Long Snake Moan – The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: British women dominating rock music for decades, American women giving the gays what they want, and Thom Yorke’s seeming inability to make a bad song since 1995.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 2/23/25

“Long Snake Moan” – PJ Harvey

Finally, finally, I’ve listened to a full PJ Harvey album! Took me long enough. Me and my arbitrary rules for listening to albums that I break half the time. Anyway. To Bring You My Love? I know this is the most vague descriptor you could give for an album, but it truly ROCKS. So many of these tracks embody the raw power that rock n’ roll can have. Not just that, but it feels like a love letter to the rich ancestry of the blues in rock n’ roll. Even without as much background knowledge of the blues, you can just feel the grimy, grungy crawling with threads of DNA in the history of blues in every growl that Harvey lets out. The desperation and wayward storytelling of “To Bring You My Love” and “Teclo” could’ve been fragments lost in the American south from decades before Harvey released the album. It feels to me like an example of the enduring power of any kind of music—here we have a white British woman in the mid-’90s taking inspiration from music from the ’20s-’40s made primarily by Black people all the way across the ocean, here in the States. Who would’ve thought.

One caveat with me saying that the album rocks: it’s got a relatively slow tempo, and we don’t get into the real guitars-going-crazy rock for a few songs. “Long Snake Moan” is one such song, and it knows it—Harvey’s sly “mmm-hmm” before the guitars slam into you like the brunt force of an avalanche is more proof of a smirk than a visual could ever be. She knows she’s about to absolutely wallop her listeners. And “Long Snake Moan” is one of the most enduring songs on the album. The title is a nod to Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Black Snake Moan,” and though the sound differs, the desire of it is what fuels both; Harvey recalls a lust so all-consuming that “You’ll be drowning/Hell’s below, God above/All drunk on my love.” With every impassioned bellow, you can feel the ragged passion sloughing off every note, desperate yet distinctly conscious of its towering presence and power.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Familiar – Leigh Bardugo – “In my dreaming/You’ll be drowning/Hell’s low, God above/All drunk on my love…”

“Ride” – The Vines

I was this close to calling The Vines Britpop, but as it turns out, they’re technically nothing of the sort. Not because of the sound, which very edges closer to the rockier side of Britpop, but because they’re Australian. I don’t want to risk the wrath of any Australians, so consider myself checked before I’ve gotten hypothetically wrecked. Oops.

Regardless of whether or not they wanted to hop on the bandwagon, “Ride” feels firmly between Blur’s grunge-parody-that-became-kinda-grunge self-titled album and Supergrass. (Craig Nicholls also kinda has that Britpop, bad-boy frontman look on lock. The bangs, the smolder…) And “Ride” is such an adrenaline rush of a rocker. Guitar tone? Heavy and clean in perfect balance. Vocals? Though Nicholls’ voice doesn’t stand out to me, that distorted scream in between the chorus reminds of the best of 2000’s rock. The art of the rock scream is a sacred one—a well-placed scream can make or break a song, and Nicholls’ is simultaneously put in the spotlight and tucked into the crashing rhythms of the chorus, a grungy accent that drives up the fuel-burning energy of the track. It’s got a rasp that’s perfect for just what it is—a headbangable, garage-y rock track begging for a flimsy stereo speaker to be blasted from.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Victories Greater Than Death (Unstoppable, #1) – Charlie Jane Anders – the adrenaline-rushed, breakneck pace of this novel matches the reckless, rocking urgency of this track.

“Best Guess” – Lucy Dacus

This video is so cute and gay that I can almost ignore how annoying Cara Delevingne is…oh, no, wait, she’s caressing Lucy Dacus and hamming it up for the camera. Of course.

