album from such a fantastic talent sure comes close.
I never got around to writing about “Magnetic,” but it felt so much like TV on the Radio to me—it was distinctly Tunde Adebimpe, but it had that same urgent propulsion that made their indie hits feel ageless. It’s one of those tracks that makes you see how far the footprints of one particular member of a band in their music. TV on the Radio bunched several people together with magic touches into a single band, which is startling, but this touch is unmistakably Adebimpe’s. But “Drop” is where his sound begins to branch out and diverge into something wholly new. It has a flavor that’s simultaneously ’80s and 2010’s indie pop. Once the beatboxing intro fades away, rhythmic as bubbles popping in midair, it becomes a much more relaxed yet introspective dive into Adebimpe’s mind. As the guitars—clean enough to almost sound like synths—radiate into the calm ripple of the track, he grapples with a sensation of awakening; “Drop” couldn’t be a more apt title for a song whose lyrics are steps away from launching off a daunting yet hopeful precipice: “I′m gonna try it for myself/I’m gonna need somebody′s help/Cast an extraordinary spell/And rise into the night.”
Together, “Magnetic” and “Drop” couldn’t make me more excited for the range of Thee Black Boltz. “Magnetic” was a perfect access point for the fans who were wanting something close to TV on the Radio 2: Electric Boogaloo (listen, it’s kind of a self-callout), but “Drop” represents the somewhat uncharted territory that we have yet to see Adebimpe cover fully.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The Sound of Stars – Alechia Dow – “We′re gonna feel it when we drop/Let′s go out where the visions never stop/There is a light/There’s a light just beyond this horizon/See it shine and rise into the night…”
Generally, the British were absolutely cooking with grease as far as rock music goes from about 1964 on, but there’s something so fruitful about the ’90s to me. If it’s from the period from 1992-1999 and it’s British, there’s a solid 75% chance that I’ll enjoy it. No, wait. Not exclusively the Brits, just because ’90s rock was so good, guys, but I just love the ’90s. To me, 1994 seems a particularly ripe crop of the vast harvest of the decade, especially the Britpop boom of the first half of the ’90s. Three out of the four of Britpop’s Big Four released albums: Blur with Parklife, Oasis (🤢) with Definitely Maybe, and Pulp with His ‘n’ Hers. But even if you look past the big players, 1994 is full of gems—”Insomniac” being one of them.
I just love Britpop, man. God. I talked a bit about Echobelly last year (with “Bellyache,” from this same album, Everybody’s Got One) with their propensity to take the genre’s penchant for social commentary a step further, as well as their much more diverse lineup compared to many Britpop bands of the time. (Not one but TWO women of color in a Britpop band was pretty much unheard of at the time) “Insomniac” is much more radio-friendly, but it embodies the “pop” of the Britpop, but never in a mindless way—more in the way that their contemporaries could wrap commentary in the most delicious guitar hooks. As Sonya Madan sings of her concerningly high subject (“I think we’ve lost control, dear/Whatever turned you on/You put it up your nose, dear”), the guitars absolutely knock you upside the head. You couldn’t wring the pure Britishness out of it if you tried (particularly the way that Madan sings “I swim in circles/In puddles/In trouble and then I go” like it’s a nursery rhyme…on a song about substance abuse), but you couldn’t wring the pure rock n’ roll out of it, either—this is what a hit should be.
“Ride A White Horse” is about as clean of a song you could get. It’s more than polished—it came out of the womb shinier than a disco ball, and its blinding sheen is made for dancing. Alison Goldfrapp has insisted that the title wasn’t a nod to T. Rex (but sort of was a reference to this), but the two songs couldn’t be further from each other—the dance-pop glamour of this song is about as far as Marc Bolan and company frolicking through the woods, but both have entirely distinct energies that differentiate themselves far beyond their respective choice of animals. Even for something made in 2006, Goldfrapp and Gregory’s work still sounds straight out of a club in the Blade Runner universe. Part of this is why I think the choice of making the music video for “Ride A White Horse” the epitome of dirty is kind of genius fit—it’s such a sanitized song, and yet Alison Goldfrapp sings it against superimposed backdrops of rotting food waste with scraps of toilet paper stuck to her heels, not to mention the cameo from what appears to be the proto-Trash Man. Even when there’s flies buzzing off of it, the polish of it never fades.
