Tag: Lucy Dacus

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 3/31/24

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles, Happy Trans Day of Visibility, and Happy Easter, for those celebrating! I hope this week has treated you well. 🐰🏳️‍⚧️

For once, I’ve got a color scheme that lines up with the festive colors. Enjoy it while it lasts….either way, this week: songs about love, songs that feel like being in a swimming pool, and songs about jelly.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 3/31/24

“Freedom of Speak (We Got Three Minutes)” – De La Soul

It’s been about a year since De La Soul’s music triumphantly returned to streaming after decades of legal battles, and about a year since my De La Soul awakening. Three Feet High and Rising is now permanently etched into my map of my freshman year of college; I spent a good two weeks with that delightfully creative and unabashedly silly album as my soundtrack, and it put a spring in my step even when the weather remained cold enough for those nasty piles of sludge and dirt leftover from at least three separate snowstorms to stay on the sidewalk. I listened to it in spring, but it’s undeniably a summer album, all bright colors and jumping joy.

Three Feet celebrated its 35-year anniversary earlier this month (3/3), and with it came a handful of demos that got left off of the extensive; it feels like a Kate Bush or self-titled St. Vincent situation (and no, I will not stop shoehorning the latter album into every conversation, this is just how it is talking to me) where they were just cooking so much and without any dilution of talent, so they just had to leave a few tracks on the back burner so as not to a) overstuff the album and b) blow our minds more than they already had. I haven’t had the chance to dig through the other demos and scrapped songs that they released, but it’s clear from “Freedom of Speak (We Got Three Minutes)” that it was a tough decision to leave them off Three Feet High and Rising. Never once was their joyous spirit dimmed, and this track is proof. After a conversation with my family, I concluded that part of what endeared me to De La Soul (and a lot of other hip-hop artists at the time) is that they lacked the machismo that defined the genre in the decades to come; not to get all “mOdERn mUSiC sUCks” with it, but I do find myself missing the early days when people like them or A Tribe Called Quest just released their collage hip-hop with subject matters that, most often, just ended up as anecdotes about their days and the snacks that they liked—or, in De La Soul’s case, a PSA about wearing deodorant that clocks in at less than a minute long. (“THAT’S RIGHT! YOU SMELL 🫵”) Who knows why that mentality got left in the dust; I bet it hasn’t gone away entirely, but I’m not well versed in hip-hop enough to know where it ended up. “Freedom of Speak” has a similarly stream-of-consciousness premise, with a good chunk of it being Posdnuos and Trugoy (rest easy) talking about their routines—taking a shower, cooking breakfast, shopping with girlfriends. But even with such a mundane subject matter, they managed to inject it with the same infectious joy that made the whole of Three Feet High and Risin so memorable—ordinary things feel like the smoothest, most cheerful events to grace the earth, and all of it is wrapped around a fake construct: being forced to cram all of their musings into three minutes. They got cut off at 2:51, unfortunately. Oops.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The World of Edena – Jean Giraud Mœbius – okay, fine. You got me. I’m double-dipping again. But there’s something similar about the ways that Mœbius and De La Soul are creative—and delightfully technicolor.

“When” – Deau Eyes

Lucy Dacus brought me here; while I was doing some digging on “My Mother & I” a few weeks ago, I found a thread talking about the performance with her mom on backing vocals, and a user mentioned seeing her with Deau Eyes as the opener on at least one of her tours. They both hail from Virginia and seem to be on good terms with each other, and any friend of Lucy Dacus (minus T*ylor Sw*ft) is a friend of mine, so I figured I would give her a listen. And…I can’t get fully on board with most of her style— it ranges from somewhat experimental indie to pure twang, but most of it comes off quite forced. And the fact that a lot of the marketing around her weirdly centers around her being a gemini, of all things (?), is certainly odd, but…if that’s her worst sin, then I can let it pass. That one’s probably more on her marketing team than on her.

“When,” against some of the other Deau Eyes songs I listened to, sounds more like 2020’s Sleater-Kinney, which is a win I’ll certainly take. Even if my enjoyment of Deau Eyes extends mostly to this song, it’s a smoothly urgent indie shuffle, rattling along with Ali Thibodeau’s (ohhhhhhh, so that’s where the name came from) vocals, which hold the melody steadier than an anchor holds down a time-battered ship in the stormy sea. Delayed guitar riffs travel in neat circles around the centerpiece of Thibodeau’s voice, playing tricks on my ears as I try to pinpoint exactly where they’re coming from—a single center or hovering all around? It’s almost dizzying on headphones, but Thibodeau keeps it reserved enough to not overwhelm the song. In this case, it’s the lyrics that are the spotlight; in a world where we are told that we are naught but products to be sold, when our bodily wellness is the cost for being able to navigate through the world with any kind of arbitrary success, Thibodeau has a bridge that couldn’t be any more relevant: “Hey, I see you/You matter more than you think you do/Each and every move, it matters too/So set the mood.” Just like how Thibodeau’s vocals anchor the music, she anchors the space around her, encouraging us to follow suit; the lyrics are simple, but undeniably true. Maybe I’m not sold on every part of Deau Eyes’ catalogue, but good on her for spreading the good word of letting yourself take up space in a world that wants to make us small. It’s what you deserve.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

VenCo – Cherie Dimaline – the time has come to reclaim your space, and by “reclaim your space” I mean “exact feminist witchcraft justice upon the skeevy, corrupt white men who wanted to take that away.”

“Jelly Filled Coffin” – Hether

Sometimes, you have a long and sentimental reason for finding and subsequently liking a song. Sometimes Apple Music digs it up, slaps it on the abject depression “Chill” playlist, and you listen to it just because of the name. It’s like “Crocodile Tears and the Velvet Cosh”—if there is ever another song called “Jelly Filled Coffin,” they’ll be copying this guy.

I first talked about Hether (a.k.a. Paul Castelluzzo) a little over a year ago, and I didn’t expect to be talking about him again—”Shy” was sweetly catchy, but I didn’t find myself wanting to uncover more of his music. I guess I’m a lazy, no-good, Gen Z slave to That Damn Phone then, since Apple Music did the discovering for me, but…for once, the algorithm did something good, unlike the time that of Montreal’s nearly 10-minute-long suicidal ideation “No Conclusion” landed on, of all places, the “Get Up!” playlist. I can’t make this shit up. At least we can take comfort in the fact that no human mind could fuck a playlist up that badly. You have to take the wins when they aren’t blatantly the product of automation. Even though Play it Pretty was released only three years after Hether Who? – EP, there seems to have been a shift towards the meandering for Hether; “Jelly Filled Coffin” has the glassy eyes of the peak of summer, humid and delirious from staring too long in the sun. The first comparison that came to mind was a less psychedelic Ty Segall—they have a similar delivery, drifting like a lazy river in the public pool, but just as brightly chlorine-colored. Every line feels like it’s being dictated from somewhere in the depths of the same pool, rippling and unnaturally blue (or is that the jelly? Depends on the jelly we’re talking about). The concept of a jelly-filled coffin was such an oddball pairing that I almost didn’t think of how oddly tragic it could potentially be—presumably being lowered six feet under, but trapped in a substance slippery enough to give you the illusion of movement. That would explain the resignation with which most of the lyrics are delivered: “Rip it out from my chest/Keep the love and leave the rest/Tether me to a post/A parasite chose you, the host.” And yet, even with the exhaustion creeping through the ripples of distortion, it never feels truly sad—it’s more delirium than outright depression, sleepwalking on the borders between sadness and just being tired. My dad made the comparison of his lyrics to Robyn Hitchcock, and many of his songs have a similar quality; on anybody else, it might sound tragic, but here, it could just be as deep as words strung together that sounded unique.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

In the Watchful City – S. Qiouyi Lu – a meandering body-hop between the stories of strangers inhabiting a strange world.

“Nostalgia” – Alice Phoebe Lou

Like Hether, I never expected to be wandering back around to Alice Phoebe Lou. I think it was around two years ago that I found her through “Witches,” which came from an old high school friend after I posted one of those “send me a song that reminds me of you” question boxes on my Instagram story. I was glad to have a new song to spin around in my head, and I was gladder still that something as gently bubbly as “Witches” reminded them of me. It sneaks back into my shuffle every now and then, and I never complain when it does.

“Witches” and “Nostalgia” are only about a year apart in terms of release date, but both of them are broadly categorized under blues; the former doesn’t feel like blues at all—more sparkly indie pop than anything, but I have no purview to talk about how blues has evolved as a genre over the decades—but the latter certainly does. Fitting that this song is called “Nostalgia” in the first place, since all of it evokes a time capsule made of sea glass, harkening back to the slow, swaying melodies of the ’40s and ’50s, but with a distinctly modern touch. If there was one lyric that would properly encapsulate this song, it would be this: “It feels like swimming/Swimming with my eyes closed.” Indeed, the soft organs and Lou’s voice feel like they’re being projected from inside of an underwater cave, a rich gray until the light from a crack in the ceiling makes the water dance on the ripples in the rock. With every lyric, you travel further in the water in slow motion, the foam from your impact fanning out around you, bubbles swirling upwards as you close your eyes, letting the waves kiss your skin. And yet, it feels just as vividly like a ballroom slow dance, engulfed in golden light as the sunset fades into night and drinks clink all around you. Whichever effect Lou was going for—or neither of those at all—is suited to her voice; her voice dips from a quiet, bluesy coo to a musical exhale that echoes through the caverns with ethereal gentleness.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Last Night at the Telegraph Club – Malinda Lo – lesbian love in the 1950’s, with a dash of butterflies and moonlight kisses.

“Charm You” – Samia

This is one of maybe…three or four Samia songs that I’ve listened to so far, and I wish I liked them all as much as I liked this one. Then again, there’s only a certain type of as-of-yet undiscovered musician that can cover The Magnetic Fields’ masterpiece “Born on a Train” (which I reviewed about a year ago!), and…I hate to say it, but Samia is not that kind of musician. But I’ll let it slide—Arcade Fire covered the same song ages ago, and they didn’t quite pull it off either; they have the extensive instrumentation to theoretically pull it off, but the only recordings I could find were ones where the sound quality isn’t great and Win Butler was singing like he had the world’s most painful case of strep throat, so…not exactly their proudest moment either. It’s hard to cover near-perfection. I feel like Peter Gabriel has been one of the only people I can think of to cover The Magnetic Fields well and not make it sound either more melodramatic than it ever needed to be or just plain bland (seems there’s no in-between), but also, that’s Peter Gabriel. I should also mention The Shins and their excellent cover of “Strange Powers”—that, at least, was perfectly suited to James Mercer’s penchant for bare emotion, and even though The Magnetic Fields have such a dense orchestration to a lot of their songs, making this one acoustic wasn’t as risky of a move as it seems—Mercer makes it work beautifully. (Childhood staple, too.) We aren’t worthy of The Magnetic Fields, and we are similarly not worthy of Peter Gabriel or The Shins. It’s a hard act to follow. So props to her for trying, at least. Chances are I’m just too attached to “Born on a Train,” but I feel like to cover it, you’ve got to back up all that emotion with the toy-train-on-plastic-tracks instrumentals and faded grandeur peeking out from behind the curtain.