Either way, 2025 is shaping up to be an excellent year for music about tender love between queer women, between Send a Prayer My Way and everything that Lucy Dacus is putting out (aside from “Limerence”…oof). As much as Dacus’ emotional hard-hitters have a soft spot in my heart (was my 18-year-old brain permanently altered by the “Night Shift” belt? Perhaps), she makes tender, gentle love songs look easy. It rings similarly to her pair of Carole King covers (“Home Again” and “It’s Too Late”) from 2022, with the same slow rhythm and inner warmth; even with the fleeting mentions of over-the-moon obsession (“Tracing your tan lines/Making you mind/If this doesn’t work out/I’ll lose my mind”), it’s a very grounded, worldly kind of love song, in typical Dacus fashion. The first verse of the song centers around caressing the more physical aspects of her lover’s body, but it almost immediately professes that “I love your body/I love your mind/They will change/So will I.” So simply stated, but immediately after that, Dacus professes her undying love. That to me, feels like real love—appreciating your partner for everything that they are, impermanent as it may be. It shouldn’t be groundbreaking lyrical ground, and I don’t think it is, but it’s always refreshing when it comes up, with so many love songs focusing on youth and impermanent, surface-level qualities of people. Plus, “Best Guess” is just such a lovely, catchy song. That guitar riff at the end? Absolutely SUCCULENT. Waiter, more Lucy Dacus guitar work, please! Best-of lists are inevitably subjective, but you didn’t get named the 213th best guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone for nothing, queen! Plus, again…it’s gay. More music videos full of queer people AND queer people being happy, please!!

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Navigating With You – Jeremy Whitley and Cassio Ribeiro – soft, tender, sapphic love…and bonding over manga.

“There, There” – Radiohead

It always comes back to Radiohead. I don’t talk about music videos as extensively as much as I do the songs themselves, but “There, There” has to be one of my favorite Radiohead music videos of all time. Maybe my favorite? Not sure. Directed by Chris Hopewell, it shows Thom Yorke, his movements edited to give the appearance that he’s a stop-motion puppet, wandering into a Beatrix Potter storybook; after peering into miniature houses hollowed into trees, he finds squirrels smoking pipes, a weasel riding a Penny-farthing, all manner of rodents having a feast, and a cat couple’s wedding ceremony officiated by a crow. Of course, Thom Yorke breaks the first rule of the Brothers Grimm (from which he and Hopewell drew inspiration for the video), that being “don’t steal the shiny clothes off of that ominous-looking tree.” You can imagine how well that goes for him. It goes contrary to the largely technological, dystopian aesthetic that has endured throughout Radiohead’s discography, despite their many changes in sound. Up until The King of Limbs, their music was rarely associated with such naturalistic imagery, but that kind of fairytale darkness, paired with the lyrics, makes for a different kind of eeriness than what they usually brew. It all makes the song’s alternate title, “The Boney King of Nowhere,” all the more fitting.

Now, the lyrics…”We are accidents waiting to happen?” WHEW. I always forget about that one…for a band that seems to churn out unforgettable lyrics at a concerning rate, even this feels like one of the most masterful lines they’ve ever come up with. Like the gleaming coat and boots that Yorke finds in the forest, “There, There” is a song of being tugged in a myriad of directions—likely all the wrong ones. In typical Radiohead fandom fashion, most people seem to be divided about what kind of temptation it’s specifically talking about—general religious, personal relationships, you get the picture. The emphasis on the personal pronouns—”I go walking in your landscape,” “We are accidents waiting to happen”—lead me to believe closer to the latter, though I and We can easily be other concepts. There’s an intoxication to “There, There,” a painfully magnetic urge to enter into something dangerous, something that will by all accounts destroy you, but the irresistible temptation remains: “There’s always a siren/Singing you to shipwreck/Steer away from these rocks/We’d be a walking disaster.” One part of you cries “Heaven sent you to me,” the other cries “We’d be a walking disaster.” The chorus of “Just ’cause you feel it/Doesn’t mean its there” is the perfect embodiment of keeping up the façade of devotion—or any kind of emotion that has such a sway that you’re convinced of its reality, even when it has no roots. The whole band makes this spectacle of temptation feel like a trek deep into the mouth of a cave; Phil Selway leans on the thumping of the tom-toms, creating a truly cavernous shell for the song, while the reverb on Jonny Greenwood’s and Ed O’Brien’s guitars echo as though confined by the same dappled walls.