Also, because this popped up when I looked this up on YouTube, here’s a bit of unexpectedly delightful Goldfrapp content:
In retrospect, it was probably a terrible idea to listen to Humanz for the first time mere days before the inauguration just because of the album’s conception. When telling Pusha T, one of the album’s plentiful collaborators, what the atmosphere of the album was, Damon Albarn described it as “a party for the end of the world if Trump wins.” Not only did he say this well before Trump was elected, but…well, y’know. We all know the mess we’re in. Humanz often gets lambasted by the fandom as their worst album. I wouldn’t say it’s bad, but I think it’s the nexus of modern Gorillaz, which is to say that it’s the point where their albums became increasingly devoted to their collaborators as opposed to the creative force of Albarn and Hewlett. Said collaborators are hit or miss, but most of the songs have a verse by Albarn with the exact same filter over his voice once the collaborators have had their place in the sun. Much as I love my guy Damon, it got slightly tiring after about 10 songs. But if it’s a party for the Trump-era hellscape, Humanz fulfills its purpose with flying colors, balancing social commentary with gloriously catchy pop songs. I feel like the thesis is perfectly encapsulated by Vince Staples’ chorus on “Ascension”: “The sky is falling, baby/Drop that ass before it crash.”
In spite of all that, the album ends on an anthemic note—”We Got The Power.” As simple as the lyrics are, simplicity is what this track needs. In times so overwhelmed with shock, horror, and doom, sometimes a more concise message is the best thing to cut through the noise. “We got the power to be loving each other/No matter what happens.” IT’S TRUE! It’s why “All You Need Is Love” has endured for so long. It’s simple, but it’s the kind of uniting message that we needed. If anyone should know that, with their history of cleverly packaged social commentary, it’s Gorillaz. Albarn is joined by Jehnny Beth (if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard Jehnny Beth sing a French verse on a British band’s song, I’d have two nickels, etc., etc.) and an uncredited Noel Gallagher. I briefly mentioned it before it, but as much of an Oasis hater as I am, it really is beautiful that they were able to set aside the stupidest possible differences, realize how stupid they were, and join forces on a song about loving each other. You can’t not appreciate it. (To say nothing of Liam…) And as the closing track to an album about a party at the end of democracy, it’s a welcome light at the end of the tunnel, and a true light—it’s not the flashing club lights that shroud the fear of most of the album, but a real lodestar.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The Stardust Grail – Yume Kitasei – “And we dream of home, I dream of life out of here/Their dreams are small/My dreams don’t know fear/I got my heart full of hope/I will change everything/No matter what I’m told…”
Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.
That’s it for this week’s songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
January. Love it or hate it, it’s that magical time of year when all of the singles and album announcements for the first half of the year start rolling in. Oh, the sweet sound of new music…especially when it’s from Lucy Dacus! It’s been known that she’s been cooking something up after previewing a handful of new songs post-the record (as is Julien Baker—new album from her and TORRES too!!), but mid-January, she officially announced her new album, Forever Is a Feeling, which will be out this March! Aside from…well, y’know (I know it’s a painting, which makes it more impressive, but what in the PicsArt is that album cover?? That font?? 😭 No hate to Dacus or to Will St. John, but…there could’ve been so many better choices…), I’m so excited for this new record—I’m loving the aesthetic of gilded museums and flowing dresses, as well as the orchestration that Dacus has brought to the record—or at least to “Limerence.”
The other day, I saw some reel or another about how a lot of modern songwriters see writing down explicit, confessional details (or details that sound authentic enough to be confessional) in their songs as an automatic way to get depth, and I halfway agree. I do think that with the steady stream of Phoebe Bridgers wannabes that have been pouring out of some factory in L.A. since 2021 has influenced that, but I don’t think it’s always lazy songwriting. Let’s just say that you can tell when it’s for soul-baring or clout-getting purposes. The key is knowing which details are important: vignettes or extended scenes that elevate the themes or contribute to evoking the intended emotion, something that Bridgers has always excelled at. I hate to say it, but the first lines of “Limerence” nearly feel like the anti-Bridgers method: “Natalie’s explaining limerence/Between taking hits from a blunt, high as a kite/While Roddy’s playing GTA/I swear, why is he so good at this game?/It should be cause for concern.” Against the delicate, piano-dominated orchestration of “Limerence” and the soaring warmth of her voice, such ordinary details feel shoehorned in, without as much connection to the rest of the song. It’s not as though she hasn’t written similarly observational lyrics, but the wording (and maybe the mention of some guy playing GTA with a harp in the background) doesn’t mesh with the rest of the track.