That aside, Samia captured something truly rare in “Charm You”—there’s something about it that sets it apart from all the other songs of hers I’ve listened to. Some of her other songs feel like she’s stretching her voice too thin, but the warm wails of this track perfectly suit the mood she’s meticulously crafted—a love song, but not one of wanting to chase a lover down or get them to like her. I’ve unintentionally bunched together too many songs that inherently feel like swimming, but this song in particular is a dive into a hot tub, a slow, boiling love that seeks to bare its soft parts: all of the pretense of a crush is gone, and all that’s left is to fall in deep: “What if we could shut up for an hour or two/Quiet, memorizing what the people do/Wouldn’t have to try and find myself in you.” The style of songwriting that Samia has taken is an approach I’ve seen a lot of indie pop artists take—collaging a hodgepodge of vignettes together to form a cohesive story—often a love story. It’s a move right out of the Phoebe Bridgers/Arlo Parks/Lucy Dacus/[fill in the blank with your sadgirl of choice] playbook, but what makes them stand out from the others is the emotion that strings them together—it’s not random moments just to flash your songwriting chops. That’s a trap I’ve seen a lot of songwriters fall into, but for once, Samia seems to have the writing flair to pull it off; every lyric on “Charm You” sounds like a red-cheeked confession with a bashful smile, giggling at some charmingly awkward memory: “Baby, let me show you the synthetic pond/Couldn’t we believe it was the hand of God/Making water boogie to a Ke$ha song?” Maybe it’s the way that the word “boogie” feels so out of place that it fits in perfectly or the image that it creates (I can see the warm, blue-lit water rippling from here, wherever there even is), but Samia’s vignettes are ones that stick, and not ones that just toss in a fruit metaphor and talk about smoking on the porch, or something. Like the album cover of Honey, there’s a blue warmth about “Charm You” that instantly charms the heart.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Margo Zimmerman Gets the Girl – Brianna R. Shrum and Sara Waxelbaum – trying to be someone you’re not—even if it’s the prevailing queer stereotype—isn’t the surefire way of making someone like you, but maybe tutoring and mutual pining will…

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

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Sunday Songs: 3/17/24

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Despite appearances, you theoretically would not actually be able to pinch this week’s graphic for not wearing green, despite wearing mostly brown. Please give it up for Lucy Dacus and her green top.

Also, most of the songs this week are either bittersweet or just………flat-out sad, so…apologies in advance.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 3/17/24

“Sarah” – Alex G

I knew it. I knew I’d fall into the Alex G trap eventually. My Car Seat Headrest-poisoned brain finally succumbed to another sad white guy with voice cracks and bedroom recording equipment. It was only a matter of time.

I genuinely can’t decide if “Sarah” is fully tragic, or if there’s some sweetness in there. The atmosphere that Alex G creates certainly leans toward the former; listening to this song is a blur from a car window, sticky with the humidity of the South as you drive past flat, dismal lawns and white-painted houses that have stood there so long that the paint has peeled and molded to brown in the corners. It dwells in a kind of dream-space where the narrator is hesitant to leave, knowing that the consequences will crash down upon them the minute they step foot into the less-green grass on the other side of the fence. Again, my mind has permanently been altered by listening to too many of the earlier, lo-fi Car Seat Headrest songs when I was at the tender, impressionable age of 14, but there’s an enchanting melancholy of the cheap distortion on the guitar and the synths that drift like ribbons underwater, each note trailing off like a thought unsaid. In a way, “Sarah” is a kind of love song, but with a love that’s overshadowed by the damning realization that you’re not the right person for the one you love. And yet, the narrator cannot extricate themselves from Sarah, wanting to cling to her desperately, but knowing that the more they stay, the more they’ll destroy her. It doesn’t feel like a self-hating, depreciating kind of awareness—it’s a crushing realization that the narrator really is, in some way, in a place where they’ll only drag the people they love down with them, against all of their wishes. That’s what makes it tragic to me; Alex G sings half of the song in a higher pitch that drives his voice to shattering cracks, and you can hear his voice break as he sings the line “she loves me like a dog.” The distorted howl of “did I make a mistake?” feels like it drifts up into a smoky, firework-scented sky as it dissipates into digital nothingness, an anguished thought birthed in the depths of introspection.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Man o’ War – Cory McCarthy – a painful and poignant journey of learning to love yourself and other people.

“Houdini” – Kate Bush

Two years ago, I doubt I would have listened to The Dreaming in full. I warmed up to Kate Bush’s earlier stuff more easily, but with the onset of the most recent season of Stranger Things, I was just kind of Kate Bush’d out, which, for a woman of her insane talent, it kind of embarrassing to say. I just couldn’t turn a corner without hearing “Running Up That Hill”—as objectively good a song as it is, the omnipresence of it turned me off. But two years, a listen to The Kick Inside, and more than a good word from my brother (the world has never seen a more fervent Kate Bush superfan), and I finally found myself here. I’m glad I listened to it now—even though my love for “Suspended in Gaffa” (still my favorite track) persisted through the summer of 2022, there was so much weirdness and artistry to the album that it was almost overwhelming—more than once it felt like that in a “mom, come pick me up, I’m scared” way (see: “Get Out of My House”), but overall, that was all apart of the package deal. Admittedly, I can’t fully get on board with all of it; as much as I love the lyrics to “Sat in Your Lap,” that song has irrationally annoyed me since I was a kid, and that quality hasn’t exactly faded—I wish it had, but it’s in the minority of songs that I actively skip on this album. After three albums, this almost feels like Bush’s Hunky Dory: the moment where she had honed her skills and image and officially started going absolutely bonkers.

One such aspect that Bush had nailed by the time that The Dreaming came around was channeling raw, untapped emotion; you can almost feel the bewildered, shaking tears slipping from her eyes as she is faced with something divine in “Suspended in Gaffa” and the feral release in the form of braying like a mule at the end of “Get Out of My House.” It’s overwhelming because it’s exactly what you’re supposed to feel—both of these songs are about separately intense and overpowering emotions, and I believe there’s very few musicians out there who can make that tidal wave translate from the music to the body. That’s already a feat, but given that she was 24 when she released this album…okay, I need to stop googling “how old was Kate Bush when she released [insert album],” because I inevitably get existential. Either way, it’s talent—and “Houdini,” the album’s grief-drenched penultimate track, is testament to that. Recounting the story of Houdini’s wife, Bess, who tried to contact him through seances with a code that the two had devised to ensure that it was him (“Rosabel, believe”); contact was allegedly made in 1929, but she lated believed the code to be the result of trickery from beyond the grave. It’s a deeply tragic story, and Kate Bush pulled no punches in drowning “Houdini” in sorrow. Soft piano dominates the piece, but when it isn’t demure and solemn, Bush lets out a mourner’s wail so convincing that I’d easily believe that she’s channeling Bess Houdini’s bereaved spirit as she bellows out “With your life/The only thing in my mind/We pull you from the water!” That image, of Houdini passing the key to his chains to Bess through a kiss, was what made it on the cover art—I thought it was a wedding ring for the longest time, but to be fair, only the round part is visible on her tongue, and the rest is concealed behind her lips.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Monsters We Defy – Leslye Penelope – romance, daring, and communicating with spirits beyond the veil.

“Objects” – Big Thief

Alright. That’s enough of the abject depression for now. Here. Sit down on the bench beside me. Here’s $20, go see a Big Thief.

I’d like to think that I’ve found out about all of these separate Big Thief songs independently, but in reality, all of the songs I end up listening to are the ones brought up by my fantastic brother’s equally fantastic girlfriend, so once again: thank you. If there was ever a song to describe this time of year—nearly spring, almost warm, and the grass is still brown but peppered with sprouts pushing through—it would be “Objects.” Each pluck on the guitar feels like worms and beetles gently crawling through crumbly earth, the shifting of tiny pebbles and dead leaf fragments as they bore tunnels through the ground. This was only recorded about eight years ago, but there’s already a stark difference in Adrianne Lenker’s voice; when I think of this song and earlier songs (see also: “Velvet Ring”), her voice sounds papery, thinner than thumbnails and soft enough to fold into simple origami. It’s gotten simultaneously more feathery, more feral, and richer with the years, but what I’ve heard of these first two Big Thief albums feel like time capsules in her vocal evolution. And like the springtime that “Objects” evokes, the lyrics are all about the spillover of love as it begins to blossom; like the same sprouts that push their way to the sunlight, the object of affection inspires the narrator to “[Leave] the familiar/Air is getting chillier/Stepping outside your skin.” It’s not just Lenker’s voice that feels understated—all of the instruments feel restrained and green, but it conveys that fizzy, bashful feeling of the beginnings of love.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Million Quiet Revolutions – Robin Gow – queering the Revolutionary War, and the blossoming of young love.

“Your Young Voice” – King Creosote & Jon Hopkins

I generally have Joe Talbot of IDLES to thank for a lot of things, namely the musical positivity he’s brought into my life, but I also have him to thank for finding this song. Recently, Talbot was featured on BBC’s CBeebies bedtime story segment, where, after reading the picture book Under the Love Umbrella, he listed off some songs to soothe children. This was one of them, and the minute I heard it, I understood completely.

