The Apples in Stereo – The Bookish Mutant

Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 5/18/25

Posted on May 18, 2025 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: do

you

SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

THAT I’M SCARED

AND I’M LONELÆEEEEEEEEEEE

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 5/18/25

“Innocence” – Björk

Saying that a certain Björk album feels bolder or more in-your-face than others feels redundant because most of them trend towards that direction. According to Sonic Symbolism, Volta was about being upfront, brightly-colored, and loud—in her personality, in her life, and in her political views (see: “Declare Independence”). Volta’s still in the weeds as far as my album bucket list goes, but I love the distinct flavor of it—flat neons and confidence. “Innocence” is a whole feast for me to pick apart in terms of sound. It stomps all over the place, leaving an asymmetrical trail in its wake, angular and herky jerky, but never more sure of itself. It’s the kind of song that makes me think that Björk’s suit on the album cover (designed by Bernard Willem) is about to turn into some kind of mech suit with flag-shooting cannons for hands. This is one of the songs on Volta that was produced by Timbaland, giving it a chrome-like sheen that could almost be pop, but could never deny the inherent weirdness that is Björk. At the beginning, the synths speed up as though winding up for a punch. The angular rhythm is an ouroboros, constantly made and remade again against Björk’s smoother vocals. There’s even a bit at 2:13 that I swear sounds like the Severance elevator noise. Every listen brings something new to the table—there’s all manner of Easter eggs lying around.

Lyrically, I can’t help but think of Debut. “Innocence” is a reckoning with the fearlessness of youth: “When I once was untouchable/Innocence roared, still amazes/When I once was innocent/It is still here, but in different places.” It’s hard not to think of the 1992 Björk that sang of “go[ing] down to the harbor/and jump[ing] between the boats” and ecstatically declaring that there was more to life than this. But the kind of confidence that she maintains at the time of “Innocence” is balancing that excitable youth with the fears that came as she matured: speaking to The Sun, she called the song “A handshake with fear.” For her, fear makes fearlessness even more tantalizing—now that she’s known the grips of it, she appreciates it even more. Even so, it’s still an extreme, but so is fear: “Fear of losing energy is draining/It locks up your chest, shuts down the heart/Miserly and stingy/Let’s open up: share!” Man. Did I need to hear that…for the millionth time. I feel like I’m the reverse, somehow. Of course, I’m not nearly at her maturity level, but I’ve been cautious my whole life. Still am. Fearlessness is freeing, and I only find that I can appreciate it when I have those fears right in front of me: I can see them, acknowledge them, and throw them to the wind, if only for a moment.

BONUS: The video above isn’t the official music video, but the 1st place winner of a fan contest that Björk held to make a music video, created by Fred & Annabelle. Here is the 2nd place winner for the video contest, made by Roland Matusek (Björk Kart?)

…as well as Björk talking about the inspiration behind the animation contest:

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Battle for WondLa (The Search for WondLa, #3) – Tony DiTerlizzi – “When I once was fearless/Innocence roared, still amazes/Untouchable innocence/It is still here, but in different places…”

“Sweet Thing” – David Bowie

It’s been about a year since I finally listen to all of Diamond Dogs in full, and I’m still blown away by how much David Bowie’s storytelling had developed. Throughout his life, Bowie accumulated an extensive library, often bringing books along with him to read on tour. (If you’re interested, John O’Connell compiled a list of some of the books that impacted him the most in Bowie’s Bookshelf. It’s a great read.) The more I think about it, the more I realize that Bowie approached songwriting like an author—whether or not there was a linear narrative, like the story of Hunger City in Diamond Dogs, he had not just melody in mind, but the exact emotion to wring out of which characters and when, and which motifs and allusions to scatter throughout. Obviously, these elements can exist outside of the realm of literature, but it’s so distinct from any given Bowie lyric, much less “Sweet Thing,” that he was a literary-minded man. No wonder I connected with him instantly.