Key word here is nearly. I’ve been a fan of Dacus long enough to trust in the consistency of her songwriting—that bit really is a blip in the vast glory that is her catalogue. The rest of “Limerence” swiftly picks up the slack of those first handful of lyrics. Orchestral Lucy Dacus is, in my opinion, the best Lucy Dacus; guitar carries her humbly captivating gravitas perfectly, yet there’s something about strings, piano, and harp that carry it to new heights (see: “Body to Flame”). With the gentle tempo that recalls the reflection of silk off of marble floors during a ballroom waltz, Dacus drifts into melancholy rumination…as she often does, but it has yet to get old, especially since she’s at least self-aware of the fact (see: “The Shell”). Against the delicate plucking of harps and strings, she sings of drowning herself in distraction just to distance herself from the inevitable collapse of a relationship: “I want what we have/Our beautiful life/But the stillness, the stillness/Might eat me alive.” Carrying the leaden weight of wanting to break free, “Limerence” nervously toes circles around its subject, subtle enough between the folds of a voluminous dress to avoid the truth. The marriage of Dacus’ unbeatable voice and the almost hesitant restraint of the orchestra carve out that feeling of wanting to squirm free, but feeling the weight of severing the other person even more intensely. It’s no wonder that Dacus seemed to have the trouble she did releasing “Limerence” as a single—it was a last-minute call after releasing the much more lighthearted “Ankles” (also excellent), but I can imagine that it has that effect—too personal to keep close but also to release, yet a song that needed to be launched as one launches a satellite out into the vastness of space.
It’s…yeesh, huh? Couldn’t have expected less from Lucy Dacus…anyways, the music video is much more delightful, I promise (and see? 3:19, there’s your album cover):
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Can’t Take That Away – Steven Salvatore – “Is there a difference between lying to you/If it feels just as bad as telling thе truth?/I know that there is/And I know what I’ll pick…”
I’m about 6 months too late to make a “brat summer? Nah, Brian Eno summer” joke, but humor me, alright? We cling to what we can in these trying times. Let me have my shitty Brian Eno jokes. Brian Eno winter doesn’t have the same ring to it. (Now, Cocteau Twin-ter—okay, okay, fine, that one’s run its course, I know…)
Somehow, when compiling my list of my favorite album closers of all time, I forgot “Here Come the Warm Jets” entirely. At that point, it had been a solid year since I listened to Here Come the Warm Jets, and it had fallen off my radar. Only when I listened to Before and After Science: Ten Pictures did this track return to me. Obviously, the emotional impact of instrumental tracks can’t be understated, but it seems they’re often overlooked when they’re not film scores. Eno, to me, has a true gift of imbuing such clarity of emotion into his instrumentals (see: “The Big Ship”). Technically, “Here Come the Warm Jets” isn’t technically instrumental, but the vocals don’t come in at 2:33, and they’re so shrouded that they sound like vaguely nonsense chanting. (Eno has said that the lyrics are also meaningless and free-associative, as are many of the lyrics on the album.) Especially as a closing track, “Here Come the Warm Jets” is one of those songs that’s able to breathe life into its title without words. With the dense, buzzing hive of distortion, so thick you could stick your hand in it and feel the wings of millions of insects, it has the fuel and squeal of both tires screeching against the tarmac and the heat and urgency of a plane taking off.
Like “The Big Ship,” you can trace the slow, hopeful ascent of the song, a steady trajectory upwards as the music rises and fades into a cloud-streaked sky. And…okay, well, I know the dirtier interpretations of the whole “Here Come the Warm Jets” phrase, and the playing card on the album cover doesn’t help, but I’m choosing to believe that they’re jet planes, and I can feel the warmth of the rising, fiery hope propelling their engines skyward. Besides, Eno took the title from how he felt the guitar sounded—“like a tuned (warm) jet,” which he added into the track sheet. As with most anything he observes, it’s truly right on the money.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Activation Degradation – Marina J. Lostetter – I can imagine the warm atmosphere of this song amongst the machinery of this novel, humming along with all of the engines and parts.
Man, I admire committing to the bit, but how do you pronounce >>>>? Or >>>, where “Brean Down” is taken from, come to think of it? The only pronunciation I’ve seen is from BBC Radio, which, after some hesitation, called it “four chevrons.” I thought it was some sort of !!! (chk-chk-chk…don’t come for me, that’s all I know about them), but that doesn’t have the pretentious ring I thought it would have. Fascinating…you do you, Beak>. Can’t knock them, especially since one of their (now former, as of last year) members, Geoff Barrow, was from none other than PORTISHEAD back in the day…damn.
When my dad sent “Brean Down” to my brother and I, he described it as “if Radiohead and Shakey Graves had a baby,” and the more I listen to it, I can’t think of a more astute description. There’s a dread-inducing, dead-eyed drone aplenty, but with vocals from someone who’s practically a British Alejandro Rose-Garcia—it’s almost eerie how similar he and Billy Fuller sound. (The Britishness wasn’t even detectable…) Either way, it’s got a kind of creeping, cagey nausea to it that’s perfectly paired with the dusty brick walls and city streets of the music video, all while Fuller sings of alienation and empty absorption: “Tell me what I want and I feel like I do/Stuck in a cage and the people looking at you/Nobody’s perfect and even if you say so/We don’t like the music ’cause it ain’t up on the radio.” There’s your Radiohead for you…but really, Beak> excelled at making the song have the illusion of looseness, with the occasional pulse of the guitar and the drums, but still ultimate feel caged and immobile, as purposefully restrained as the artfully jerky moves of the music video’s danger, Vladislav Platonov. It’s not just the mechanical drone that haunts “Brean Down,” but the sensation as if something is slowly shadowing your figure—conformity, so it seems. Not a whole lot that induces dread as much as that.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Junker Seven – Olive J. Kelley – “Tell me what I want, and I feel like I do/Stuck in a cage and the people looking at you/Nobody’s perfect and even if you say so/We don’t like the music ’cause it ain’t up on the radio…”
Only took me three singles to use the actual Phonetics On & On cover for one of these graphics…I do it for the color scheme. After months, it finally fit. Sorta.
With every single from Phonetics On & On that comes out, I’m continually blown away by just how much Horsegirl have grown and the incredible talent they’ve managed to accrue with experience and maturity. From the beginning, they’ve known how to throw together a tight groove, but “Switch Over” is one of their most striking ones yet. It shines in the way that only freshly polished wood does, creating a catchy, dynamic tapestry with lyrics that, when put together, only consists of about nine words total, repeated over and over. It’s not unusual for Horsegirl, but god, it’s sure been refined from greatness to something fantastic. In limbo between the ’70s (if that wasn’t evident from the Lou Reed poster at the beginning of the video), the ’90s, and something uniquely current. Even with the rhythm kept on such a tight leash, there’s an undeniably current of ease and whimsy running through it—I think it’s the lack of restraint. They’re throwing everything into making something deceptively simple and cooped up, but the passion that they throw into it makes the edges, rigid upon first glance, wiggle with every strike of Gigi Reece’s cymbals. (Also, gotta love how they just disappear into nothingness the minute they hit the cymbals. Peak comedy.) Maybe it’s too early to say so, but Phonetics On & On is shaping up to be one of the best albums of the year—“2468” and “Julie” were hits from the start, but “Switch Over” is proof that we can’t predict the breadth of talent that Cheng, Lowenstein, and Reece (and Le Bon) have up their sleeves.
Man, I’m glad to live in a world with Horsegirl in it. Their only sin so far is refusing to tour near where I live.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Time and Time Again – Chatham Greenfield – rapid switching and repetition, but this time, it’s repeating the same day over and over (yes, this is basically lesbian Groundhog Day).
