Tag: Nico

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 7/16/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

Sparklehorse also posthumously released “The Scull of Lucia” this week, and it would’ve fit the color scheme, but I just know that it’s gonna make me too sad to write about. Love you, Mark, but I’m trying to preserve my sanity.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 7/16/23

“Divorce Song” – Liz Phair

I guess this week’s batch is starting out on a sour note, but I just have not stopped listening to bits and pieces of this album for weeks, so get Liz Phair’d. My advice, though: as we are in the peak of road trip season, this is the absolute worst song to put on a road trip playlist, as good as it is. Regardless of whether or not you’re in a romantic relationship on said road trip, I feel like it’s just a horrible omen either way.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, Liz Phair said that she wasn’t surprised that this song became a fan favorite from Exile in Guyville: “…[‘Divorce Song’] has that deadpan delivery. It’s an ordinary person doing ordinary things…the song is really just about relating to another person. It feels like an action-packed song. You’ve done a lot…but really it’s just two personalities trying to be intimate and bumping up against each other on a road trip and that’s all that happens.” The concept of lyrical storytelling is, for some reason, always equated to having some grand, lofty narrative, as if stories about ordinary things somehow don’t make the cut. But that’s exactly what makes “Divorce Song” such a powerful song—it’s a linear narrative about a road trip gone south, and yet it packs the same punch of a narrative spanning multiple songs. You can tangibly feel the trapped heat of the inside of a car, the humid desolation of a cramped hotel room, and the sinking realization that “it’s harder to be friends than lovers/and you shouldn’t try to mix the two/’cause if you do it and you’re still unhappy/then you know that the problem is you.” Against the backdrop of Phair’s turmoil, small details create a painfully fleshed-out picture (“and it’s true that I stole your lighter/and it’s also true that I lost the map”), the images of this song feel as real as if I were watching them unfold on a movie screen; that really should be the bare minimum, but honestly, in the age of mass-produced, filtered music dominating the airwaves, this song feels like a breath of fresh air, even 30 years later. (Not too sound like a boomer there. I’ve just been inundated for the past few days because Taylor Swift was in town this weekend.) Contrary to Pitchfork contributor Scott Plagenhoef’s assertion that Exile would come off as dated to this generation because we’re so used to explicit sexual content in mainstream music…it’s not dated in that sense? At all?? Sure, we are exposed to more of it, but that doesn’t diminish the value of one of the first female artists to bring these kind of raw, unapologetic, and honest lyrics to the indie rock scene and owning it. It’s not like it’s impossible to see that empowerment shining through, whether it’s in the context of 1993 or 2023.

Seriously, Pitchfork…whose grand idea was it to have a man write a review of the 15th Anniversary Edition of Exile in Guyville? Not that men can’t write reviews of music by women and vice versa, but this one? The album that specifically came about to critique the boy’s club of indie rock? That’s just a war crime, if I’ve ever seen it. The review is from 2008, but…no, they had definitely had women on board at Pitchfork by then. There’s no excuse. Jesus Christ…

“Naked Cousin” (demo) – P.J. Harvey

uhhhhhhh tommy shelby sigma male octillionaire grindset cillian murphy moment

No, I haven’t watched Peaky Blinders yet, but my parents recently going through the whole show (and getting close to finishing it) has me almost convinced to watch it?? If anything will convince me, though, it’s the absolutely loaded soundtrack: Radiohead? The White Stripes? The Kills? I mean, come on. Perfection. And this too!

And, it’s reminded me that I need to get into P.J. Harvey. Somehow, I always forget about her, but every time I hear a song of hers, it’s instantly gripping, whether it’s the grinding jumpscare of “Rid Of Me” or what is hands down the best cover of The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” ever performed, along with our queen Björk:

If that doesn’t make you want to worship the ground that they both walk on, just for a moment, I’m not sure what possibly will. The sheer power they both wield.