This song is a very sparing one. In a sense, “Your Young Voice” is barely a song at all. It’s only two lines that repeat for almost three and a half minutes: “And it’s your young voice that’s keeping me holding on/To my dull life, to my dull life.” And yet, it tugs at the heartstrings more than some songs with a full verse-chorus structure of the same length. The lyrics are so simple, and yet, their repetition weaves together what a mountain of unnecessary stanzas do in any other piece; their repetition feels like a promise, a mantra—you get the sense that whoever’s young voice is keeping the narrator anchored, the only thing keeping them clinging to the end of their fraying rope. Repeated over these three and a half minutes, it feels like a prayer to remember why they’re enduring this life in the first place. King Creosote (a.k.a. Kenny Anderson…King Creosote is a fantastic stage name, if I’ve ever seen one) has a voice with a constant, shuddering waver that whispers over your ears like cold wind over the plains, and that waver is what cements that image of frailty and unconditional love for me. “Your Young Voice” is also simple in its composition—mostly acoustic guitar, with some piano that fades into the ending as Anderson’s voice dissipates into the fog, but this song is all about dredging the well of deep emotions from a place of emotions stripped bare: there’s no need for embellishment or flair. No matter if your interpretation of the young voice is a parent to a child or teenagers falling in deep (not the interpretation that would’ve come to mind first, but that’s how Sex Education took it, although they used a cover…not nearly as good as the original, in my opinion), this song is love, boiled down to its tearful essence.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Under the Earth, Over the Sky – Emily McCosh – not to double-dip on the pairings (it’s been three months, it’s fine), but this one is an even better fit, in my opinion—the bare tenderness of the father-son relationship at the heart of this novel was made to be listened to with this song.

“My Mother & I” – Lucy Dacus

When I was thinking about organizing this graphic, I was just loosely going off of looks, not necessarily what order the songs are in. That’s generally how the process goes. However, there are times where I end up shooting myself in the foot and then turning around and shooting the feet of everybody else who might happen upon this post. I mean…I guess “Houdini” or “Sarah” would been kind of an awful way to end this batch, but it looks like we’re bringing down the house with…Lucy Dacus ruminating on the complicated relationship between her and her mother. Real light stuff to go with your Sunday morning cup of coffee, huh? My bad, guys.

2019, the album where “My Mother & I” appears, is part cover album, part original material, each song released to coincide with a holiday—“La Vie en Rose” for Valentine’s Day, “Dancing in the Dark” for the shared birthday of her father and Bruce Springsteen, and “In The Air Tonight” for Halloween (Lucy, it’s a good cover, but…that’s the song you cover for Halloween? Out of all the objectively spookier songs that exist?), etc. “My Mother & I,” as you probably gathered, was released on Mother’s Day, and also to coincide with Taurus season—both Dacus and her mother are Tauruses, part of what the song anchors itself around (“The stars have a lot to say/About women born in the month of May”). It’s a beautiful song, but I find myself glad that I haven’t been able to connect to it fully; the relationship that Dacus describes with her mother, the distance and later connection emphasized by the fact that Dacus was adopted, is one that seems to be full of fractures, but scored by the love that ultimately tethers them. I’m so close to my own mother that it makes me thankful that, even if I had the aspiration to write music, the only feeling that would come up is gratitude because I have the honor of being her daughter. There’s a restrained kind of sorrow that hints at places where Dacus seems to have needed the guidance of her mother (“They called me an old soul/When I was too young to know/The difference between a soul and a ghost/I feared what was inside/Trapped in my body, kept from the other side/A spirit searching for a second life”). “My Mother & I” comes from a place of wistful rumination, but ultimately reaches for a sense of forgiveness and commonality—Dacus branches beyond the Taurus connection to a wholly human one—”We want love, warm and forever/We want to die in the presence of our loved ones/My mother and I.” It’s…ow. Yeah. I don’t know why I went into a Lucy Dacus song that I hadn’t heard and not thought “hmm, surely it won’t be emotionally crushing!” But in this case, the emotional core comes from a kind of forgiveness that has taken years to spread its roots, but has only grown stronger in the dirt with age. And it seems that the forgiveness is mutual, since she’s since performed this song with her mother on backing vocals:

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Our Crooked Hearts – Melissa Albert – forbidden magic with lineage through a flawed mother and a daughter left to pick up the pieces.

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

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs – 11/5/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

Did somebody order a monthly blue period double-dipped with Peter Gabriel? Because you guys are not gonna believe what showed up on my doorstep this morning…

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 11/5/23

“The Tower That Ate People” – Peter Gabriel

COME AND GET IT! TWO FOR ONE PETER GABRIEL DEAL! TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!

If there’s a vaguely overarching theme for this week’s songs that I can throw together, it’s that Peter Gabriel gets so much weirder than people give him credit for. I suppose that’s the curse of any musician whose earlier hits get the spotlight while the later, more experimental parts of their career go on the wayside in terms of engagement, but are as full of life and creativity as anything else they’ve produced (see also: David Bowie, Kate Bush). To be fair, we’re so used to aging artists that continue to pump out more of the same in hopes of keeping the fire of fame going (say, what’s going on with The Rolling Stones lately?), but equating aging to a decline in musical artistry is shallow either way. Again: I just saw Peter Gabriel a few weeks back, and here he is at 73 delivering some of the most spectacular performances—both visual and musical—that I’ve seen from any musician on stage.

The album, 2000’s OVO, is technically his soundtrack work, and was conceived for a multimedia show that ran in the Millennium Dome for 999 shows in that same year. Gabriel’s work on it interfered with his next album, the criminally underrated Up, which ended up coming out in 2002, a year after it was set to be released. The through lines between the two are clear; “The Tower That Ate People” (good god, what a title) has an industrial, almost Massive Attack-like crawl to it, propelled by a looped guitar riff. Gabriel’s voice comes out as a shrouded growl, making it all the more convincing when he opens the song with “There’s a bump in the basement/there’s a knocking on the wall.” The electronic grinding as he sings of “the pumping of the pistons” makes the music swell. It’s a clanging machine, but it never loses an ounce of that cinematic, Peter Gabriel touch—especially not the prolonged silence after he declares “We’re building up/Until we touch the sky,” letting everything fade to lumbering, echoing footsteps. I can only imagine what the stage show was like. I’m jealous that I wasn’t one of the lucky few who got to see this live on the i/o tour, because can you imagine the feeling of this reverberating straight through your ribs?

“We Looked Like Giants” (Death Cab for Cutie cover) – Car Seat Headrest

THEY’RE BACK!! THEY’RE BACK!!!! So what if it’s a cover—it’s a perfect fit.

Even without as much Death Cab for Cutie knowledge (much less about the album that they’re commemorating—before this, all I knew was the title track. Owie.), it’s easy to see that pairing them with Car Seat Headrest was a fit as perfect as puzzle pieces sliding together. Despite “We Looked Like Giants” being a cover, it feels like the whole song is harkening back to the Teens of Denial glory days, with its crashing guitar breakdowns and angst so dense you could squeeze it out of a dish towel. The lyrics feel even more like it was made for them—”When every Thursday/I’d brave the mountain passes/And you’d skip your early classes/And we learned how our bodies worked.” Certainly makes…every single song from Twin Fantasy make more sense. Even without the slam of an intro that the original version boasts, the tension and momentum that Will Toledo and company bring to this song fills it with the nervous energy that has defined the band for so long—it’s a song teetering on its tiptoes, balancing out both arms as it contemplates the edge. Toledo’s signature, honeyed wail takes the song to dizzying heights, making the collision course back to Earth as the final seconds plunge into silence all the more riveting. I always get all sappy about Teens of Denial and all of the memories of listening to it the summer before I started high school, and this song brings all of the good parts of that back—slip this before “Fill In the Blank,” and I wouldn’t even blink. Leave it to Car Seat Headrest to toe the line between an unchanged cover and one that makes the cover all their own.

“The Family and the Fishing Net” – Peter Gabriel

I’ve done it. I’ve finally surmounted the task of going through all of Peter Gabriel’s albums (minus his soundtrack work). Peter Gabriel summer has come to an end. Peter Gabriel 4: Security was the last one for entirely arbitrary reasons, but it’s fantastic—and a lot creepier than most people give it credit for.

Take this song. Immediately, it sonically calls back to “Intruder,” with its ominously creeping instrumentals, off-kilter chanting and an unsettling chorus of flutes that open the song. Slowly, you start to process the lyrics, and the chill starts creeping down your spine. “Icing on the warm flesh cake?” Yep. Mom, come pick me up, I’m scared. But if you take just a quick look through, you can see the true genius of this song—I was super curious about the meaning, and I was floored by the concept behind it.

“Vows of sacrifice (vows of sacrifice)/Headless chickens (headless chickens)/Dance in circles (dance in circles)”. It sounds like the makings of a cult. But Peter Gabriel specifically created “The Family and the Fishing Net” as a wedding song. Vows of sacrifice? For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. Headless chickens? Could just as well be serving a roast dinner at the ceremony. Dance in circles? We’ve all done that at a wedding or two, haven’t we? That’s where the lyrical genius comes in—it’s not just that he’s subverting Western wedding imagery and making it sound like a cult ritual, there’s a level of exoticization that he brings to it that makes it clever in a conscious way that lines up with his worldly sensibilities. It feels like a response to every song that’s ever demonized and exoticized ordinary (and often sacred) rituals of indigenous people around the world. And given that much of this album has that worldly ethos (see also: “San Jacinto,” “Wallflower”), it’s a perfect addition. As much as I tend to rag on old white guys, Peter Gabriel should be one of the paragon examples in writing songs—and any kind of writing—outside our worldviews, just for the simple fact that he cares to listen about people’s lived experiences. It’s not just writing about some strange, foreign goings-on that he witnessed in his travels—Gabriel took the time to make sure that he understood and uplifted the people and cultures that he encountered. That’s what makes this song feel so important—he recognized the detriment in writing songs from an ignorant distance, and used that aspect of the history of Western music to create one of the creepiest—and most clever—songs in his catalogue.

Also, to the anonymous YouTube commenter who said that she wanted to have this play when she walked down the aisle: I salute you. I’d pay to see that.

“She Plays Bass” – beabadoobee

So it turns out that the she who plays bass is beabadoobee’s actual bassist, and…yeah. They’re aren’t romantically involved, but that still has to be bizarre to be playing bass on a song about yourself. At least all parties seem to be okay with it? Knock on wood that beabadoobee’s backing band doesn’t get into any kind of Fleetwood Mac funny business.

That aside, here’s another entry into my thesis that beabadoobee makes the perfect music for teen rom-coms. From her 90’s-inspired Space Cadet EP (hmm, wonder why there’s a song called “I Wish I Was Stephen Malkmus”…), it’s an ode to yearning, longing, and bright, shiny guitars. Bea Kristi described the song as “a Cure rip-off,” a description that she admitted to Robert Smith himself when they met at the BRIT awards back in 2020. Either way you want to describe it, there’s no denying the brightness of it—despite the black and white cover of the single, “She Plays Bass” is rife with neon colors and cartoon stars. I halfway get the Cure bit—definitely more like “Friday I’m in Love” or “Let’s Go to Bed” than their other music—but what I do get is delightfully guitar-driven indie longing, sparkling and starry-eyed. If “Glue Song” plays in the end-credits of said rom-com, maybe this plays as the intimidatingly cool love interest is introduced. Just a thought.