I get so hyperbolic with Radiohead. God, I know I do. I swear that past a certain point (1995?), a good 75% of their songs are tiny masterclasses in how to be creative—how to craft an atmosphere, how to write a gut-punching lyric, how to make music that sticks.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Someone You Can Build a Nest In – John Wiswell – “Why so green and lonely?/Heaven sent you to me/We are accidents waiting to happen…”

“The World’s Biggest Paving Slab” – English Teacher

So listen. I haven’t seen Frank. The one with Michael Fassbender, right? I’ve been meaning to watch it for years, but I haven’t gotten around to it. Should this music video give me enough of an idea?

~~My entirely arbitrary album listening system~~ Destiny has not yet decided whether or not English Teacher will end up being a band I actually get into, or if I’ll resign myself to going “oh, this song is GREAT” and put off listening to them for another three to five business years. They’ve only got one album, This Could Be Texas, so I really don’t have an excuse. It’s on the list, though. And that one album won last year’s Mercury Prize, so it has to be worth it—not necessarily by virtue of being award-winning, but beating out Beth Gibbons and Charli XCX isn’t exactly an easy feat, even for an award that seems to cater more to alternative artists. Either way, “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab” is proof that no matter what, some part of me will always be attracted to any kind of alt/indie rock coming out of the UK. Something must be in the water there. Or maybe I inherited the gene from my dad, who spent his high school days listening to Julian Cope. Probably both.

Even just from this glimpse, I can already see how much of an avant-garde sensibility that Lily Fontaine and company have; their chord progressions seem to slant ever so angularly, prickly and particular, until the chorus lets them dissipate like fog. The lyrics are a collage of people and curios from Fontaine’s hometown of Colne; being at university for four years gave her the space to look back on it: “witnessing the social, economic and political issues that exist around there in juxtaposition with the beauty of the landscape and the characters that live within in it.” “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab” evokes everything from banks to remnants of the witch trials and a far-right terrorist—a complex history within what, as far as I can tell, is an unassuming, rural place on the surface. Through Fontaine, Colne itself announces its presence as something to be “Walk[ed] all over,” yet also as something containing multitudes beneath the time-weathered stone, for those who care to notice. Fontaine’s vocals switch from airy in the chorus to spoken-word in the blink of an eye, but both ring equally as cries of complicated pride: “I am the world’s biggest paving slab/And the world’s smallest celebrity.”

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Lagoon – Nnedi Okorafor – the place couldn’t be further away, but it’s a similar concept united around the soul of a place—in this case, Lagos, Nigeria.

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 been a longtime fan of Nnedi Okorafor, albeit on and off—I picked up Akata Witch back when I was in middle school, and then discovered her adult books when I was in high school. Since then, I’ve been a fan of her quirky brand of Africanfuturism. You can imagine my surprise when I found out that Death of the Author was not an addendum to her long sci-fi fantasy canon, but instead literary fiction—albeit, with a dash of sci-fi. Either way, the switch from genre to genre is as smooth as I’d expect from Nnedi Okorafor.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Death of the Author – Nnedi Okorafor

Zelu is on the verge of giving up her dream to be a writer. After a pile of rejected manuscripts and a botched job as a professor, she moves back in with her overbearing, judgmental family as she attempts to get back on her feet. But when a spark suddenly comes to her, she has a bestseller on her hands: Rusted Robots. As she grapples with the price of fame and the mobility—and simultaneous lack thereof—Zelu must come to terms with her own identity as she explores the fabrication of it that the public has created for her.

TW/CW: substance abuse, ableism (external & internalized), loss of a parent, near-death situations, kidnapping

Of all people, I didn’t expect Nnedi Okorafor to take the leap into literary fiction, and after I found out the switch in genre, I didn’t expect to enjoy Death of the Author as much as I did. Thankfully, it’s only really literary in the sense that it’s contemporary, realistic fiction…mostly. The woven tapestry of Zelu’s real life and her creation, Rusted Robots, turned out to be a powerful meditation on the nature of art and identity.

Once again, make no mistake: this is fiction, but it’s not entirely just fiction. The assumption is that it’s a handful of years in the future; Zelu has fairly futuristic, adaptive prosthetics that are still in beta testing, and she tests out an automated cab service that’s been newly introduced to the streets of Chicago. Yet Okorafor takes the same skilled hand that she uses to craft intricate, far-future worlds and translates it into the idiosyncrasies of modern life, from the gauntlet of social media fame (and harassment) to being in the confines of a chaotic, judgmental family. For every character that was introduced, Okorafor matched them with an unforgettable personality, even if they only appeared for a few pages. All of the complex, rapidly fluctuated emotions were depicted with sensitivity, from the highest joys to the deepest pits of anguish and the plentiful uncertainty in between. Even without her talent for worldbuilding, Okorafor is a force to be reckoned with, and Death of the Author is proof.