Again, there’s no excuse for me not to get into more P.J. Harvey right this minute, except for my pileup of albums waiting to be listened to. But for now, I at least have this song—and it’s a demo? How is this a demo?? Lucy Dacus, on her episode of Amoeba Records’ YouTube series What’s In My Bag? picked an album of Harvey’s 4-track demos, and remarked about how she wished that her demos were “remotely shareable” in comparison. Either way, I’m so glad that this demo is out in the world. Even with my limited P.J. Harvey knowledge, raw power is what characterizes what I’ve heard of her music—raw-throat screaming, instrumentals that bear down on you like an onslaught. “Naked Cousin” is just that; the slightly grungier (not necessarily grungy in the Nirvana way, but in both the musical and non-musical sense of the word), grimier sound quality coming from the demo enhances its atmosphere. It’s an eerily sinister song, the dirtiness of the instrumentation matching the lyrical image of discomfort that Harvey weaves: “I hate his smell and/I hate his company, but/But most of all, I hate that he/He looks just, just like me.” It’s a deeply uncomfortable song—Harvey really enhances the tangible feel of someone lingering over you, the feeling of their hot, sour breath pressing against your skin. She can certainly create an atmosphere, even if it’s the last one you’d want to be surrounded by.

“Femme Fatale” – The Velvet Underground & Nico

Since I’ve started working at the library, I’ve made a playlist for myself to listen to while I’m shelving books. It’s all soft, slow songs, both so I don’t get distracted and so it matches the atmosphere of the library. So there’s a lot of Phoebe Bridgers, Radiohead, Wilco, some older St. Vincent, et cetera. “Femme Fatale” went on there almost immediately, but not just because it fit those criteria: nothing makes you feel more like a character in an indie movie than listening to The Velvet Underground in a library.

Nico’s vocals take the lead on “Femme Fatale,” leaving Lou Reed to the backing vocals on the chorus. I already talked a little about the power of her voice back when I first listened to The Velvet Underground & Nico back in April with “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” but those two songs together are emblematic of her vocal range. Next to the looming, encroaching presence on the former (although it comes later in the album), “Femme Fatale” sees Nico dipping into a gentle whisper, her voice fading to an almost imperceptible hiss at the very end of each chorus as she says “hear the way she talks.” As massive of a presence as her famously low, resonant voice is, she slips into the quiet so easily (see also: “I’ll Be Your Mirror”), and yet retains the same cavernous quality—even as her voice drifts through the enchantingly gentle intro of guitar and tambourine, you can instantly feel it in your chest, making your bones vibrate. Or maybe the latter is just the mixing of this song—famously headphone-vibrating, if the YouTube comments are any indication. It’s the perfect fit for a film—the only movie I can seem to find with it is Bandslam, which I’ve never heard of, but Wes Anderson really needs to get on it. Past time that he used it for something, although maybe he filled his personal Nico quotient in The Royal Tenenbaums?

One Nico song seems like a small quotient, but who am I to judge Wes Anderson? He’s Wes Anderson, after all.

“St. Charles Square” – Blur

Gather ’round, my fellow Americans, let us all cry and watch videos of Blur performing in Wembley Stadium, and hope for the best that they’ll just get over themselves and announce a North American tour. Grab your tissues. Cry with me.

But this. THIS. This is the Blur that I’d been missing! “The Narcissist” was a solid song, but “St. Charles Square” is a much better showcase of their talents—and brimming with so much more creativity. Unlike the former single, which sounded as though it could be a solo Damon Albarn track, “St. Charles Square” finally feels like Albarn, Coxon, James, and Rowntree have reformed as a truly cohesive unit, their unique talents blending as seamlessly as they did in the 90’s. Whether or not Damon Albarn’s “OI!” at the beginning is a callback to “Parklife” (aaaaaaaaaall the people) or just him being British is up for debate, but even if it is nostalgia bait, you bet I’m biting it. You guys have no idea how many times my mom and I have car-danced to that song. I’ll gladly be a nostalgic shill for a bunch of white, middle-aged British guys. And finally, finally, Graham Coxon’s signature guitar playing has returned to the spotlight! His riffs are as power-laden and punchy as ever, and he’s adopted an echoing tone that calls back to David Bowie at the very beginning of the 80’s, right as he released Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps). And this song is full of scary monsters and super creeps of its own—the delightfully eerie lyrics are rife with “ghosts come back to haunt me” and “something down here/And it’s living under the floorboards/Its grabbed me round the neck with its long and slender claws.” With all that to work with, it’s no wonder that Albarn’s flair for showmanship shines in this track: I’d be lying if I told you that his piercing, werewolf howl at 1:40 didn’t make me giddy on every single listen. It’s a spooky delight all the way through.

“Unknown Legend” (Neil Young cover) – Shakey Graves, Shovels & Rope

I didn’t know until I started looking into this song that it was a cover—Shakey Graves was the main draw, I only knew of Shovels & Rope because they always come up as similar artists when I search for Shakey Graves on Apple Music, and I can only remember one (1) Neil Young song off the top of my head. And normally, I wouldn’t be one for folk-country songs describing a blonde woman riding through the desert on a Harley-Davidson that rhymes “diner” with “finer” (in reference to said woman), but, again: Shakey Graves.

iTunes has this song labeled as Shakey Graves & Shovels & Rope (and my English major brain wants to separate them with a comma or “and,” not a second ampersand, for the love of god 😭), but I was surprised to see that YouTube lists it as Shovels & Rope feat. Shakey Graves; if anything, there’s far more Shakey than Shovels—Alejandro Rose-Garcia is clearly taking the lead on vocals here. (I guess that this song was also included on Shovels & Rope’s covers album, Busted Jukebox, vol. 1, so that’s probably why.) Either way, the harmonies on this rendition of Neil Young are my main draw. Rose-Garcia’s voice has this distinct, irreplaceable rasp to it, rough and raw-throated at the edges, but never losing its power. Combined with the husband and wife duo of Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst (is it bad to ask who’s the shovel and who’s the rope in this relationship?), their voices form a resonant group of harmonies, with Hearst’s high notes elevating the thrill of the music and Trent providing a steady wall for it to anchor itself against. Whether they’re hitting the highest of high notes or gently drifting away from the chorus with their whispered repetition of “the air she breathes.” Again: I’m not usually one for the folky covers with the obligatory harmonica solo at the end, but Shakey Graves will convince me.

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

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

Posted in Uncategorized

Sunday Songs: 4/23/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

I may be slightly sick, but I did not lose my lack of coherence, so today, I give you a very famous banana, Wall-E, and the only band that can make a Black Sabbath song sound dainty. Have fun trying to bring it all together. I certainly did.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 4/23/23

“Heavy Bend” – Big Thief

With full sincerity, I mean this in the absolute nicest way possible: the beginning of this song sounds like an Apple ringtone. An Apple ringtone, but the kind that has no business being as much of a banger as it is. Like the Piano one. Did any of that make any sense? I need a Taskmaster-style choreography to this one now. Would this give Noel Fielding shrew vibes?

My Big Thief/Adrianne Lenker conversion has begun, thanks to my brother and his girlfriend, and every day I’m inching closer to listening to Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You. But this song is unique—everything, from the echo of Adrianne Lenker’s sighing into the microphone to the hypnotic, harp-like strums that feel like the auditory answer to dew-covered spiderwebs in the early morning. That hypnotic quality reminds me a lot of “Bicycle,” another song that I raved about a few months ago, that shares the quality of feeling enchantingly impressionistic, like a painting imbued with motion. And as much of a cliche as this is, “Heavy Bend”‘s biggest crime is being too short. Some songs work as short and snappy (see “We’ve Got a File on You,” “Pam Berry,” “A Little Bit of Soap,” etc.), but this song feels like it’s begging for a key change, a bridge, just something to propel it beyond a minute and 36 seconds. On the other hand, that makes it tantalizingly easy to play on repeat. If you play it enough times on loop, you can just pretend that it’s longer. Denial is the first stage of grief.

“All Tomorrow’s Parties” – The Velvet Underground & Nico

nothing like cackling at niche jokes alone in your dorm, amirite?

I’ve finally got around to listening to another classic album—one that I’d heard about half of beforehand anyway, but still enjoyed, for all of its legend, discomfort, and strange beauty. A classic story of a disaster and a sales flop becoming a tried-and-true classic, every song feels like its own world—a very seedy, eerie, and hazy world, but a world all the same. I doubt anybody will ever describe Nico’s voice better than the journalist Richard Goldstein, who described it as “something like a cello getting up in the morning.” I wouldn’t automatically put it on my top 10, but it’s clear that its lasting legacy isn’t without reason.

“All Tomorrow’s Parties” is one of the songs that was relatively new to me, and it quickly became my favorite of the album. There are so many layers to it, more than the peelable, bruised, Andy Warhol banana on the album cover. It chugs along like a great machine, elephantine in its size, slow in its looming progress. Nico’s distinct voice, thick, resonant and cavernous, plows it along, drawing a long shadow over the music. Each piano chord seems to plod along, even with how rapid each chord is. It almost feels like a dirge in the way it seems to crawl, certainly for the fate of said “poor girl” that the song describes. Unlike “Heavy Bend,” this song is the perfect length—the typical 3 minutes doesn’t give it enough time to loom over the listener, but just over six minutes gives it all the time in the world.

“I/0” – Peter Gabriel

“gay rights” – Peter Gabriel 2023

Oof, another beautiful one…I’m just glad this one is easier to swallow than “Playing for Time,” but it’s just as powerful.

Peter Gabriel’s had his fair share of movie involvement, from writing various film soundtracks to providing the tearjerking end-credits song “Down to Earth” for Pixar’s Wall-E. So it’s not surprising how easily he can slip into that cinematic smoothness with such ease. Certainly helps that the Soweto Gospel Choir, the same choir that performed with him on “Down to Earth,” provided backing vocals for “I/O” as well. Even though every song from the forthcoming i/o (stop trying to capitalize the i STOP TRYING TO CAPITALIZE THE i) has been paired with a visual so far, this one is practically begging for its own Pixar movie, or even just some animated music video. You can feel every bit of nature creeping through this song, from every creature mentioned in the lyrics to running water and green hills.

was this another gateway to sci-fi for baby Madeline? probably.

If we’re keeping with the Pixar theme, that would be two Pixar movies that he would hypothetically contribute to with a deeply environmentalist message. I’ve never been a die-hard Disney or Pixar fan, but Wall-E is special to me in so many ways—it was one of the first movies that I ever saw in theaters as a kid, and 15 years later (Jesus, I feel old), it reflects on humanity’s disconnect from nature, and the dangers of thinking that we’re the masters of everything that we can grab at. The scene where Wall-E reaches up to touch the stars still fills me with incredible awe. But, as with everything, we didn’t listen, and now we’re in the landscape where a handful of corporations are responsible for polluting a large part of our planet. And that is why we’ve become disconnected: as soon as we forget that we’re as much a part of the Earth as every other plant, animal, and other entity, we think that we can get away with all of this. And that’s what Wall-E tried to tell us in 2008, and it’s what “I/O” is telling us now: “So we think we live apart/because we’ve got two legs, a brain and a heart/we all belong to everything/to the octopus suckers and the buzzard’s wing.” Here and now, I’m glad that at least one other old white guy besides David Attenborough recognizes this. Happy belated Earth Day.

“Step On Me” – The Cardigans

I can’t pull the “I LiKEd tHiS sOnG bEFoRe IT wAS a tIKtOk sONG” card because I technically didn’t know this song in particular, but with David Bowie as my witness, I can swear that I did grow up listening to The Cardigans in the car quite a bit. I’ve had the luck of having very few songs I know become “tiktok songs,” but I’ve found that it’s no use griping over it and insisting that “[you] liked it before it was cool.” People are just going to assume that you got a song from some popular place, and that is the case sometimes, as much of a pretentious hipster I am. I vehemently despise tiktok’s obsession with speeding up every song that gets popular (WHY), but either way, it led me back to The Cardigans and to First Band on the Moon, and I’m happy with that—and happy that everybody else seems to be enjoying it.

(Does anybody know if this song was attached to a certain trend? I know that it’s vaguely trending, but I’m not sure how or why—I’ve just seen it with a few unrelated art videos…)

“Step On Me” is one of many lovely bites of pop on First Band on the Moon, and one of the best—certainly my favorite track on the album. Nina Persson casually just created the national anthem for people-pleasers with this one—a song about dodging your own needs, letting people walk (sorry, step) all over you: “go on and step on me,” even as the object of the song stands on her left foot and breaks it. With a crunching, muted intro that continues to punctuate the end of every chorus, everything about this song is proof that The Cardigans. got the recipe for a good pop song down to a science back in the 90’s—Nina Persson’s deceptively delicate, ringing voice, no shortage of hooks and catchy lyrics, and radio friendliness without over-simplicity. Every time the scratchy, muted intro comes on shuffle, I can’t help but drop everything and turn up the volume. Like I said—The Cardigans had pop music down to a science. No wonder they’re trending again. If you can make a Black Sabbath cover sound dainty (MULTIPLE TIMES), you can pretty much do anything.

“New York City Cops” – The Strokes

Like Jack White, Julian Casablancas is just one of those musicians who I really want to hate, but then I hear songs like this that are just so undeniably catchy that I just can’t hate him all the way. That being said, the thought of him still makes me want to roll my eyes all the way back in my head, mainly because of flashbacks of him taking over Sirius XMU and saying something along the lines of “now, this next song is from a 60’s punk band from Peru…oh, you don’t know them?” I really wish I was kidding.

Even though the beginning feels a little manufactured to me (the staged-feeling quality of Casablancas screaming, then going back on it: “ahahaha………didn’t mean that at all 🫦”…oh, please), the rest of the song is a masterfully tight piece of post-punk (oh, post-punk revival…okay, fine). It’s delightfully uptight—it all feels boxed in a cramped room, but it takes the confines of that room runs with it, never once loses momentum after the first drumbeat. The rough edges of Casablancas’ voice contrast perfectly with each scratchy guitar chord, a constant buffet of sound that never loses its sandpapery texture. I mean that as a compliment—it’s not a grating sandpaper, but more of the hard-edge, punk sandpaper that makes The Strokes sound the way they do. And although this song was subject to some abysmally bad timing in the U.S. (the song was initially removed from the U.S. release because the album was released so close to 9/11—the chorus of “New York City cops/but they ain’t too smart” was, understandably, a massive no-no so close to such a tragedy, even if it was completely unintentional), I’m glad “New York City Cops” ended up seeing the light of day a significant amount of time after the fact.

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: 2/12/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

It appears that my way of telling the world that I’m very done with winter, thank you very much, is by making brighter and brighter color schemes for these posts. The songs aren’t *all* necessarily happy, but hopefully a handful will bring some warmth to you into these chilly times. Bring on Spring already, huh?

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 2/12/23

“Bicycle” – St. Vincent

You know those movie/TV scenes where the protagonist sees somebody from across the bus/train station, and then the bus/train/insert vehicle of your choosing passes by, and the person mysteriously disappears by the time the protagonist looks back?

forgive the, ah…interesting editing, this is the only clip I could find 🥴

Yeah, that. Sort of. Maybe a bit artsier. Not to dunk on the Sam Raimi Spiderman movies, my beloveds (except for this one, I still haven’t seen it), but I can’t think of an artsier example. More in line with the feel of the song.

My roundabout point is that this is how “Bicycle” makes me feel—I could either be the mysterious person who disappears behind the train, or the onlooker watching them from across the tracks. I can practically feel the beret, peacoat, and plaid scarf descend upon me, walking through puddles in high-heeled boots as the mysterious person from across the station vanishes…

As much as I adore St. Vincent’s shreddier side, I always feel a little nostalgic for her earlier, art-pop days when I hear songs like this. I didn’t even know it existed until I saw it hidden in her earlier singles, apparently a b-side to “Actor Out of Work” that never made it onto Actor and sort of faded into the background of her catalogue. And even though it fits more of the impressionistic forays of Marry Me, it’s a crime that this song doesn’t get any attention. With a slow build from a collage of light woodwinds and pianos, it feels like a watercolor painting of a city in the rain. Annie Clark’s voice, which rocks like gentle waves as she muses about a stolen bicycle and a pair of tennis shoes, creates an atmospheric painting of a song. The point at about the 2:36 mark where the background steps into a different key, practically feels like levitation. It’s a beautiful song, and it’s a crime that it took me this long to find. Either way, what matters is that I have the chance to listen to it now, and I’m already starting to listen to it nonstop until I’m sick of it. I doubt I’ll get sick of it.

“Cody’s Only” – Wednesday

I found out about Wednesday completely on a whim while glancing at an article about NPR’S 2023 artists to watch. I came around to this song, and just like that, I’ve got another few albums added to my never-ending hydra of a list of albums I need to listen to. One song was all I needed to get hooked; Karly Hartzman’s vocals have a likably nasally quality to them, lingering in the quiet, guitar-plucked first minutes of the song, then soaring to the point of exhaustion as the guitars explode into fuzz once more. “Cody’s Only” is a song that keeps you on your toes: you think it’s just another quiet, sadgirl indie song for the first thirty seconds, but as soon as the heavy guitars and percussion kick in, you’re blown out of your seat. I’ve only listened to a handful of their songs now, but they remind me a little of Snail Mail, maybe with a bit of Horsegirl mixed in, but I’m sure that I’ll be hooked on at least a few more of their songs. I don’t want to get my hopes up too too high, but I might be a fan…

“Hello Sunshine” – Super Furry Animals

And you thought I was done with Super Furry Animals for the week? Gotta keep you on your toes somehow…

I already talked a bit about the Wendy & Bonnie sample at the beginning of this song last week, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk more about this song, especially with how much I’ve been listening to it lately. Despite how much said sample creeped me out, it’s a song I remember fondly from my childhood, and it still retains that signature joy to this day. Paired with the music video and its cheery, pseudo-pegasus creatures, it’s a song that brought sunshine into some of the freezing days of the past few weeks. After the distorted sample fades out, it launches into a perfect package of Britpop joy. It’s not as loud, explosive, or experimental as some of their other hits, but it’s pure comfort. Listening to it feels like you’re in the strange, animated world of the music video, bright, cartoony, and filled with…well, sunshine. It’s a song that’s begging for the hopeful end credits of a movie, and it’s a song that never fails to fill my heart with a little warmth in these cold months.

“These Days” (Nico/Jackson Browne cover) – St. Vincent

Another St. Vincent song that I had no idea existed until recently…I’ve given up all shame in doubling up on artists on these posts now. I am forcing you to listen to St. Vincent singles ca. 2008-2009.

You can’t deny how somber this song is (and Jackson Browne apparently wrote it at 16? never ceases to amaze me), but there’s some kind of intangible hope that Annie Clark’s take brings to it. This was one of the first singles she ever released as St. Vincent, a b-side of “Jesus Saves, I Spend,” and it’s hard to think of a better cover to go along with the art-pop sensibilities of Marry Me. The more delicate side of both Annie Clark’s airy voice and her intricate guitar playing suit this song; maybe it’s this that gives this version more hope: there’s a hidden brightness in her instrumentation, wistful, but not quite sunk in sadness. Clark might as well be a sort of musical, more positive King Midas—every cover she touches turns to gold, and even if it was already gold, she makes it shine even more.

(…except for that cover of “Funkytown.” We don’t talk about Funkytown.)

“Main Titles” (from Only Murders in the Building) – Siddhartha Khosla

We’re ending on a happy note, trust me. Short and sweet.

I’ve recently started blowing through Only Murders in the Building (NO SPOILERS, I STILL HAVEN’T FINISHED SEASON 2), and it’s easily the most delightful show I’ve watched in ages. And given that the premise surrounds a true crime podcast and an actual murder, that’s saying something. But then you throw in two eccentric old guys and an equally eccentric Selena Gomez, an old apartment building in New York City, and some weird shenanigans involving a cat, and it’s instantly the most comforting murder show you will ever watch. And it’s almost enough for me to forgive Cara Delevigne for getting on my nerves so much, and that’s saying something.

Key word there is almost. The bar is in the Mariana Trench.

But one of my favorite parts of the whole show, the very thing that shouldn’t have a whole lot to do with the content of the story itself, is the opening credits:

I could go on for days about how wonderful the animation is, but half of what makes it shine is the background music. Even though it’s short enough for YouTube to constitute is as a Short™️ (and definitely not Trying To Capitalize Off Of The Success Of TikTok™️), it perfectly encapsulates the mood of the entire show; it’s all played in a minor key, giving it the slightest bit of a sinister air, but the combination of the strings, choir, brass, and the delightful little chime at the very end give it a strangely cozy, warm feel. It almost has the feel of some of the work Danny Elfman has done for Tim Burton (I know that doesn’t narrow it down at all, but hear me out); there’s an air of spooky around it, but there’s an undeniable whimsy that carries the entire song. A good theme song is hard to find in the days of the “skip intro” button (and anybody who skips this intro deserves jail time, I don’t make the rules), but this is an instantly memorable one.

Since this whole post consists 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

Book Review Tuesday (1/31/23) – A Million to One

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I hate to end the month on a negative note review-wise, but I just wasn’t a fan of this novel. I’ve been following Adiba Jaigidar’s books for a little while, and for the most part (still don’t see why Hani and Ishu still gets that much hype), she does well with writing diverse YA romances. I was excited to see her take on a different genre, but to my disappointment, A Million to One read as a half-baked, flimsy excuse for a heist.

For my review of Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating, click here!

Enjoy this week’s review!

A Million to One – Adiba Jaigirdar

Josefa, Emilie, Hinnah, and Violeta: four girls from radically different backgrounds, thrown together on the RMS Titanic. Their mission: to steal a copy of the Rubaiyat, embedded with jewels and worth a fortune. With all of their skills combined, the girls are confident that they can swipe the priceless book once and for all. But the Titanic is filled with distractions, romance, and all sorts of obstacles, and the job may be easier said than done. Add in the recent revelation that the Titanic is sinking, and the four realize that they may be in over their heads…

TW/CW: drowning, mentions of parental abuse, loss of loved ones, abandonment

Yikes. I think I’m gonna have to break up with Adiba Jaigirdar after this one. I loved The Henna Wars, Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating was decent but nothing earth-shattering, and now A Million to One was just plain disappointing. Her books have just gotten progressively worse for me? I really appreciate that she’s branching out from romance, but it really seems like she bit off more than she could chew.

Before I get to all my gripes, I will say that I loved, as with all of Jaigirdar’s novels, the amount of diversity. It’s historical fiction, but we have Black, Pakistani, and Croatian characters, a sapphic romance, and all but one of the main characters are immigrants, which is always fantastic to see. The thing about A Million to One was that everything came down to the execution, and the execution failed miserably.

If I had to sum up A Million to One in brief terms, it feels like Jaigirdar was watching your garden-variety heist movie, fell asleep half an hour in, and then tried to write a book from that memory as soon as she woke up. All of the beats of a typical heist were technically there, but they all but stood around and did nothing. Everything that should have been interesting about this novel—getting the gang together, the Titanic setting, carrying out the heist, the romance—was glossed over in favor of a good 100 pages of dithering in between each major plot point. It was the skeleton of a heist, lacking all of the meat and muscle that would have made it substantial.

For instance: the first few chapters of the novel. These were dedicated to Josefa assembling her crew, which is the kind of beat that I really enjoy in any kind of heist plot. However, all it consisted of was Josefa randomly going up to the rest of the characters with seemingly no explanation and offering them the job, and them either agreeing to it immediately (???), or, if we were lucky, having a paragraph of deliberation before agreeing to it. This could have been a perfect opportunity to develop the characters (especially since they weren’t developed much at all throughout the novel anyway) and introduce their personalities/roles in the heist, but we got absolutely none of that. It wasn’t like A Million to One was so long that this part of the plot needed to be cut down for time—it’s barely over 300 pages. There was no excuse for that.

And for the amount of opportunities that Jaigirdar had to develop these four characters, most of them were shockingly underdeveloped. Other than some insight on the motivations of Violeta and Emilie, all four characters had nearly indistinguishable voices, personalities, and no reason for being on the mission other than a vague role. We got a bit of a tragic backstory for Hinnah, at least, but a tragic backstory with nothing else to go off of does not a well-developed character make. In addition, we only got a vague idea of what the characters’ roles were—the actress, the thief, the acrobat, and the forger—often with no context. For instance: Violeta was supposed to be an actress, but we got no idea of her background, her training, and how she got to be so good. For a novel that seemed to market the diversity and individuality of the crew, it would’ve been leagues better if I had been able to tell who was who without the chapter titles.

The majority of the novel ended up being a bunch of meaningless dithering about on the Titanic, which was intended to…build up the suspense, I supposed, but it felt like far too many pages of The Gang running around the ship, chatting with a boy or two, trying to throw the guards off their trail, and making no progress whatsoever. There was supposed to be a romance somewhere hidden in there, but it ended up being my problem with Hani and Ishu, amplified: two characters just got thrown together with zero prior chemistry, insinuation, or anything that would suggest love. It got to the point where any movement in the novel was indistinguishable, and by the time I finally got around to the actual heist, any semblance of suspense or action had vanished. The only thing that managed to partially grab my attention was the fact that the Titanic had started to sink, but by then, the only aspect that somewhat grabbed my attention was that half of the main cast died. If major character deaths are the only thing that are keeping your reader interested, then something is very wrong with your plot.

All in all, a break from form for Adiba Jaigirdar, but one that ended in a half-baked, borderline boring disaster. 2 stars.

A Million to One is a standalone, but Adiba Jaigirdar is also the author of The Henna Wars, Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating, and the forthcoming The Dos and Donuts of Love.

I’ve already posted once today, but have another song anyway:

such a lovely cover 😭

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