“Black Hole” – boygenius

What? You thought I was gonna shut up about the rest after talking about “Powers”? You fools…

“Black Hole” is an easy song to have on loop—it’s part of the 3/4 of this EP where every song is freakishly hypnotic, but they’re all around two and a half minutes long, so they just suck you down with them forever, like water sucked down the sink drain. Or…maybe, something else? Mayhaps…a black hole? But the black hole in this song is a more recent revelation—”You can see the stars, the ones/The headlines said this morning were being spat out/By what we thought was just/Destroying everything for good.” The black hole in question is a fascinating one: caught by the Hubble telescope in early April of this year, NASA observed that this supermassive black hole was leaving a trail of stars in its destructive wake that stretched over 200,000 light years long. It’s the perfect, beautiful moment to write a song about. Hopefully this bodes well for me because I’m taking an astronomy class next year: I’ve always struggled with astronomy in school previously, but it makes me tear up that we live in a universe that we will never fully know everything about. That there will always be new things to discover about the vastness of space and the world around us and beyond us until the day I die.

Back to the song: it’s poetry. More specifically, it’s two separate poems. Julien Baker takes the reins in the first poem, with her musings about looking at the stars. The gently clattering electronic instrumentals sound appropriately starry, with the hum of synths leading into Baker’s voice, then transitioning into a tinny, ascending scale on a keyboard just before everything shifts. This is the second poem. It feels like the camera has whipped around as the drums and synths intensify, panning around to Lucy Dacus as Phoebe Bridgers lingers just out of the frame, opaque camera shots flickering at high speed over them as the camera zooms in on their faces. Hearing Dacus take the high notes and Bridgers taking the low, the opposite of their normal range, is an odd treat—it makes Bridgers’ voice seem like a ghost, barely there unless you really pay attention, while Dacus acts as the piercing lighthouse beacon cutting through the fog. All of their lines are enchantingly neat, spaced apart like they’re all collected in separate bins. Apart from the initial confusion (and fleeting clunkiness) of the first two lines (“White teeth/black light/White tee/brown eyes”—”teeth” and “tee” sound way too similar, especially when preceded by the same adjective), I’ve been eating up the emotionally-charged precision of it all. As each line is cut off the chopping block, the drum machine thrums on, just as meticulous as the delivery of each lyric. And I am nothing if not a sucker for songs on an album (or an EP, in this case) that transition into the other as though they’re the same song. Especially with this and “Afraid of Heights” being so short, it feels all the more like a single song. Pure artistry.

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

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs – 10/15/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

THIS IS A CODE RED, I REPEAT, WE HAVE A CODE RED! IMPENDING BOYGENIUS BREAKDOWN IMMINENT! BRACE, BRACE, BRACE! BOYGENIUS BREAKDOWN HAS REACHED MACH 1, I REPEAT—[RADIO GOES DEAD]

…CAPTAIN? CAPTAIN!

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 10/15/23

“Powers” – boygenius

I’m writing this on the day that the rest – EP came out, and I can assure you that’s been the only thing pouring through my headphones all day. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve run through the whole thing. It’s easy to do it endlessly—only four songs, 3/4 of then in the two minute range. That’s this EP’s only crime—those three songs are just too short. Other than that, they’re so criminally flawless that it was exceedingly difficult to pick just one to talk about this week. There was the appropriate all-consuming but gentle harmonies of “Black Hole,” the painful relatability of “Afraid of Heights” (Ms. Lucy Dacus could you not stare into my soul today? Please?), and the gut-punches of “Voyager.” I was trying to have a good morning, but then, boom: Phoebe Bridgers hit me with that beautiful line about the pale blue dot. Ouchie.

But from the start, “Powers” would have always broken through as a standout amongst standouts. Led by Julien Baker, this song is appropriately the EP’s longest, and one of boygenius’ most lyrically exciting songs. It’s something that I wouldn’t have expected out of them—of all things, a superhero origin story. It’s the coolest. Who wouldn’t get that rush of excitement as Baker and company croon “Either way, I have been wondering/Just how it is that I have never heard/The tale of how I got my powers?” Leave it to a line so inviting, so promising of something cosmic, to immediately steal my heart. Over the course of the song, Baker ponders this untold tale, searching for some remnant of the event that made her extraordinary—”Did I fall into a nuclear reactor/Crawl out with acid skin or something worse/A hostile alien ambassador?” It’s the kind of subject matter that lends itself to a more pop-rock sensibility, something punchy and full of action, but the subtle rise from acoustic guitars to atmospheric, electronic background noise feels just as sweeping. As the background reaches something close to a quiet crescendo, the lyrics are all it takes to ramp up the stakes: “No object to be seen in the supercollider/Just a light in the tunnel and whatever gets scattered/Life flashing before the eye of whatever comes after.” And with a whole album about their shared friendship, how could the final lines of “The hum of our contact/The sound of our collision” not be about just that—the strange journey that led three to become one and create such meaningful music together? And to follow it with a somber, resonant chorus of brass as the EP fades out? Glorious. “Powers” really is boygenius at the height of their own powers—purely cinematic, all-consuming, and as emotional as ever. Long live the boys.

“A Wonderful Day In a One-Way World” – Peter Gabriel

It’s long overdue that I talked about Peter Gabriel 2: Scratch. I listened to it all the way through…wow, a month ago? But stubbornly, I refused to put it in because it didn’t at least vaguely fit into one of my color schemes until this week. As everything has been with my eternal Peter Gabriel summer, Scratch was a strange and jaunty little adventure. It seems to be his only album that never really produced any “hits,” as we’d define them, but it still charted to #10 in the U.K. Scratch didn’t chart quite as high in the U.S., and you can sort of see why—it wasn’t made for hitmaking. Neither was Car, but that album was just so nuts and all over the place that a hit was bound to come out when the dust settled. It’s still got that playful weirdness that Car had in spades, now with the cohesion that Car lacked. It’s still experimental and abrasive as all get-out at times (see: “Exposure,” another favorite of mine from the album), but you can see the unifying threads.

“A Wonderful Day In a One-Way World” was a surprise favorite for me, but it really shouldn’t have been. I’m not fully warmed up to prog in general, but Peter Gabriel’s late 70’s take on it has a certain jaunt to it that makes it endearing. Like some of Kate Bush’s weirder music coming out at around the same time, it’s got that hip-swaying, Bowie-inspired groove that propels it for the whole length. Something about the particular arrangement of instruments and the light, airy key that it’s in makes it feel so playful. I’d even go so far to say that it borders on sounding like a show tune. Again: not something I’m normally receptive to, but the combination of Peter Gabriel’s theatrics (no doubt leftovers from his Genesis days) and the winking spirit of the whole song make it much more fun to listen to. The wry lyricism only adds to that theatricality (“There’s an old man on the floor, so I summon my charm/I say, ‘Hey scumbag, has there been an alarm?’”) as the self-absorbed narrator makes his way through his one-way world (“Time is money/And it’s money I serve”). If there’s anything that this journey through the Peter Gabriel catalogue has taught me, is that he’s always been full of surprises, and continues to be to this day—that’s what’s made him so lasting, in my opinion. Whether he’s looking outward or inward for inspiration, he always has something new to offer. That sure is a rarity for an artist of his age.

As for me, I’m excited to see his newest surprises on tour tomorrow! Ready to cry…

“Me and Your Mama” – Childish Gambino

This is probably one of the more left-field songs that I’ve ever ended up including on these posts. I’m 100% under a rock when it comes to most mainstream music; most of what I know is a) what I remember from middle school dances (not fondly), b) random stuff I pick up from following Pitchfork and Stereogum, and c) my neighbors. It’s always just background noise for me—thankfully, I’ve matured past the “I don’t like mainstream music and therefore I’m better than anyone else” mindset that plagued me in middle school, and even though most pop/mainstream rap still remains not my cup of tea, I’ve gotten to the point where I can admit how cool something sounds. I’d be remiss if I didn’t deny that it happens once in a blue moon.

Like this. I only happened upon it because a friend of mine put it in the background of their story, but the snippet I heard blew me away. We’ll get to that a bit later. But if there’s any song that screams “album intro” louder than anything else, it’s “Me and Your Mama.” It starts off at a crawl, with some gentle, twinkling synths and a beat that doesn’t persist so much as creep up on you. There’s a nearly 2-minute wait for anything to change about this song—it takes a while to really kick in. But the payoff? Jesus, the payoff. The first time I hit the 2:01 mark when listening to this song all the way through, I swear my soul left my body. Everything about it makes it worth the wait—come on, how could that Halloween-store-skeleton laughter not immediately elevate everything? All of it—the sudden collision and time signature shift, the bass—it’s like getting an electric shock straight to the heart. And right on the heels of Donald Glover absolutely howling the rest of the lyrics. Even when some of the earthshaking soundscape fades in favor of letting a bit of acoustic guitar slip through, none of the momentum gets lost. Every line is delivered rawly, like it’s freshly covered in blood, pulsating with captivating energy. And just as it reaches its crescendo, it’s gone. Two minutes more of spacey synths, and this song drops out of existence. Poof. I can’t not see the expert craft that went into every note of this song—it’s elevated from a song to something reaching beyond an experience. It really does swallow you whole for all 6 minutes and 18 seconds. I only have a vague notion of the rest of Childish Gambino’s catalogue, but damn. That’s how you open an album.

All for a song called “Me and Your Mama.” Go figure.

“So Cruel” (U2 Cover) – Depeche Mode

I’m gonna say it: I’ll absolutely defend U2. Up to their more recent stuff, I’ll still hold that they’re an incredible band, the “we’re going to put our new album on every single apple device and there’s nothing you can do about it” incident notwithstanding. I might’ve been too young to understand the full degree of annoyance of every apple user who wasn’t into U2, but I wasn’t too young to have a ton of fun at one of my first concerts—U2, on that same tour. Even if Songs of Innocence wasn’t their best work, I can still remember how the show was just pure fun. And whoever was in charge of the visuals was putting out their absolute best work—even almost 10 years after that show, I still remember how wowed I was by them. Sure, their more recent work has gone more than a little stale, but they’re far from deserving of the “worst band in the world” title that people have foisted on them in the last 20 years or so. How is everybody putting that on them when…I don’t know, Oasis exists?

Oh, they toured together, you say?

…oh.

Anyways. I’m not necessarily here to talk about U2 themselves. Just as U2 has been the soundtrack to many a car ride in my childhood (see: at least a quarter of How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb), so too were many songs from this album of U2 covers. I’ve always been back and forth about Depeche Mode—I love their atmosphere in general, and I like some of their songs here and there. (“John the Revelator” will ALWAYS be a banger.) It’s that atmosphere that elevates their cover of “So Cruel.” The original was already chock-full of drama, and Bono’s soaring voice, as it usually does, sells it all. But Depeche Mode’s interpretation gives this drama and heartache a new flavor, taking it to goth heights that make both the heartbroken, enchanting moan of both Bono and David Gahan feel all the more palpable. The landscape of synths consumes the whole of this cover, with a murmuring heartbeat of a drum machine blanketed by a static hum of electricity that feels fizzly enough to touch. It grows sparser (and bleep-bloopier) in the chorus, but that’s exactly what it needs. Gahan’s cavernous voice needs all the more room to breathe, and it’s given that and more. It’s hard to think of anybody other than Bono who could deliver lines like “Her skin is pale like God’s only dove/Screams like an angel for your love” without sounding ridiculous. It’s an excellent cover—and a welcome surprise from my shuffle.

“More Than This” – Roxy Music

This one’s been a long time coming on one of these posts. I listened to it a ton this August, but it got lost in my desire to create a somewhat coherent color scheme, despite the chills it gives me on every listen. But now here we are, in our nice little blue period, and here we are. Perfect time for us to join hands, close our eyes, and feel like someone’s blowing a nice, big gust of wind into our long, lustrous heads of hair.

There’s few songs that I can think of that are as instantly transporting as “More Than This.” I’m not usually as receptive to that eighties, saccharine synth extravaganza, but this feels like the fleeting, sweet time capsule of that moment in time. It does call to mind that angle where the subject is blindingly front-lit, glowing from within with the wind blowing in their hair. I feel like we would all be receptive to feeling that glow once in a while, right? I wouldn’t complain. Maybe it’s because “More Than This” came before this was the concrete norm—this was 1982, and we were still a few years removed from the overlords of synthesizers and consumerism, so maybe that’s why it doesn’t feel as contrived. Somewhere in between Roxy Music and the rest of the eighties, the romantic grandeur of this song was lost—and that’s what keeps this song so powerful. It perfectly matches the starkness of the album cover; Bryan Ferry conceived of Avalon, the album where this song hails (its title track and first single), while visiting the west coast of Ireland. I haven’t been, but I can imagine that kind of stormy environment of steep, gray cliffs, the kind that have endured since time immemorial, would tend to stir that up in a person. And even though I haven’t listened to the rest of the album, that sweeping beauty shines through. As the narrator languishes in melancholy, hoping that there is something beyond this deep sorrow but being so entrenched in said sorrow to definitively say so, the instrumentals make a combination of guitars, synths, and saxophone sound as expansive as the sea. Bryan Ferry’s voice isn’t the deepest, but it hits that level of deep that sells the existential plea of it all. “More Than This” really feels romantic—not in the lovey-dovey sense, but in the 19th century poetry sense. Is it too much of a stretch to say that somebody like Shelley or Keats would have rocked with this? I’ll stand by it. Bottom line: yes, we put too much focus on old dead white guys in literature, but sometimes nobody hits it quite like certain subsets of old dead white guys. Keats knew what was up. And if this song is proof, so does Bryan Ferry.

And as a bonus, here’s the legendary Karen O’s acoustic take, from a few months back:

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

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 4/16/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

Casually just started coughing up a lung for a week, but at least the sun’s out for the first time in about 3 months, so a win is a win in my book. It would be nice to be able to sleep without waking myself up from said coughing, but maybe if I just listen to the record another time through…hmm…

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 4/16/23

“Hammer Horror” – Kate Bush

Oh, the beauty of unflattering YouTube thumbnails.

I always feel guilty for not liking Kate Bush as much. She’s clearly been such a groundbreaking artistic genius for most (if not all) of her career, and she’s an undeniably incredible storyteller as well. But music taste is music taste, and everybody’s got a different one.

I used to think that Kate Bush was generally just hit or miss for me, but as I’ve started to listen to more of her work, I think the root of it is that I’m just more into earlier Kate Bush. I haven’t pinned down a rhyme or reason, really—I haven’t listened to The Kick Inside or Lionheart yet—but they’re really just so fun. There’s an infectious, early-70’s-inspired undercurrent that runs through all of them, combined with high drama that only a 19-year-old Kate Bush could produce. Take “Hammer Horror,” which combines an operatic, orchestral element in the first 30 or so seconds, but slips into a Hunky Dory-like groove, punctuated by lightning strikes of bright guitar—man, I miss how guitars sounded in the 70’s. It’s pure theatre—and even though I’ve never claimed to be a theatre kid, there’s something about the way that she leans fully into all of the clawing-at-the-camera drama that makes it all the more fun to listen to…if you just forget the music videos of that whole period. (*coughcough “Them Heavy People” coughcoughcough*)

*cough*

can somebody pass the Dayquil? seems I’ve got some—*C O U G H*

“Satanist” – boygenius

Worry not: the Boygenius Breakdown is far from over. I’ll spare you from the rest of it after this week for the sake of adhering to my self-imposed color schemes, but behind the facade, I’m still curled up in the fetal position listening to “We’re In Love.”

Penned by Julien Baker and sectioned off for each of the powerhouse members of boygenius to shine, “Satanist” was an instant hit for me from the record after the singles had been released. Backed by steady guitars, this song stands as a fun, cheeky dare about pushing the limits friendship—”will you be a Satanist with me?/Mortgage off your soul to buy your dream/Vacation home in Florida.” It all feels like a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun, but with boygenius’ strong connection and shared friendship, there’s an intangible, genuine feel to it, as if the song could’ve stemmed from a genuine question. (Again: “Were In Love” feels like its lyrical twin, in that sense. Lots of callbacks and intertwining on this album.) But at its culmination, when Phoebe Bridgers’ sharp-edged scream fades into a hazy, sunset background, the music suddenly sinks underwater, all three of their voices seeming to fade under the waves in a haunting, enchanting conclusion. I can almost imagine that, with the image of the record, that the end of this song is their hands reaching up from the ocean—”you hang on/until it drags you under.”

“Amoeba” – Clairo

“[Clairo’s] a lebsian” was an easy sell from my brother’s girlfriend for this song before I could actually hear it playing, but it was a worthwhile sell beyond that. Most of what I know of Clairo comes from snippets of some of her viral songs and Lindsey Jordan (a.k.a. Snail Mail) making the crowd sing “happy birthday” to her over FaceTime during one of her shows, but I’m glad that I’ve been exposed to this song. It flows effortlessly, easily: never does it feel the need to elevate itself or explode entirely, and its gentle existence is what continues to endear me. The vocals scream 2010’s, but some of the instrumentals feel like they traveled in a time capsule from the 70’s—quiet as they are, the funky keyboard licks and bassline make me sway in my seat every time. Everything in this song is understated, but that’s its hidden power—if everything is quiet, no part can overpower another, making for a seemingly perfect melding of each element. I don’t know how much of that is Claire Cottrill and how much is Jack Antonoff (who my feeling are still divided on—he produced the betrayal that was MASSEDUCTION and then the masterpiece that was Daddy’s Home right after…?), but whatever the case, it’s a lovely, gentle pop song.

“Worrywort” – Radiohead

This song might as well be an endangered species. A hopeful Radiohead song? I almost don’t believe it…

I still have plenty of Radiohead’s discography left to trudge through, even after 4 years of them being second only to David Bowie for me, but the joy of that is that, for now, there’s always something new to discover. I’m just hoping that it’ll stay that way for longer—every cell in me is hoping that A Moon-Shaped Pool was their last project, but…hurgh, that’s a story for another day. Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood’s Fear Stalks the Land!: A Commonplace Book, a collection of lyrics, poetry, and art from the Kid A/Amnesiac era turned me onto this one, snugly tucked away on Knives Out – EP. Amidst…well, everything else that came from that period—a mass airing-out of early 2000’s paranoia and fear—”Worrywort” feels like the only light of hope that was produced at that time in Yorke’s life. Aside from how much I love the spelling of “Worrywort,” like it’s some sort of medicinal plant, there are so many delicate parts to this song, much like the tiny fibers inside of a leaf. All of the synths layered on top of each other feel like a visual representation of if you hooked up guitar pedals to plants and heard what tiny, thin sounds they made while photosynthesizing or spreading their roots. With that making up all of the instrumentations, Thom Yorke’s plaintive murmur stays shadowy, only resorting to his signature keening in tiny parts of the background. And as I said before, it’s one of the only Radiohead songs that I can think of that seems, at least on the surface, to feel lyrically optimistic (no pun intended); “There’s no use dwelling on/What might have been/Just think of all the fun/You could be having.” What? Who are you, and what have you done with Thom Yorke? Not that I’m complaining. Glad he was at least fleetingly cheery for a brief moment sometime in 2001.

Against the backdrop of…well, everything else that Radiohead has put out there, lyrics like these almost feel like a ruse, like there’s some sly, cynical commentary hidden in there. But there really doesn’t seem to be—if anything, it feels like Yorke confronting his own demons, a battle between the voice of depression and the reassurance that he’s trying to bring to the surface. But either way, it’s strangely comforting—there’s something of a beautiful mantra in the song’s outro: a repetition of “it’s such a beautiful day.” Sure is.

“Bath County” – Wednesday

Nothing heals the soul quite like an excess of crunchy guitars.

Getting through my album list is proving to be a Herculean (but still enriching) task, so who knows if or when I’ll end up listening to Wednesday’s new album, Rat Saw God, but I’ve heard it’s been getting good reviews? Pitchfork, like Rotten Tomatoes, is always something I take with a grain of salt (JUSTICE FOR DADDY’S HOME), but an 8.8 from them is still pretty impressive. Laced with urban legends, Southern heat, and abandoned houses, the atmosphere of “Bath County” shines through, pioneered by Karly Hartzman’s mercurial voice—capable of being all at once smooth and soothing, but cracking and abrasive at other times. The guitars are an extension, screaming when the time is right (and even when it isn’t), making the whole song feel like watching a bonfire tower into the sky. I’ve seen Wednesday be compared to everything from grunge (makes sense) to shoegaze (…nah, I don’t see it), but either way, from my limited experience with the band, they’re very 90’s—but still very them.

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

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

Posted in Music

the record – boygenius album review

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Monday, bibliophiles!

It’s finally here! The moment that I’ve been patiently waiting for…

After I discovered Phoebe Bridgers back in early 2020 (before it all went wrong), my boygenius revelation came soon after (right around when it really all went wrong). Not only was it my gateway to Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, but it stood out as a representation of so many things—a critique of the pedestals we tend to reserve only for male artists, the way the music industry often lumps together “women in indie rock” simply because of their gender, and the magic that happens when three incredibly talented queer women get together and make music. Their self-titled EP, released in 2018, seemed to be the beginning and end of their relationship, but they secretly reformed and came together to release their first full-length album this March. And the results are simply magical, full of different highs and lows, but emotional and heartrending all the way through—in the best way.

boygenius’ Rolling Stone cover, an homage to Nirvana

Enjoy this album review!

THE RECORD – BOYGENIUS (album review)

Release date: March 31, 2023 (Interscope records)

TRACK 1: “Without You Without Them” – 8.5/10

never underestimate the power of an intro 🥲

If the record encapsulates the friendship of Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus, then this song is the perfect summation of that thesis. boygenius have made me so emotional over a cappella, somehow—their harmonies, pioneered in this case by Lucy Dacus, rise in perfect tandem, as each one thanks their parents, and their parents before them (“who would I be/without you, without them?”)—for the opportunities that brought them together as friends, by a cosmic miracle, and relishing in the quiet moments opening up to one another. Already a hard-hitter, and we’re barely even a minute into the album…

TRACK 2: “$20” – 9/10

Mama told me that it don’t run on wishes, but that I should have fun,

Pushing the flowers that come up

Into the front of a shotgun…

boygenius, “$20”

Rocketing from the quiet moments to a supersonic pace, “$20” remains one of my favorite songs on the album, even after everything else came out. Every lyric is delivered like a punch while grinning, each member’s voice coalescing and pulling apart at just the right moments, fading in and out of sync in perfect deliberation. Everything erupts with Phoebe Bridgers’ final scream, which remains one of the highlights of this album, where all of the pent up energy in this song bubbles to the top and fades out just as quickly. HAAAAAAAGH I STILL CAN’T STOP LISTENING IT’S BEEN LIKE 2 MONTHS

TRACK 3: “Emily I’m Sorry” – 8/10

This was my least favorite of the singles, but it’s still a beautiful heartbreaker of a song—like much of Phoebe Bridgers’ work, the instrumentation (which I still love, especially when everything seems to dissolve at 1:46) takes a backseat to her air-light, heartstring-tugging voice, and lets her shine. It just feels less cohesive as a supergroup—I get that all of the members had their songs that they wrote on their own, but this feels more like a Phoebe Bridgers single that just happens to feature Baker and Dacus than a boygenius song. It’s worked with some of the other songs in that style, but I feel like this would’ve worked better as just Phoebe Bridgers.

TRACK 4: “True Blue” – 8.5/10

sidenote—the shots of them sleeping in the film remind me so much of Blur’s “No Distance Left to Run” music video…

And it feels good to be known so well

I can’t hide from you like I hide from myself…

boygenius, “True Blue”

Hooooooooowhee, we’re back to Lucy Dacus throwing her whole fist into my chest and tugging at the heartstrings, huh? Is that what we’re doing?

Although (almost) nothing compares to the meteoric ecstasy of “$20,” “True Blue” is still a steadfast favorite of mine on this album. It’s a case study of how perfect the harmonies of these three are for each other. The way that Baker and Bridgers chime in on the bridge always makes my heart sing, as though they were somehow predestined to have this pairing of differently gorgeous voices, all joining hands in another ode to their mutual friendship.

TRACK 5: “Cool About It” – 9.5/10

But we don’t have to talk about it,

I can walk you home and practice method acting,

I’ll pretend that being with you doesn’t feel like drowning…

boygenius, “Cool About It”

This one rapidly rose to become my favorite on the album, and I’ve had it on repeat ever since. boygenius is versatile in the way that they organize songs together—sometimes it works with all of them singing at once, as in “$20,” but neatly-sectioned songs like this one, where each of the members gets their time in the spotlight, works just as well as the other. And this one’s the shining highlight of the album, a Simon & Garfunkel-inspired, introspective reflection on the complicated feelings of confronting people who were once prominent in your life—not being able to deny their toxicity, but grappling with not being able to outwardly show it. Each facet of their lyricism shines—Baker’s ability to dig directly into the emotional core of these feelings and making it look easy, Dacus’ dry but solemn display of wit, and Bridgers’ vulnerable confessions steeped in glistening stars. I have nothing but love for this song.

TRACK 6: “Not Strong Enough” – 7/10

Strangely, this was one of my least favorites of the album—the lyrics remain incredible (and the music video is so sweet 🥲), but there’s a country-pop twang to this one that doesn’t quite hook me all the way. There’s no denying how wonderful the ending is as Lucy Dacus builds up the bridge—”always an angel/never a god,” which all comes crashing together as we get another fantastic Phoebe scream.

TRACK 7: “Revolution 0” – 7/10

Though this one doesn’t hit me as hard as some of the others, Phoebe’s soft introspection truly shines on this song. The barely audible strings and the fluttering, dissolving synths make for an atmospheric song that feels like the musical equivalent of watching the sunrise on a crisp, winter morning. I can practically feel my breath fogging out before me, just as all three of their voices seem to gently drift into the air.

TRACK 8: “Leonard Cohen” – 6.5/10

Though Lucy Dacus’ lyrics are still funny and tender at the same time, this song feels oddly disjointed to me. Dacus’ voice comes in at a sudden, weirdly-placed time, and it doesn’t seem like it’s no purpose. Again: lovely lyrics, but the song never quite picks itself up from that initial, rocky start. I hate to say it, but maybe it’s for the best that it’s so short.

TRACK 9: “Satanist” – 8.5/10

(do I get something for being the 666th like on the lyric video for a song called “Satanist”?)

(STOP TRYING TO AUTOCORRECT CRED TO CREDIT SHUT UP SHUT UP)

One of my favorites after the singles, “Satanist” is proof that the neatly-sectioned format of letting each member sing a verse is a perfect way to let them all shine through! With Julien Baker’s witty lyrics and punchy guitars all the way through, it’s just a lovely chunk of indie rock all the way through. The ending, though drastically different, is just as wonderful, with all of their harmonies rising up like bonfire smoke into the night sky.

TRACK 10: “We’re In Love” – 8.5/10

If you rewrite your life,

May I still play a part?

boygenius, “We’re In Love”

Ow, did Lucy Dacus just get saddled with all dealing all of the emotional damage on this album? Does she just have a huge paddle that she’s just musically whapping us with? If that’s the case, “We’re In Love” was what knocked me off my feet for good…ouchie

Nearly 5 minutes long, “We’re In Love” presents Lucy Dacus and company ruminating on the nature of their shared friendship once more, reflecting on inside jokes and quiet moments spent together, and loving every inch of each other despite their flaws. Even outside of their cosmically aligned harmonies, it’s clear that boygenius have struck something truly special with their friendship, a connection that has allowed them to grow and produce no shortage of beautiful, creative works, and get to know each other better through it. It’s gorgeous…get out the tissues.

TRACK 11: “Anti-Curse” – 8/10

Turning back to the more fast-paced side of “Satanist,” “Anti-Curse” has Julien Baker letting loose once more. Though I enjoyed some of Baker’s other tracks more, it still has that raw vulnerability that endeared her to me when I first became a fan, but with the expansion of her more vast, Little Oblivions sound that gives everything even more weight. It feels like the whole song is painted in the same colors as the album color, with sunsets, breaking waves, and the taste of salt in your mouth.

TRACK 12: “Letter To An Old Poet” – 8.5/10

I wanna be happy, I’m ready

To walk into my room without looking for you,

I’ll go up to the top of our building,

And I’ll think of my dog when I see the full moon.

I can’t feel it yet,

But I am waiting…

boygenius, “Letter To An Old Poet”

Oh, so I see they let Phoebe Bridgers have this one tearjerker, and she took the opportunity and RAN with it? YOW.

I can’t think of a more fitting closer for the record. The whole song acts as a sister song to “Me & My Dog,” off of their self-titled EP, a reconciliation not only with the complications of a past relationship, but of a desire to heal oneself, move on, grow, and confront the truth. It’s clearly personal to Phoebe, but it feels like a collective healing call for all of them, a promise that the past is the past, but that we are all different people than who we once were. Every re-worked lyric acts as proof of change, a renewed mindset, and of hope that the future will be better while stargazing. Gah. Beautiful end to a beautiful album…

THIS PHOTOSHOOT HAD NO BUSINESS BEING THIS FUNNY 💀 I CAN’T GET OVER JULIEN IN THAT FRILLY DRESS HAHAHAEHJKEFKFDKJ

I averaged out all of the ratings for each track, and it came out to about an 8.1! I’m so glad that they decided to make a whole album—through all of the highs and lows, it displays their talents as individual musicians and as a collective creative force, and I’ll never get sick of their heavenly harmonies. And above all, it stands as a tribute to queer friendship, and every kind of love that we share, no matter the feelings that we associate with it. I’m sure it’ll be one of my favorite records of this year, without contest.

Since this is an album review, consider the entirety of the record to be today’s song.

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

Posted in Uncategorized

Sunday Songs: 4/9/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles, and happy Easter for those celebrating! 🐣

I’m still riding the boygenius high, and I will most certainly be riding it for much longer (that is a threat), but I promise I’m listening to a few more songs…maybe…

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 4/9/23

“Cool About It” – boygenius

Never in a million years would I have predicted having a song with banjo in it constantly on repeat, but life is full of surprises. All the better if said songs are delivered by the likes of boygenius.

I’ll surely be raving about boygenius’ recently released full-length debut the record for the next month, but this song, after their first four singles, is taking center stage in my head constantly. With a melody inspired by Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” and sparse, gentle instrumentation that lets each member of the supergroup bathe in the spotlight, it’s a quiet, introspective highlight. Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, and Phoebe Bridgers take turns reflecting on the mixed emotions of painful, strained reunions with exes and old friends, hidden lyrics shine through in not-so-hidden lyricism—”I can walk you home and practice method acting/I’ll pretend that being with you doesn’t feel like drowning,” in Bridger’s final words. boygenius have let their joint talents meld together in a handful of different structures, but somehow, this neat, boxed-in sections where one singer takes the lead per verse make for a song that truly feels like all of them. And as gently as bubbling water in a creek, their harmonies rise as one for each chorus—my heart can’t help but leap a little when each of them harmonize to the final line of each verse: “even though we know it isn’t true…”

[fanning face] The power they have, I swear…

“You & I” – Graham Coxon

I’ve been meaning to get more into Graham Coxon’s solo work ever since my 2021 Blur frenzy, and through the nuggets of song titles that I seem to remember completely at random, I’m getting more and more excited about it. The only song of his that I know that isn’t a cover or from the soundtrack of The End of the F***ing World (which I still need to watch…), it’s an unadulterated dose of tight, anxious Britpop straight to the veins; even without Blur and all of the detriments that came with its fame, it’s clear that this is the kind of music that Coxon was meant to play. And he plays it well. Each punchy chord feels laid out on a precise grid, and from what I can gather about him, it seems like something he would do. “You & I” is a distinctly polished song—not in the way that an over-produced, Top 40 hit is, but polished in the way that every edge has been meticulously sanded down to perfection, not a note out of line. These nervous, uptight white guys know their stuff sometimes…

“Everybody Wants To Love You” – Japanese Breakfast

I’ve gotten bits and pieces of Japanese Breakfast over the years—I remember being in the car all the way back in middle school and hearing a piece of NPR about her debut album, Psychopomp, and being interested, but I don’t think I ever got around to listening to it then. With all the buzz around Jubilee and her acclaimed novel Crying in H-Mart, I figured I might get around to giving Michelle Zauner and company a listen. Like “You & I,” I remembered the title of this song at random, and I’m so glad I did!

“Everybody Wants To Love You” feels like the 2010’s, indie rock answer to a poppy love song of the 50’s or the 60’s. Everything about it feels cheery—the bright, practically glittering guitar tones, the sharp pep of Zauner’s voice, and the starry synths that seem to leave sparkling trails over every second of the song. Add a wonderfully catchy guitar riff and package it into the pop-standard 2 and a half minutes, and you’ve got something that feels like it could come out of any era. Well…maybe not any era—some of those lyrics definitely would not have flown in the mainstream before the 60’s, but that’s not the point. It’s just 2 and a half minutes of joy, purely and simply.

“A Quiet Life” – Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld

Over break, I went through the first season of Netflix’s Dark with my family, and ever since, I’ve ripped a solid half of the songs from that show and slapped them haphazardly into my music taste. Seems like that’s largely the case for a lot of the commenters on this video too (all of the Dark references have passed the vibe check with absolutely flying colors), and, among other things, Dark reminds me how good it feels to be so invested in every part of a show—not just the story itself, but every little detail that goes into it. Like the music.

I won’t go into how perfectly this song melds with the overall themes and the last episode of season 1 of Dark for fear of spoiling something so wonderfully intricate, but it’s chilling on its own as well. Blixa Bargeld boasts such a rich voice—it reminds me a lot of Jarvis Cocker, with that same rasp at the edges of the resonance you can feel in your chest. Just like Dark’s absolutely disturbing score, Bargeld’s vocals seem to buzz in moments, turning from something human into the hum of putting your ear next to a beehive. There’s a deeply poetic feel to everything in this song’s atmosphere, with the orchestral composition forming in the background and the gloom that seems to settle over every note like fog. It creeps along like frost, painted in the same grays as the album cover. What I’m trying to say here is this: whoever was in charge of the music direction for Dark—I SALUTE YOU. BLESS YOU.

“Demi Moore” – Phoebe Bridgers

Phoebe Bridgers is a distinctly 2020 artist in my musical canon. I first listened to Stranger in the Alps in the early months, before everything went…y’know, and Punisher came out that summer. But unlike Punisher, an album that’s a no-skip for me to this day, some of the songs on Stranger in the Alps didn’t do it for me on the first few listens. It’s understandable—Stranger was her debut, and with Punisher, she had more time to hone her craft and sound. But I’ve recently come back to some of those songs that I didn’t warm up to the first time; some of them still don’t impress me, but “Demi Moore,” along with the harrowing “Killer,” took a while to grow on me.

With a title borne from a misheard lyric (“I don’t wanna be stoned anymore” became “stone Demi Moore,” this song, like many of her others, lingers in the hazy, middle-of-the night lairs of vulnerability. Especially on Stranger, the instrumentals often take a backseat to Bridgers’ singing, letting the emotional side speak for itself amidst quiet synths that flicker like satellites in the night sky. Phoebe Bridgers’ voice floats along like misty fog over a creek, all at once thin and full of emotion.

And again—normally I can’t stand banjos, but these somehow work because of how…quiet they are? Sorry for the banjo slander here, but…I can’t help it, I’m sorry. I was forced to learn in 7th grade for school, but I didn’t enjoy much of it, save for trying to pluck out a rendition of “It’s A Wonderful Life” from memory. I’ll begrudgingly admit that it did help me get a bit of head start on playing guitar, but I still have a vendetta with the instrument. I digress.

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

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

Posted in Music, Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 4/2/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

Not to worry, folks: the inevitable Boygenius Breakdown™️ is scheduled for next week to allow for some time for everything to sink in. As per the never-stated-but-generally-just-implied agreement, however, this week’s Sunday Songs meets the required Queer Quotient™️ that every Bookish Mutant post is required to pass before entering the blogosphere. I’m running a tight, gay ship over here, and I’ll see to it that it stays that way.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 4/2/23

“Born on a Train” – The Magnetic Fields

In the span of about a week, “Born on a Train” sprung from just being downloaded to my third most listened-to song of this year, according to Apple Music. Maybe that says more about my penchant for wearing songs into the ground than it does about the song itself, but I swear there’s an infinite magic woven into every note of it. Snugly fit in The Charm of the Highway Strip, a loose concept album about traveling and roads, this third track gently chugs along like the train the chorus speaks of. (And another example of the band’s generally wry humor—I haven’t listen to Charm in full yet, but the fact that “Fear of Trains” is only four tracks away from this song always cracks me up. Duality of man.) The drums and muted, acoustic guitar strums throughout recall the machinery of a train, in contrast to the ringing chimes as Stephin Merritt finishes out each chorus. And as with most Magnetic Fields songs, it’s laced with bittersweetness to the core; there’s a sense of the narrator grappling with their own nature, knowing that they’re bound to leave everyone that they love, that same lonely, fleeting, twilight feel as the “ghost roads” that Merritt describes in the first verse. Merritt’s voice has the same resonance that you feel inside a cave, reverberating through your bones—it was easy to feel, hearing this song live at a smaller venue, which I still count myself incredibly lucky to have experienced.

On that habit of riding songs into the sunset, I think I get sick of only about half of them—”Born on a Train” feels like one of the ones that’ll stick.

“Drooler” – Palehound

At this point, all that’s keeping me from listening to more Palehound right now is the fact that A Place I’ll Always Go is too complicated of an album cover to draw on the door whiteboard on my dorm (wait, I forgot about posting those…maybe once school’s out? Don’t hold me to it), and for some reason, even though I can listen to any other artist’s discography out of order, I’ve stubbornly decided to do so with them. (With the albums, at least—I didn’t know this EP existed until recently…oops…) But…Dry Food was just so good. I couldn’t get enough of the whole album. Something about El Kempner’s talent for letting every instrument go loose and reining them back in just as quickly keeps me listening over and over again.

So I ended up finding and promptly listening to her very first musical outing as Palehound, 2013’s Bent Nail – EP. The decision to make “Drooler” the first track was a clearly calculated one—it lulls you in with Kempner’s brightly-toned guitar notes that seem to gently roll like a loose wagon wheel, but drops off just as quickly, breaking into a bluesy, catchy groove, strangely accented at times with the sounds of pots and pans clanging against each other. All the while, Kempner’s voice does similar gymnastics, slipping into lower tones and spiking airily high in the space of seconds. It’s hard to keep that balance—something that she frequently tests on songs like “Pet Carrot” (which works on the EP, and bafflingly maintains on her performance of it on her Tiny Desk Concert), but “Drooler” toes the line with ease. And just like that, everything that Kempner builds devolves into riotous fuzz at the end, a skidding, spark-flying crash to a perfect piece of guitar-driven indie-rock.

“Eye Patch” – De La Soul

So I’ve got another De La Soul album to add to my never ending album list, huh? I’m not complaining. Anything for another experience of wonderful, creative music, that Pos, Dove, and Mase seem to exude from their very pores, or something…

Two albums after their breakout Three Feet High and Rising, De La Soul had made a point to shed the sunshine-colored, mislabeled hippie image that had followed them everywhere, but even though that image was a major point of resentment for Plugs 1, 2, and 3 after the album’s release, listening to songs like “Eye Patch” leads me to believe that, at least musically, that spirit never quite left. Backed by the endlessly catchy samples of Jimmy Reed, the Outlaw Blues Band, and the same French language learning program that they sampled for Three Feet High and Rising, it’s another earwormy patchwork that, even from my limited experience with the band, feels like their trademark. It’s smooth, rolling like waves over your skin, the perfect walking soundtrack for a movie, or just walking to class and feeling the sun on your skin. And despite the more serious undercurrent that emerged in everything post-De La Soul is Dead, there’s still samples of sheep and children laughing—there’s no denying of the original, three fresh-out-of-high school friends making music in the basement ethos that have made De La Soul so lasting.

“Crocodile Tears and the Velvet Cosh” – David J.

Part of what I love about this song is that there will never be another song called “Crocodile Tears and the Velvet Cosh.” If there is, I can guarantee that it’ll be ripping this title off.

I can never claim to be fully goth (even though I can and will go overboard with the black eyeliner, without hesitation) partly because both Bauhaus and Love & Rockets (a.k.a Bauhaus – Peter Murphy) have historically been hit or miss for me. I’ve still found some of the latter that are already classics for me (“Holy Fool,” “Bad for You,”…why do I keep putting off listening to Lift?); the solo careers have been similarly hit or miss, though I’ve been hoarding a small handful of songs from Murphy, Ash, and David J., respectively as of late. Strangely, even though I’ve only heard two songs of his (the other being “I’ll Be Your Chauffeur”) David J. has been the one that I’ve liked the most consistently. As much as I love and respect the eclectic spirt of Love & Rockets (okay, scratch that: I can’t forgive them for “The Purest Blue,” there’s NO excuse for that nightmare fuel), sometimes you have to sit back and linger on the gentle side of things. That’s exactly what “Crocodile Tears and the Velvet Cosh” feels like for me: it slings a reassuring arm over your shoulder, and lets you relax while the breeze tugs at your hair. Filled with tiny packets of clever wordplay (“I read you like a book/Seeing through/without ever losing my place”), it’s an unassuming, acoustic piece with hidden bits that glisten in the dark.