In terms of Diamond Dogs’ tracklist, often with songs that are directly chain-linked to the others, I’m partial to “Future Legend/Diamond Dogs” (my favorite album opening of all time…nothing will ever go harder than that), but “Sweet thing” is the emotional core of Bowie’s narrative, without a doubt. Take a look at the first verse: “It’s safe in the city/To love in a doorway/To wrangle some screams from the dawn/And isn’t it me, putting pain in a stranger?/Like a portrait in flesh, who trails on a leash?” MAN. Glam rock had roots in theatre and the dramatic from the start, but this is one excerpt from Diamond Dogs that would have felt right at home on stage. As one of the entries in Bowie’s failed 1984 musical adaptation, it’s a loose twist on the ill-fated romance between Winston and Julia in Orwell’s novel; Bowie had to make some changes after the musical was dead in the water, rendering the characters nameless and the woman, seemingly, into a prostitute. Under the watchful eye of the “knowing one,” a kind of panopticon surveillance a la Big Brother, the narrator and the prostitute share painful, ill-fated, but fleeting love: “I’m in your way/And I’ll steal every moment/If this trade is a curse, then I’ll bless you/And turn to the crossroads…” With the imagery aplenty of doors and doorways, it’s an affair steeped in transition, an air of impermanence and separation present in every bittersweet moment. Bowie sells it all with one of the album’s most heart-wrenching moments: he draws out “Will you see/That I’m scared and I’m lonely?” with a stabbed, bleeding heart, hand outstretched, with full on musical theater drama. Yet never once does it feel false—Bowie can’t help but let some sincerity slip through the metric ton of personas and fiction. Alan Parker’s guitar soars in true glam-rock fashion, and somehow, the saxophones never feel out of place; Bowie’s world is all brass, rust, and forbidden love—a world fully realized that burst from the shell of Orwell to become a myth all its own.

BONUS: for the full experience, here’s the full story, told in a joining of “Sweet Thing,” “Candidate,” and “Sweet Thing (Reprise)”:

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Rakesfall – Vajra Chandrasekera – the 1984 pairing has run its course at this point, so here’s a story of epic-like love spanning across space and time.

“Pet Rock” – L’Rain

Another amazing find from my dad, “Pet Rock” thrives on being propped up. The music video shows a variety of pet rocks being set up and placed around a miniature dollhouse fitted with all manner of retro furniture, tiny instruments, and mini versions of L’Rain’s album I Killed Your Dog. (Now that’s a title for you…what’d you have to do that for??) The music thrums with distortion, barely contained chaos with a bubbly, Crumb-like atmosphere, faintly on the verge of psychedelic collapse. Taja Cheek’s vocals, like Lila Ramani, flicker in and out of clarity—the only time a finger pokes through the haze is when the guitar, before the instrumentals start unraveling, almost tricks you into thinking that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Like the dollhouse, “Pet Rock” has the feeling of a neon-colored haunted house (new Meow Wolf concept?)—everything appears structurally sound, but there’s all sorts of weirdness drifting just out of earshot.

The lyrics take a similar turn: after speaking of being propped up like said rock “Why would you go without me?/And make me something else?”), the lyrics go from a faint dread to something outright sinister: “Like a dead girl with shades on/Propped up by captors/I’m fine/I’ve got no one to talk to.” HUH?? Cheek told Alternative Press that the story was inspired by “an old story I’d been told about a woman who was riding the train but looked strange, and the reader eventually figures out that she’s dead, with glasses on, being propped up by the people that seem to have harmed her.” There’s a solid manipulation metaphor for you—rock or human, you’re not alive, just a nice little dolly to be moved around the dollhouse in whatever way suits you.

It’s just a rock! Or not quite, this time? Rocco takes a stand?

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Ninth House – Leigh Bardugo – “Like a dead girl with shades on/Propped up by captors/I’m fine/I’ve got no one to talk to/It’s all my fault, I know…”

“Blossom (Got To Get it Out)” – Komeda

I seem to gain a tolerance for more uptight songs once I get older, but in retrospect, “Blossom” gets less uptight the more I listen to it. Sure, it’s about as high-strung as The Feelies, but it’s got this ’60s girl group feel to it that makes it inherently more playful. Komeda seems to fall into a kind of indie, ’90s niche taking their cues from the bubblegum pop from the ’60s (see also: The Rondelles); it’s jangly as all get-out, and features an almost Fred Schneider-esque chorus of spelling out “B-L-O-S-S-O-M” like a cheerleader’s chant. I’d argue that Komeda’s voices aren’t quite as enthusiastic as their forebears (and the instrumentals), but it’s got that vibrant, candy-colored spirit of the ’60s with a distinctly ’90s production—it’s much more fun now that I’ve revisited it.

What makes this song infinitely better for me is the fact that, under the title “B.L.O.S.S.O.M.,” this song was on Heroes and Villains, an album of songs inspired by The Powerpuff Girls, alongside The Apples in Stereo, Devo, Dressy Bessy, and Frank Black…what a time to be alive. This version is re-recorded, sped-up, and drum-machine-ified, and doesn’t resemble a whole lot about the original. The more electronic version isn’t jangly at all, but the very early 2000’s, rapid-fire instrumentals mesh with the 2d, supersonic speed of the Powerpuff Girls. I’m partial to the original, but at least you’ve got this absolute banger from The Apples in Stereo, right?

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Ocean’s Godori – Elaine U. Cho – vibrant, fast-paced, and with the kind of spaceships I can imagine blasting Komeda through their speakers.

“High” – The Cure

I wasn’t here to witness it, but it must’ve been such a jarring shift in the ’90s when the Cure became more embraced by the mainstream. My parents talk about how maddening it was to have their special, alternative music be ignored or made fun of in the ’80s and then all the normies started singing along to “Friday I’m In Love.” Jeez. The Cure could always make an incredible pop song, but it never ceases to baffle me that they went from being relatively underground to selling out arenas in such a short period of time. Now that rock is less adjacent to the mainstream these days, I can’t say I’ve had an experience that mirrors it. The only thing I can think of is all of the members of boygenius getting huge, but they aren’t nearly as weird as the Cure were. The eternal battle: wanting people to appreciate your weird music, but wanting to gatekeep it at the same time…

I can’t fully grasp the kind of frustration my infinitely-cooler-than-me in their ’20s parents had when Wish came out back in 1992. I fully adore “Friday I’m In Love,” even though I can recognize that it’s leagues less weird than the more creative parts of their catalogue. But if the fact that I remember “High” to this day must prove that they weren’t all that resentful. “High” was a mainstay throughout my childhood in many a car trip—I distinctly remember mishearing “licky as trips” as “licky as chips” (those damn Brits) and Robert Smith meowing (can you really have a Cure song without it?). I’m charmed to this day about the way Smith makes adjectives into nouns with each lyric—”sky as a kite” or “kitten as a cat” makes perfect sense in his lingo. What strikes me now is that The Cure, even at their darkest, always kept true to having emotion at their core. They were dramatic and goth, but they were always in touch with whatever was at heart, and painted it in every complicated color. “High,” like “Friday I’m In Love,” is proof that they can be just as sugary and playful as they can be brooding and raw, but to an extent, all of it feels true to them. Like the subject, who’s “happy as a girl/limbs in a whirl,” “High” is The Cure in a dreamy, lovelorn state, adrift in the clouds in the throes of ecstatic love. It’s not their most emotional love song, but it’s got a similar purity as “The Perfect Girl” or “Just Like Heaven”—”High” feels like a spiritual successor of that emotion, even if it’s not fully on the level of the latter two to me. To this day, this track remains as warm as sand between my toes or afternoon sunlight heating up the glass of the back seat of a car.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Across a Field of Starlight – Blue Delliquanti – “And when I see you take the same sweet steps/You used to take, I say/’I’ll keep on holding you in my arms so tight/I’ll never let you slip away…'”

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!

Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 4/21/24

Posted on April 21, 2024 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: bright green to match the verdant buds sprouting on the tre—oh, god, not again, WHY IS IT SNOWING…

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 4/21/24

“Questions and Answers” – The Apples in Stereo

Note: this isn’t the official music video (there isn’t one), but it is in my eyes. Somebody just put this song in the background of videos of their cats in 2009. And they’re some friggin’ cute cats. I miss the days when YouTube used to be a simple, wholesome place…

I would have talked about this album…oh, a good three weeks ago, but I stubbornly made several color palettes that didn’t match Her Wallpaper Reverie at all, so I’ve regretfully withheld from it until now. Somehow, it was only the second Apples in Stereo album that I’ve listened to all the way through (the first was Travellers in Space and Time, but that was ages ago, so this felt like the first), and it’s just about the jangliest, summeriest (glad that’s actually a word) album I’ve heard in ages. By then, Robert Schneider and company had carefully chiseled their craft so that everything sounded like either a lost Beach Boys demo, some kind of space-age, robot dance break, or somewhere in between. (You’d be surprised at the commonalities between the two. They make it work.) You’ve got the cut-and-dry indie, almost Pavement-like “Benefits of Lying (With Your Friend)” on one end, and “Drifting Patterns,” a thicket-dense, borderline anxiety-inducing instrumental that sounds like it should be playing in the entry hallway to the space exhibit in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on the other, but there’s no sense that either are out of place; strung together by a sprinkling of instrumental bites that clock in at less than a minute long, Her Wallpaper Reverie just feels like a showcase of the exact range that The Apples in Stereo are all about.

“Questions and Answers” stood out as a favorite for me—it’s squarely on the “we’re making the jangliest jangle-pop song known to man and we cannot be stopped” side of The Apples in Stereo, but you know me. I’m eating it up. It’s such a shame that Hilarie Sidney, their longtime drummer, left the band in the first place (but it’s understandable, given that she’d just recently divorced Schneider), but I find myself wishing that they’d lent her more opportunities for her to have lead vocals (see also: “Sunndal Song” and “Stay Gold”). She has a command of her voice in such a similar way to Schneider that they both could fit into any song he wrote; they both have a nasally quality that never grates—it just would feel weird for an Apples in Stereo song to not be nasally sung, somehow. But in this case, Sidney was the better choice to lead “Questions and Answers”; as much as I love Schneider, I can’t quite see him getting quite the same vocal sway and tightness that Sidney brings here. Maybe that’s because I’m having trouble envisioning him singing in the same key that Sidney is singing in, but I swear that “Questions and Answers” wouldn’t be the same without the way that she stretches the vowels in “moon” out like taffy in the hot sun or her unrelenting devotion to this song’s impressively airtight rhythm.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet – Becky Chambers – the bounciness of “Questions and Answers,” plus all of the references to moons and star maps, would fit right into Chambers’ cozy galaxy.

“Yesterday’s World” – Circulatory System

Yup. Sorry. Get ready for some more Elephant 6-posting this week. Sometimes the urge just overcomes me.

Elephant 6, in terms of its bands, tended to cross-pollinate quite a bit: chances are, if you take any given band from there, at least three members of said band will have been in or formed other bands on their own, also in Elephant 6. Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel fame was, for a time, in The Apples in Stereo, as was Bill Doss (rest easy), who was half of the brains behind The Olivia Tremor Control. It branches inwards infinitely. Circulatory System was an offshoot of The Olivia Tremor Control, fronted by Will Cullen Hart, and…I hesitate to outright call it Olivia Tremor Control 2: Electric Boogaloo (2 Tremor 2 Control), because that really isn’t a complaint on my part. We need more bands like The Olivia Tremor Control, and we need more of their sense of…well, fun. “Yesterday’s World” is glee cleverly disguised as a serious, psychedelic shredder. Yes, you’ve got the churning guitars, but woven in between them is a chorus of young kids (who faintly go off-script in the background), a quivering assembly of woodwinds, and marching band-like drums towards the end. With the lyrics factored in, I can’t help but think that these childlike elements were stirred in to nail in this desire: “Yesterday feels/Feels just so far away/From these days.” At the age that I’m at, I’ve been frequently grappling with the same thing; now, more than ever, I am both physically and chronologically distanced from the freedom of youth, but there’s also the growing “get a job/move out/etc.” pressure of age and capitalism. Such a fun age. Time moved too quickly for me to grasp that those days wouldn’t last forever. I’m glad I tried to train myself at 18 into knowing that age doesn’t mean that the joy gets sledgehammered out of you the minute you become an adult, but it’s an ongoing process, and I’d be lying if I said that I’d mastered it. For now, all I can do is the same of what Circulatory System are doing: integrate those moments of childhood and freedom into my newly adult life. They have their chorus of smiling, jumping kids within their music, and I’ve got the battered copies of my favorite book series from elementary school on my dorm bookshelf. Yesterday’s world isn’t always out of reach, even as we must live in the world of the present. Keep the kiddo alive.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Psychology of Time Travel – Kate Mascarenhas – yesterday’s world has been reached…

“Jesus Came from Outta Space” – Supergrass

Seems that rock n’ roll, as a collective, has come to the conclusion that this is where Jesus has been chilling out all this time: as Robyn Hitchcock put it, “out on the rim of space.” Seems that Supergrass also came to the appropriate conclusion about how Jesus would feel if he were to see the state of the world as it is now: disappointed. (Remind me again of which part of the Bible told you to harass trans kids? Oh, you can’t find it? How strange…) At least, if anything, we can take this message with us, whether or not it’s delivered from Jesus or Gaz Coombes: “Love is all, love is tall, love is older than you/Love’ll talk, love’ll walk, love’ll speak up for you/Love’ll shake, love’ll wake, love’ll wake up with you.”

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The First Sister – Linden A. Lewis – I raise you: Jesus in outta space? (Sort of?)

“Kill Me” – Indigo de Souza

Through only a handful of songs, it seems to me that Indigo De Souza has mastered the art of being really, truly, messy. It’s not just messy through a few sparing, self-deprecating lyrics about how far you’ve dug yourself into a sinkhole of misery. No—there’s some of that, but if there’s anything that her music does, it’s drag you right along with it, in all of its exhausted, cake-smushing glory. Riddled with aftershocks of a breakup, “Kill Me” crawls along the floor on its hands and knees, snuffling for scraps amongst the rubble, searching for something to hold onto. Oscillating between said “kill me” refrain in its handful of variations and a poisoned urge to crawl straight back to the person who caused all this strife, it’s a song, like “What Are We Gonna Do Now,” that feels like a frozen time capsule: minutes after the phone call that ended things, tear stained, dirty-clothed, and desperate—for answers, for comfort, and for reciprocation. It’s a raw-throated kind of desperation, but one that replicates the feeling of looking down at yourself in your grease-stained shirt and asking yourself what the hell happened to me? There’s a sardonic humor in the way that De Souza declares: “No one asked me/To feel this fucked up/But here I am, fucked up,” an exhausted chorus barking out the final “fucked up” along with her. “Kill Me” moves along like paint spilled on the floor, seeping into the floorboards no matter how much you try to scrape it out, muddying into an ugly mess of what used to be good colors into the woodgrain.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Something Like Possible – Miel Moreland – post-breakup exhaustion and misery that leads to blossoming growth—and new love.

“I Miss You(r Dog)” – Addison Grace

Following on my unintentional train from Lisa Hannigan’s “What’ll I Do” last week, here’s another lighthearted breakup song. Unlike Hannigan, it’s not so much laughing through the pain, but this one laughs more at an aspect of breakups that not enough songs talk about—the pets that get dragged into it. It’s a fact of life: sometimes toxic people have really lovable pets. They’re innocent. They didn’t have to get into this mess, but here we are. Granted, it is slightly weird that Addison Grace basically treats said dog like it’s a child that he’s battling for custody over, but it adds to the humor. It’s just a silly song through and through, from the bait-and-switch parentheses in the title to the purposefully placed sound effects (“I’m sure you told all your friends that you think I’m a [dog bark]”…ba-dum tsssss). And for all of the breakup songs wallowing in self-pity, sometimes all you can do in that situation is laugh and fixate on the silly parts. Or, if you’re Addison Grace, get it through to said ex that their dog deserves a birthday befitting a king.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Radio Silence – Alice Oseman – this one isn’t specific to this book, but more Oseman’s larger universe—given how much music seems to inform her creative process, this song is just begging to be included somewhere in it. Feels in line with her penchant for cheery but emotional indie pop.

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!

Monthly Wrap-Ups

March 2024 Wrap-Up 🌾

Posted on March 31, 2024 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles, Happy Trans Day of Visibility, and Happy Easter for those celebrating!

Mentally, I’m still at the beginning of the semester, but somehow midterms are over and I’ve just gotten back from break…ignoring that…

Let’s begin, shall we?

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

I’ve continued to be busy in most of my academic aspects of life, but I’ve managed to stay on top of it—midterms season wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, and it certainly helped that we got an accidental four-day weekend thanks to a snowstorm so drastic that my college called two snow days in a row. I’ve lived in Colorado my whole life, and I’ve never experienced a double snow day…good times, gotta say. I didn’t leave my dorm for all of that Thursday and spent my time playing Minecraft and drinking hot chocolate. A win is a win. But now, the weather’s warming up, and I’m looking forward to soaking it all in.

I honestly thought that this month was going to be my worst reading month, but I read a lot more than I expected; spring break definitely gave me a boost, and March has ended up being my best reading month of 2024 so far! Rating-wise, it’s a different story (certainly more stinkers in this batch), but there were plenty of excellent reads before and after my brief reading slump. Blogging has been about the same—again, school has made it so that I’m mostly sticking to my usual book reviews and Sunday Songs, but I’ve had fun writing them all the same.

Other than that, I’ve just been drawing, playing Minecraft (WE’RE FINALLY GETTING THE DOG UPDATE), studying, watching The Bear, The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin (STAND AND DELIVAH), Abbott Elementary, and Constellation (I haven’t been this stressed out and baffled by a show since Dark, and that’s really saying something), series 17 of Taskmaster, Dune: Part 2 (may thy knife chip and shatter), seeing Chelsea Wolfe live (!!!!! THE QUEEN), and reverting from human to hibernating grizzly bear the minute snow started falling.

READING AND BLOGGING:

I read 19 books this month! I thought it would end up being a lot less than that, but spring break gave me much more time to read. As far as ratings, this has probably been my worst reading month (first DNF and 1-star rating of the year…), but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t read a ton of fantastic books!

1 – 1.75 stars:

Out of Character – Jenna Miller (⭐️.5)
The Sevenfold Hunters – Rose Egal (DNF – ⭐️.75)

2 – 2.75 stars:

Afterlove – Tanya Byrne (⭐️⭐️)
Pangu’s Shadow – Karen Bao (⭐️⭐️)

3 – 3.75 stars:

The Boy You Always Wanted – Michelle Quach (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
A Prayer for Vengeance – Leanne Schwartz (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
The Monstrous Misses Mai – Van Hoang (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
Silver Nitrate – Silvia Moreno-Garcia (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
The Cybernetic Tea Shop – Meredith Katz (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
The Other Side of Infinity – Joan F. Smith (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
Womb City – Tlotlo Tsamaase (⭐️⭐️⭐️.75)

4 – 4.75 stars:

Everfair (Everfair, #1) – Nisi Shawl (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Somewhere Apart: Selected Lyrics 1977-1997 – Robyn Hitchcock (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Kindling – Traci Chee (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1) – Rebecca Ross (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Our Crooked Hearts – Melissa Albert (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Drunk on All Your Strange New Words – Eddie Robson (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë (for school) (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
The Bad Ones – Melissa Albert (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.25)

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: The Bad Ones – 4.25 stars

POSTS I’M PROUD OF:

I had fun reviewing Kindling, Our Crooked Hearts, The Monstrous Misses Mai, and The Cybernetic Tea Shop!
Music rambling! Here are my Sunday Songs from 3/3, 3/10, 3/17, 3/24, and 3/31!
I made a list of feminist book recs for Women’s History Month!

POSTS FROM OTHER WONDERFUL PEOPLE THAT I ENJOYED:

SONGS/ALBUMS THAT I’VE BEEN ENJOYING:

APRIL 26TH CANNOT COME SOON ENOUGH

returning to my sad bastard roots

shoutout to this absolute weirdo and his lyrics

alright I FINALLY listened to this album, great stuff

and the best song title goes to…

such a delightfully summery album

already loved TVOTR, but chelsea Wolfe turned me on to this one. haunting…

Today’s song:

listen this is a banger but don’t think I wouldn’t deck Morrissey in the face without hesitation

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

Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (3/19/24) – The Monstrous Misses Mai

Posted on March 19, 2024March 19, 2024 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Technically, this review is an early review, but I didn’t get it as an ARC—I got it through the Amazon First Readers program. Usually, the books they offer aren’t my cup of tea, but The Monstrous Misses Mai seemed intriguing, and I never say no to free Kindle books. I love a good story about witches, and though it was predictable at times, The Monstrous Misses Mai was an entertaining addition to the wide subgenre!

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Monstrous Misses Mai – Van Hoang

Los Angeles, the early ’50s. Cordelia Mai Yin is down on her luck. Disowned by her parents and out of work, she’s been finding it difficult to find a place to stay. The apartment she eventually finds is cramped and occupied with three other roommates, but they have more in common than just their middle names. They all have unfulfilled dreams—and they all need a way to pay the rent. Callum, a mysterious friend of their landlord, knows it too. He offers them the deal of a lifetime, in exchange for a small sacrifice. Now, Cordi has a stable income and the job of her dreams, but the spells binding her reality are quickly beginning to fade, and the girls are running out of sacrifices to appease them…

TW/CW: body horror (mild), murder, loss of loved ones, manipulation

WARNING: this review contains some spoilers!

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Amazon First Reads program!

In the grand scheme of things, I don’t blame these characters—mostly Cordi—for turning to witchcraft to find a way to pay the rent. You gotta do what you gotta do in this economy. And in the economy of L.A. in the ’50s too, I guess.

The Monstrous Misses Mai was such an entertaining novel! I love a good book about witches, but I would say that it’s slightly different than your typical witch novel in that none of the main characters know what they’re doing with their magic. They’re all but sucked into a magical pyramid scheme that requires greater and greater sacrifices as it drains them little by little. Magic always comes at a cost: we all know that from the get-go, and this novel is no exception. But not knowing what exactly would happen to the women of the Mai residence was what kept the tension up for this novel for me. Although I wanted more out of the eventual climax (more on that later), it was a great narrative tactic to keep the reader guessing—not necessarily about where the plot would go, but about how things would go wrong for the characters.

Van Hoang has excellent prose, and it especially served this novel when it came to describing both L.A. in the ’50s. Her descriptions are so vivid and colorful—there wasn’t a single image in this novel that I couldn’t visualize in almost cinematic detail. The way that Hoang described both the cramped loft that the Mai women share and the glitz and glamor of the fashion world that Cordi finds herself entangled in made the world feel so much more tangible, and the divide between the double lives that the characters lived felt so much more fleshed out and tense as a result. Having such a stark contrast made the creeping feeling of dread for the characters even more palpable—with the magic that they were dabbling, the glamorous lives that they were leading would no doubt catch up to them.

The Monstrous Misses Mai focuses on four women (Cordi, Tessa, Silly, and Audrey), but we’re reading entirely from Cordi’s perspective. Cordi was a compelling enough character, and her struggles—both financial and magical—fueled the plot and pacing in a steady way. However, I wish I could say the same for the other characters. Tessa was next in terms of the most fleshed-out character, but for most of the novel, she only felt like Cordi’s confidante, and not the magical accomplice that she was supposed to be. Silly and Audrey were barely characterized at all—Silly was only seen in sparing glimpses, and what we got of Audrey was entirely one-dimensional; Audrey was the token no-nonsense, “guys, maybe it’s a bad idea to be messing around with forbidden magic” character, and all the resolution gave her was an “I told you so” [strikes pose with hand on hip] moment and no development whatsoever. I feel like this novel could have worked better as a multi-POV novel; if we got into the heads of all four of the Mai women, we could have gotten individual ideas for their specific stakes, risks, and transformations.

Remember what I said about not knowing about the magic? It worked for most of the novel, but when it came to the ending, I found myself wanting more. The resolution felt so predictable—they’re finally too many spells deep to reverse their magic, leaving them in a worse situation than they were before. For a little while, I almost thought it was going to resolve in some kind of tired “oh, women and their vanity hahaha, you know how chicks are” ending, but luckily, it’s 2024, so not to worry about that; I do appreciate that the blame was placed squarely on Callum for being the one who instigated a magical pyramid scheme and nearly stole their souls. However, I feel like there wasn’t a whole lot that was original about Hoang’s take on this kind of story. I expected there to be something strange about what the magic cost them or how their transformations occurred, but all we get is their (very mild) bodily deterioration and some lost fingernails/hair loss. Which, yeah, the fingernails were pretty gross, but I found myself wanting a kind of unique magical toll that it took—something otherworldly that would ultimately expose them. It wasn’t bad, per se, but it wasn’t the most memorable take on this kind of story.