I was hesitantly optimistic that Okorafor was writing a disabled main character again; Noor was a great novel, but from my memory, there was quite a bit of internalized ableism in the main character that went unaddressed. (However, somehow I didn’t know that Okorafor has experience with disability and was herself temporarily paralyzed, so my bad.) The setting couldn’t be more different for Death of the Author, but Okorafor has certainly stepped up her game as far as writing disabled characters—and part of it is that Zelu is unlikable. More often than not, you can at least sympathize with her, but at times, you can see her for the insufferable, argumentative, reckless stoner that her family sometimes sees her as. Of course, not every disabled character has to be likeable, but her relative un-likeability made some of the novel’s most powerful commentary shine even more. As she grapples with her meteoric rise to literary fame, Zelu’s fans place the burden of her being a “role model” for a number of communities: Black, woman, Nigerian-American, disabled. Being a role model can be powerful, but as soon as people saw Zelu as more of a role model than a person, it disregarded her humanity in an entirely different way. She became an example, not an autonomous being—something that is intimately tied to what many disabled people experience. In that way, Zelu represents a leap in how Okorafor writes her disabled protagonists—not just independent, but human.

I don’t have a ton of experience with meta-fiction—it’s not a matter of me not liking it, I just hardly get around to reading much of it—but Death of the Author pulls it off with ease. If you’re still not convinced that Okorafor’s literary fiction isn’t for you, you’ll at least be tided over by her signature brand of Africanfuturism, complete with the landscape of a futuristic Nigeria, robots, and appearances from Udide. It’s somehow a delightful vision of the future, where types of robots have proliferated across the face of the Earth in the face of the extinction of the human race. It’s threaded into Zelu’s life, yet it’s also a clever distillation of the novel’s themes; Ankara’s struggle with coexisting with Ijele inside of his head, as well as the changing world around him, spoke to the themes of embracing collaboration and the blurry relationship between creator and reader.

Which brings me to the whole “death of the author” part. I’ll admit, the Roland Barthes quote from the (original) “Death of the Author” gave me literary theory flashbacks. But as a grounding concept for the book, I love how Okorafor’s Death of the Author playfully pokes fun at the concept. Here, it’s as though the concept has been subsumed by the publishing industry; instead of taking Zelu’s novel as tied to her heritage and her disabled identity, the world swallows it and regurgitates a whitewashed, Americanized movie adaptation that the public eats up. (“Look what they’ve done to my song, Ma…”) Yet at the same time, Zelu is confronted by readers who insistently pester her, insisting that everything in the novel is fully tied to her identity and selfhood. Death of the Author’s strength is the clarity it finds in the balance. Zelu’s work is intimately tied to her identity, but just as intimately tied to her imagination. Her being marginalized meant that people saw her work as surely being solely about her identity, but that wasn’t the whole story either. (The note in the acknowledgements about Okorafor talking to her daughter about worrying that readers would think that Zelu is her makes the point all the more clear.) In this case, fence-sitting is the most reasonable position I can think of—to consider reader interpretation first and foremost can have fruitful results, but to deny the lived experience veers into foolishness, and vice versa; Okorafor’s embrace of the area in the middle is what made the message so clear. Reading and world-creation is a twin act, created both by ourselves and those who receive our work—it’s not a simple question of one or the other.

All in all, a surprising novel that at first seemed like a left turn, but turned out to be another testament to Nnedi Okorafor’s enduring talent. 4 stars!

Death of the Author is a standalone, but Nnedi Okorafor is also the author of several books for adults, teens, and children, including the Binti trilogy (Binti, Home, and The Night Masquerade) the Nsibidi Scripts series (Akata Witch, Akata Warrior, and Akata Woman), Lagoon, Noor, the Desert Magician’s Duology (Shadow Speaker and Like Thunder), and many more.

Today’s song: