Happy Sunday, bibliophiles, and Happy Easter to those celebrating! 🐰
Since I took a break last week to finish up my honors thesis, here’s my graphic and the accompanying songs from that week:
SUNDAY SONGS (3/29/26):
- “This Mess We’re In” (feat. Thom Yorke) – PJ Harvey
- “The Rat’s Prayer” – The Soft Boys
- “Can’t Sleep” – Jay Som
- “Peggy Guggenheim” – They Might Be Giants
- “Rebel in You” – Supergrass
This week: living vicariously through a digital album because SOMEBODY won’t tour in my area, making something out of nothing, and the inevitability of mildly cursed Jeff Tweedy music videos.
Enjoy this week’s songs!
SUNDAY SONGS: 4/5/26
“Crash Landing” – mary in the junkyard
THE ALBUM! THE ALBUM IS FINALLY COMING!
After about a year and a half of following their excellent singles and EP, mary in the junkyard is finally putting out their debut album! Role Model Hermit comes out this July, and I couldn’t be more excited. With the last handful of singles, I had some fears that they’d become a one-trick pony, but I’m so glad that a) they’re deviating from the sound that they’d established, and b) that the final product is this stunningly good.
“Crash Landing” gives their sound more polish, but takes away none of their corner-dwelling, cobweb-covered sensibilities. The harmonium gives me goosebumps every time, but after the instrument fades away, that haunting power never fades. When the harmonium chords transition into the soaring guitar, it really makes the choice of the music video make sense—everything in this song sounds like frigid waves crashing against white chalk cliffs. Now that Clari Freeman-Taylor sounds clearer, the subtle power of her voice comes through even more, through lyrics surrounding falling in love with a deeply guarded person: “And I can take your mask off/But only in the dark/And you won’t takе your shoes off/In case you have to run, run, run.” The repetition of “you open up like a coconut” sticks out, mainly from the coconut bit—that word doesn’t fit as neatly with the rest of them—but as with all of their lyrics, mary in the junkyard frame it as just the right kind of flotsam and jetsam to decorate this track.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Sisters in the Wind – Angeline Boulley – “And I can take your mask off/But only in the dark/And you won’t takе your shoes off/In case you have to run…”
“Up The Hill Backwards” – David Bowie
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps has a special place in my heart. All the way back in middle school, at the height of my David Bowie discovery phase, it was one of the first albums that I listened to in full, after the virtually unbeatable Hunky Dory/Ziggy Stardust/Aladdin Sane glam trifecta. But I hold it up with nearly the same nostalgia. I feel like most of it tends to get lost amongst other Bowie albums, save for its most popular singles (“Ashes to Ashes” and “Fashion”). Both of them are icons in their own right, but I’d honestly argue that Scary Monsters, all the way through, is nearly as strong as the Berlin Trilogy, if not equally strong. It’s in a strange limbo in Bowie’s discography between the end of Berlin and the beginning of his plainer, more mainstream pop era of the ’80s, and the space between that juncture is what makes Scary Monsters so exciting to me: all the polish of pop, but with the same unusual, and often dystopian undertones of an album like Low or Lodger. Hell, he’s using what sounds to be the same drum machine from “Breaking Glass” on “Up the Hill Backwards.” It’s basically the fourth and forgotten chipmunk of the Berlin Trilogy that got unfairly swept aside.
“Ashes to Ashes” remains one of my favorite David Bowie tracks of all time, and that, along with the more commercial singles from the album, tends to overshadow the other gems on this album, everything from a Tom Verlaine cover to a dystopian tale more grounded and grittier than the contents of Diamond Dogs. But “Up The Hill Backwards” is an immediate standout to me. It feels like an alien organism wearing the skin of a typical pop song as a coat: everything seems aligned perfectly for radio-friendliness, but then it reveals just how delightfully askew it is. Most of that is due to the unusual 7/4 time signature, giving it that lack of resolution, but it’s full of chimes and squeals and chimney-like puffs that make it into a well-oiled machine like no other. With the ripping guitar riffs of Robert Fripp, you can’t go wrong—every off-kilter cog in “Up The Hill Backwards” is working in precise harmony. And it’s all strangely upbeat for a song about the existential void that comes in realizing the slowness of progress; the first line references a line in Dada: Art and Anti-Art which itself is referencing the fall of Imperial Germany (“The vacuum created by the arrival of freedom/And the possibilities it seems to offer”), but it could represent the death of one system and the slow birth of another. It’s contextualized further knowing that Scary Monsters was written in wake of his divorce with Angie Bowie, so that “vacuum created by freedom” can be systemic or personal. Either way, “Up The Hill Backwards” pledges to trudge onwards in the face of collapse, no matter how uphill the journey is.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Five Ways to Forgiveness – Ursula K. LeGuin – “The vacuum created by the arrival of freedom/And the possibilities it seems to offer/It’s got nothing to do with you, if one can grasp it…”
Jeff Tweedy’s always been one for mildly cursed music videos (see: “I Know What It’s Like”), and this video certainly translated it into the COVID-19 age, with the noses and mouths of fellow musicians (and a handful of actors) disturbingly green-screened over his masked face. If you’re hankering to see what Jeff Tweedy’s face would look like if it was mashed up with Robyn Hitchcock, Fred Armisen, Jay Som, Seth Meyers, Jon Hamm, or Nick Offerman (and more)…now’s your chance, I guess?
A lot of Jeff Tweedy’s solo work before Twilight Override tends to be more on the folky and borderline simplistic side (though the two are mutually exclusive, that’s not a dig at the entirety of folk music). It hasn’t hooked me nearly as much as his work with Wilco, but what you have to understand is that even if you’re getting something less than Wilco-quality, it’s still a great song. “Gwendolyn” is a more straightforward rocker, but you still get your money’s worth of most of what I like about Jeff Tweedy; there’s punches of truly inspired lyrics (“The sun coming up/Like a piece of toast”) and squealing, joyous guitar riffs aplenty. The truth is, Tweedy’s a cut above the rest, and even his more traditionally rock songs are as such—”Gwendolyn” is pure joy.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Lady’s Knight – Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner – okay, sue me…yes, I did put this in just because we’ve got two Gwens here.
“The Strangers” (Live) – St. Vincent & Jules Buckley
Even though I’ve been cruelly deprived of an orchestral tour date near me, at least I have LIVE IN LONDON! , St. Vincent’s digital-exclusive live album, where she’s accompanied by Jules Buckley’s 60-piece (!!) orchestra. I’ve loved seeing these new takes on her classic songs, especially since she’s been dredging up some rarely-played deep cuts out of the vault to interpret live (most of the shows have been opened with “We Put A Pearl In the Ground,” an instrumental piece from Marry Me.) “The Strangers” isn’t a deep cut by any capacity, but nonetheless, I think some of the album’s best interpretations have been of tracks from Actor; the whole album leans into drama and theater, so it’s no surprise that it translates well with orchestral backing. “The Strangers” is given the suspenseful, eerie grandeur of the original track, with the backing instrumentation easily taken up by the string and woodwind sections. It’s a grand, cinematic interpretation of an already grand and cinematic track, and with Annie Clark’s elevated shredding, it becomes something truly epic and sweeping, decadently consuming everything in its path.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Red City – Marie Lu – “Lover, I don’t play to win/But for the thrill, until I’m spent…”
“Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club” – Blur
My lukewarm Blur take du jour is that Graham Coxon may be the most talented member of the band, either on par or above Damon Albarn, as much as I love him. So the fact that I love Think Tank so much comes as a surprise even to myself. Blur without Coxon, in concept, isn’t even Blur! Right?
Sort of.
Coxon left the band temporarily due to creative differences, and during Think Tank, he only appears on one track, playing guitar for “Battery In Your Leg.” But what redeems the un-Grahamness of the album is the sheer inventiveness of it. You take away your lead guitarist, responsible for creating the band’s most iconic riffs, and the rest of the band members went “Huh. Let’s make sounds that sound like everything but a guitar and see what happens.” For Blur, this feels like a continuation of the experimental mindset that peaked with13, but in a new, more worldly sort of vein. In a way, it’s a response to loss, musically more than anything, though occasionally lyrically (“Sweet Song” was written about Coxon’s departure): when an important person departs from your life (temporarily, at least), what do you do with what’s left?
“Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowl Club” doesn’t tackle that subject matter, but it is a spectacular showcase of what happened when a chunk was untimely ripped from the fabric of the band. It’s one of the tracks on the album that easily could’ve come from Gorillaz’s first album, with its commentary on greed and the destruction of the environment. Alex James’s bass gets to shine on this track, with his smooth, funky riffs becoming the centerpiece amidst humming autotune and guitars. However you feel about Blur sans Graham, it stands as a quirky album produced by a band at a crossroads—it’s strikingly unusual in their catalogue.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Automatic Noodle – Annalee Newitz – similar in spirit to the feel of Think Tank: full of strange machinery, and mostly upbeat in spite of being smack dab in the middle of a dystopia.
Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.
That’s it for this week’s songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
The Bookish Mutant 