“VBS” – Lucy Dacus

I finally got around to listening to Home Video last week, and although I wasn’t as wowed as I was with her sophomore album, Historian, it still exists as an insect trapped in amber. The album chronicles Dacus’ childhood and adolescence in Virginia, grappling with her latent queerness in contrast to her Christian upbringing, as evidenced in “VBS,” a slice-of-life recounting of church camp. Musically, Home Video wasn’t as expansive and vast as its predecessor, but Dacus’ lyricism throughout the entire album is as strong as ever—I can’t stop thinking about the lines “Sedentary secrets like peach pits in your gut/locked away like jam jars in the cellar of your heart.” For such an unassuming-sounding song (in the beginning), there are so many tiny layers to peel back, from the underlying seeds of questioning everything she’s known to the explosive burst of guitars as Dacus describes, “There’s nothing you can do, but the only thing you’ve found/playing Slayer at full volume helps to drown it out.” The latter makes me wish for more of the guitar work that Dacus displayed on songs like “Timefighter,” but that moment as a self-contained piece, like the glass butterfly boxes that form each song, makes the storytelling even clearer and cleverer than ever.

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

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

Posted in Monthly Wrap-Ups

March 2023 Wrap-Up 🌬

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Friday, bibliophiles!

How is March already almost over?? Mentally I’m still in the first week…but it’s spring break, so that’s always good. And although I woke up sick this morning, at least I have boygenius, the cure for all that ails. Maybe their queer antibodies will help me fight this nastiness off before I have to go back to school.

[shaking the image file for the record on my iTunes library] c’mon, man, do your thing…

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

I still can’t bring myself to believe that I’m almost done with my first year of college. It feels like I should have at least 5 months left, or something…how? Either way, it’s been much easier on me taking mostly humanities classes, and even with midterms, I’ve been able to keep my head above the water. The weather’s slowly but surely starting to warm up—there were a few days were it felt like early summer, and then we got snow the very next day, and if that isn’t Colorado weather in a nutshell, then I don’t know what is. But I’ve savored the little moments—the bits of sunshine that come through the trees in the morning, the view from my dorm, and the day I had both my classes off, so I visited my friend at my dorm for next year and got coffee on the way back.

My reading’s been a little bit slower, I suppose since I’ve had several books to read for at least 3 classes, so I’ve had to read a lot of them in smaller chunks. They’ve been very different but all very good books—again, what I love about college (or at least being an English major) is that I’ve been reading books I’d never imagine reading in an academic setting—Annihilation and Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass were both on my reading list this month. I’ve managed to get some other great reads in as well, even though I had to slow down for midterms. It was harder to see since I slowed down more than usual, but it was a pretty solid reading month—only 2 books in the 2-star range, so that’s always a plus in my book (no pun intended).

Other than that, I’ve just been drawing, playing Minecraft over break (you have NO IDEA the absolute havoc some loose axolotls can do to an ocean ecosystem), watching Flight of the Conchords (as hilarious as I imagined it being), season 2 of Shadow & Bone, and Dark, and wishing for all this snow to melt. I swear that one pile of slush outside of the dining hall has been there since January…

READING AND BLOGGING:

I read 18 books this month! Better than I thought I’d done, given midterms. I found my first 5-star read of the year, though, and I also participated in the #transreadathon for the week of March 20-27, and found some great reads as a result!

2 – 2.75 stars:

Spin

3 – 3.75 stars:

The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester

4 – 4.75 stars:

The Thirty Names of Night

5 stars:

Story of Your Life

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: Story of Your Life – 5 stars

Story of Your Life

POSTS I’M PROUD OF:

POSTS FROM OTHER WONDERFUL PEOPLE THAT I ENJOYED:

SONGS/ALBUMS THAT I’VE BEEN ENJOYING:

DE LA SOUL IS ON STREAMING GO LISTEN GO LISTEN
John Lennon put everything into that inhale huh
the only musical jumpscare that I find myself actively seeking out
SUCH a good EP
the fact that this song only took a week to get to #3 on my most played songs on apple music should say something about it…or me
delightful song, gorgeous video, solid album!!

Today’s song:

TODAY’S THE DAAAAAAAAAAAY

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

Posted in Music, Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 2/5/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, everyone!

It’s February now, and what better way to start the month off than with an excess of Super Furry Animals? I hereby claim no responsibility for any damages caused by any bipedal, masked, bear-like demon-creatures that may cross your path. They’re best deterred by repeated screaming, if you want my advice. And look out for the chupacabras while you’re at it.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 2/5/23

“The International Language of Screaming” – Super Furry Animals

I finally listened to all of Radiator (which I seriously think boasts one of my favorite album covers…ever, really. You really won with this one, Pete Fowler.) earlier in the week, and it just felt like pure fun all the way through. I know how vague of a description that is, but listening to almost every track (save for the downer “Download”) gives me the sense that Gruff Rhys and company had a blast recording every single song. Knowing that this comes an album or two before the masterpiece that is Rings Around the World, Radiator feels like the band keeping the cheerful, carefree spirit that they’ve always maintained, but just starting to get weird with it—they haven’t quite gotten into the flat-out experimental territory of Rings just yet, but you can see it peering through the cracks just as well. My only criticism that I can think of for Radiator is that some of the songs blend together a bit, but it’s not a complaint if they all sound almost as good as this one. “The International Language of Screaming” is a clear standout—it’s a concentrated shot of Britpop fun straight to the heart, pure and simple. Maybe it isn’t as weird as some of my other SFA favorites, but I can’t help but nodding my head to every “la la la la” and ecstatic “WOO!” every time it comes around on shuffle. It’s joy with a side of popping colors and punchy guitars.

“By the Sea” – Wendy & Bonnie

Apologies for the whiplash from going straight from “The International Language of Screaming” to this eeriness. But, as with far too much with this post, there’s an inevitable Super Furry Animals connection.

I first found out that this song existed because of “Hello Sunshine”; I distinctly remembered a part at the beginning that creeped me out as a kid, so, naturally, I set out to find it. Sure enough, it was a sample of this song (0:00-0:47 in the video), and the rest of the song is…just as creepy. Recorded when Wendy and Bonnie Flowers were 17 and 13, respectively, it’s a chilling, atmospheric song that feels just as gray as a cold, churning sea crashing against a rocky shore. Punctuated by seemingly random fills of soft drums and out-of-sync guitar strums, there’s a strange discordance about it. It’s clear that the vocals were intended to be the main attraction here, their lilting harmonies shining through the cloudy fog of the rest of the song. It’s a great listen, but at the same time, it’s strangely comforting to think that I’m still creeped out now by the same thing that I was creeped out at when I was 5. I still don’t get why I was freaked out by some random clip from Baby Einstein, but this is understandable. There’s really something about Wendy & Bonnie, huh?

“Everyday Sunshine” – Fishbone

“Everyday Sunshine” takes on a whole new meaning when you wake up on Monday morning and see that it’s -6° outside. Anybody else sick of winter? No? Just me?

Aaaaaaaand another whiplash-inducing left turn, but we’re back to happy songs, don’t worry! We’re back to what’s close to the epitome of happy songs, as a matter of fact. I found this one courtesy of my amazing mom, and I haven’t stopped nodding my head ever since. If Super Furry Animals tried to embody joy, this is inches away from the pinnacle of the feeling itself. Just like the colorful murals and fields of blue and orange wildflowers in the music video, “Everyday Sunshine” is a sunburst (no pun intended) of carefree ska happiness. Every note from the brass section and every drumbeat brings armfuls of hope, and you can’t help but look out at the cloudy skies and try and find that tiny sliver of sunshine poking through. It’s the perfect bandaid for every mood: happy? Play this song. Neutral? Play this song. Sad? Play it and dance by yourself until your troubles are but motes of pollen drifting away from the aforementioned field of wildflowers. Again, a big thank you to my mom for this one. ☀️

“True Blue” – boygenius

With that, we’re…back on the sadgirl train, but…this one’s at least not nearly as heartbreaking as “Emily I’m Sorry,” so…

The harmonies of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus obviously fit together like it was written in the stars, but even so, you can see whose songs are whose—and this is Lucy’s song, without question, even if the handwritten in the lyric video didn’t give it away. It has their signature melancholy written all over it, but somehow, it feels more on the tender side, like learning to love somebody after you’ve only just started to heal yourself. Dacus’ voice is a soft but pushing force, gently letting the song form itself around her as it swirls into the night sky, while the higher harmonies of Baker and Bridgers seamlessly flow through to the chorus and the bridge—I particularly love how Baker’s high notes come through on the bridge—”Because it doesn’t matter anymore/Who won the fight?/I’m not keeping score.” Songs like this really display the two sides of boygenius—it’s a song where one member takes the lead, but they still come together as a single, cohesive force of nature.

“The Man Don’t Give a Fuck” – Super Furry Animals

“Out of focus ideology/Keep the masses from majority/Head space brainwashed, tumble dried/Left to bleed whilst vultures glide…”

…oh, so they just went and gave the GOP their own theme song, huh? On second thought…no. The GOP doesn’t deserve such a monumental banger.

I hate to double up here, but the Super Furry Animals train has left the station, and it’ll be an eternity before it reaches its destination. This song has quickly risen to become one of my favorites of theirs; it may not be as weird or experimental as some of my other favorites, but it’s a tight, four-minute burst of head-banging. From the deceptively slow build of the first minute, the music cascades into pure fuzz and drumbeats, and though the music drops out for short intervals, it never once loses its unstoppable momentum. It’s easy to see why this was one of their most popular songs: even though the chorus dominates almost the entire song, you can’t help but get up on your feet the minute the drums kick in. The slow creep of the vocals and jingle bells that starts at around the 2:30 mark builds suspense with a gradual layering of harmonies, building to a raucous screams that pushes right back into the ecstasy of the chorus. Almost 5 minutes of the same line (“you know they don’t give a fuck about anybody else”), and it never gets tiring—on the contrary, it’s already my second-most played song of the year, according to Apple Music. That’s an earworm for you.

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

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