Aside from the crushing constraints of the music industry, especially for someone as influential as Lauryn Hill was at her peak…yeah, if I wrote anything as good as this, I’d be perfectly content to get it out there and then disappear from the face of the earth. Well, sure. The tax evasion and the random controversies aren’t exactly ideal. But again—if you release one album and become this influential, I don’t blame her. “Doo Wop (That Thing)” is an extension of that—it’s almost mythic in its construction, written and produced solely by Hill. Sure, I’m late to the party—it took me a minute to warm up to hip-hop as a whole, really—but better late than never.
In fact, I can’t think of a better time to return to this song. If there’s anything that’s essential in these times, it’s “Doo Wop (That Thing).” (The line “Talking out your neck/Saying you’re a Christian” comes to mind for…multiple reasons, related and unrelated to the song’s message.) You need armor against misogyny, materialism, and being seen only for your body and sexuality—it goes both ways, as Hill astutely points out. Patriarchy harms everybody. “Doo Wop (That Thing)” isn’t so much an anthem as it is instructional, and not even instructional in the “and THAT’S why…” way. It’s less of lines on a chalkboard than it is the calloused hand of a mentor, a mother, on your shoulder telling you not just to not make her past mistakes, but to know your damn worth. It’s critical. Men have always thought that they’re immune to the consequences of their actions (and the systems we have in place have reaffirmed that), but I’ve seen Trump’s reelection embolden them even more. Jesus Christ…if I had a son, I’d never kick him out of the house for being queer (a bit redundant, since I’m queer myself, but stay with me), but I WOULD if I found out that he was commenting “your body, my choice” under women’s posts online. CHRIST. Moments like these do seem like nothing has changed since 1998, but maybe that’s why Hill’s rallying cries resonates now more than ever. I want it on banners all across the country, from now until it’s no longer relevant: “Respect is just the minimum.” It’s a call for men to reconsider (and ENTIRELY reconstruct) how they treat women and for those women to realize the potential they have within themselves, restrained by misogynistic structures and societal expectations. The end of the first verse really does send chills down my spine: “Let it sit inside your head like a million women.” Remember those who came before you. You have your power, and their power.
Happy Thursday, bibliophiles! Happy Leap Day too, I suppose.
Already the end of February, huh? Good riddance honestly. Not that I had a bad month, but I’m just ready for all this gross, slushy weather to be over with.
Let’s begin, shall we?
GENERAL THOUGHTS:
February’s definitely still been busy, but now that I’m more used to my schedule and able to keep myself on track, it’s all good. Things are getting into gear with my classes, I’ve been able to make time to write and make art and hang out with friends, and the weather is starting to warm up. Key word is starting. We’ve had snow almost every Friday or weekend without fail for…probably a month or two? Colorado. The meteorological indecision never ends. But luckily, other than that first week, I’ve been able to blog somewhat steadily.
Reading has been similarly good—sadly, most of the books I’ve read for school so far haven’t been my favorites (apologies in advance to all the Jane Austen fans here), but other than that, there have been very few misses! I also shifted my focus to books by Black authors this month for Black History Month, and I’ve read both familiar and new-to-me authors and had tons of fun. I also ended up having two five-star reads in a month, so I’d call it good! I’m glad that I’ve been able to keep up my reading schedule, because there’s so many books I’m excited to read soon! A whole bunch of holds from Libby have been pouring in, all of which I’ve been eagerly anticipating…
Other than that, I’ve just been cranking out tons of writing, drawing here and there, watching Abbott Elementary, BEEF (absolutely SHAKESPEAREAN lemme tell you), The Bear (ngl I’m mostly just in it for the needle drops), and Constellation (WHAT IS GOING ON 😀), and being in a near-constant state of being on my toes since I never know when we’re gonna get dumped with snow.
Oh, and I think we have the best possible end to a month that I’ve had in several months…BABE. WAKE UP. NEW ST. VINCENT JUST DROPPED. WE’RE GETTING THE ALBUM, TODAY’S THE DAAAAAAAAAAAY
APRIL 29TH CANNOT COME SOON ENOUGH.
READING AND BLOGGING:
I read 17 books this month! Definitely more than I expected to read, but I’m about at the point in the year where I’m familiar enough with my schedule that I can squeeze in more time for reading. There were definitely a few stinkers in the mix, but I had not one but two five star reads this month, which was pretty incredible! My eternal thanks to Audre Lorde and R.F. Kuang.
I believe I heard about The Melancholy of Summer somewhere around the blogosphere when it first came out last May, and I figured it would be a good piece of fiction between several hefty fantasy reads. Louisa Onomé is a new-to-me author, and now that I’ve read her newest work, I don’t regret it—a coming-of-age story that pulls no punches.
Summer is alone. Waiting to turn 18 and gain her independence, she has been staying at friends’ houses after her parents were convicted of fraud and went on the run without warning. Left to her own devices, Summer has been able to keep her status a secret, but after her counselor discovers that she has been living alone, she’s sent to live with a cousin she barely knows. Struggling to balance her double life with a cousin who’s barely more independent than she is, Summer is faced with a myriad of difficult decisions for the future. But Summer is left with a burning desire to find out what really happened to her parents, and it will take her to places she didn’t bargain on going to.
First off: this isn’t about the book itself so much as the marketing. About the marketing…whose idea was it to tag this book as “sad girl summer”? How do you see a book tackling a myriad of sensitive topics, including but not limited to parental abandonment, homelessness, and familial betrayal and go “ah, yes, ✨sad girl summer✨” WHAT? I just wanna talk to whoever made that decision. Just a quick chat. WHY? And I thought trope marketing couldn’t get any worse…
All this is to say that I’m saying these things because it’s more than The Melancholy of Summer deserves. Situated on the older side of YA, it’s not just a coming-of-age story: it’s an unflinching portrayal of the topics I discussed earlier. There’s no sugarcoating or dancing around the reality of issues here. It’s a heartbreaking novel, but it’s not one that employs horrific events for shock value—they’re an authentic consequence of Summer’s circumstances. I haven’t read a lot of novels—especially not YA novels—that have dealt with these kinds of subjects, but I really respect the route that Onomé chose to go down in terms of portraying them. Although I can’t speak to their accuracy, it feels like an unapologetic respectful depiction of parental abandonment and homelessness, along with the emotional turmoil that brings.
Going off of that, Summer’s character felt just as authentic. She really feels like a teenager, and not in a forced way; it really should be a given for a YA novel, but you’d be surprised at how many authors miss the mark. Summer isn’t just a teenager—she’s a messy one, an emotional one, and sometimes a brazen and impulsive one, but never once did it feel like Onomé was forcing it down our throats that she’s 17. Summer’s yearning for independence felt all too real, especially given her circumstances; none of the pent-up anger that she expresses felt out of place, and none of her emotional outbursts were without reason. Summer felt, more than anything, just how someone with teenage, volatile emotions would feel having to grapple with circumstances out of her control, and that’s a large part of why The Melancholy of Summer was so successful for me.
That being said, although most of the plot points did feel appropriately and respectfully handled, much of the development (or lack thereof) with the character of Olu felt very rushed and unresolved. The plot point about her being groomed, as well as the plot of Summer trying to help her out at the venue, felt like it was tossed in as a slice of filler, and therefore felt half-baked at best. With how authentically Onomé portrayed a lot of the topics in the novel, it seemed uncharacteristic that something as serious as grooming was brushed over so quickly and resolved in a way that could only be described as unsatisfying. It was all but a footnote, and it seemed like it wanted to be a major plot point, but with how unceremoniously it was shoved into the middle of the novel, it felt poorly handled.
This was a symptom of a larger issue in The Melancholy of Summer overall; other than Summer, hardly any of the side characters get the development that they need. Save for Summer’s aunt, the side characters that we’re meant to care for almost as much as Summer were often one-note and tossed aside whenever the plot called for it. Tanya, Summer’s cousin and guardian, could have been a vital character to explore, and although we do get the sense that she still feels like a kid and doesn’t know any more than Summer does about navigating life, she shows hardly any growth throughout the course of the novel. The same can be said for Olu, Sid, and many of the other people that we meet. It was clear that Summer got the most attention, and yes, she’s the protagonist, but that doesn’t mean that the side characters had to be left in the dust.
All in all, a heartbreaking and authentically-written novel with a vibrant protagonist but a not-so-vibrant supporting cast. 3.5 stars!
The Melancholy of Summer is a standalone, but Louisa Onomé is also the author of Twice as Perfect, Like Home, and Pride and Joy.
Today’s song:
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
The Bookish Mutant 