All in all, a story of witchcraft and deception with memorable prose but not-so memorable twists. 3.5 stars!

The Monstrous Misses Mai is a standalone, and Van Hoang’s adult debut. Hang is also the author of the Girl Giant and the Monkey King series (Girl Giant and the Monkey King and Girl Giant and the Jade War) and the forthcoming middle grade novel Hidden Tails.

Today’s song:

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

Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 2/11/24

Posted on February 11, 2024February 11, 2024 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

Huzzah! No more black and white color palettes! Color has returned! And somehow, I’ve managed to cram way too many songs that I’ve had on repeat into a single post, so get ready for some rambly paragraphs. Also: music that changed the game (several games, in fact), people who really liked the ’60s, and me freaking out over an Instagram post that’s already over a week old.

Before we get into that, here are last week’s songs:

2/4/24:

Now, enjoy (oops) this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 2/11/24

“Read the Room” – The Smile

I already rambled about this song plenty on my review of Wall of Eyes from last week, but if you haven’t read that, take my word for it. “Read the Room” was half the reason I was excited for the whole album in the first place just because of how arresting it was to hear it live for the first time without knowing they’d been cooking it up. From that, I thought I was going to destroy my hopes for this song because I’d hyped it up so much, but no. It’s still hypnotic in every way possible. Just listen, okay?

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath – Moniquill Blackgoose – massive egos and magic rainbows aplenty, but this time in the form of gaslighting and colonial pressures surrounding Anequs, an Indigenous woman fighting to make her voice heard.

“Enjoy” – Björk

Finally. I’ve finally gotten around to listening to Post, and with every song I come back to, I keep hitting myself for not listening to it sooner. Not just because some of my favorite Björk songs (and no shortage of childhood nostalgia, courtesy of my parents and their wonderfully indie taste) were on it, but just because I’ve seen it held on so high of a pedestal for so long. Normally, that’s not a primary motivator for listening to an album unless I’ve had it recommended by someone I trust, but if it’s Björk, talent of talents, that’s being held on said pedestal, then why shouldn’t I? Now that I’ve listened to it, I’m struck by the feeling that Post sounds simultaneously like nothing I’ve ever heard and everything I’ve ever heard. Every song sounds so unique, and yet screams of everything that’s come after it, whether you’re looking at the world of rock, trip-hop, or electronic—a route that Björk took on this album when she felt that rock music held little opportunity for the experimentation brewing inside of her. And that experimentation was truly wild—wild in the naturalistic sense, in the sense that she’s always meant when she’s said that she isn’t necessarily inspired by the music of her native Iceland, but of the volcanic landscape of Iceland itself. There’s musical eco-brutalism rife in this album, a full-frontal fusion of the natural and the industrial that grinds together into something that feels both alien and familiar, but wholly captivating. Maybe eco-brutalism isn’t quite the right word—I’m sure there is a word for this, but the “brutalism” part, although it is distinctly industrial in some places, feels sleeker and more technological. Post feels like that picture of a bunch of bright green plants crawling out of the dirt, but they’re planted inside of the headlight of a car; both images are strikingly different from each other, but they were always meant to be distinctly harmonious without bleeding into each other.

“Enjoy” was one of the songs that I hadn’t heard previously, and now, I’m practically waiting on its every beck and call. I just cannot stop listening to it. With something so simple as a walking, looping synth to provide its chrome backbone, “Enjoy” becomes a kind of cyberpunk catwalk, a confident strut through metal and neon lights. It’s no surprise that Tricky (who Björk had a short-lived relationship with at the time) had a hand in this track; it’s got trip-hop written all over it, but even that couldn’t place it as anything but purely Björk. With brass blasts punctuating the spiraling web of synths thickening every note, it feels like the formula that she’s molded like clay for her whole career—taking two distinct things that would sound horribly out of place in the hands of any other artist, but in her hands, sound like they were made to mesh together, a cyborg chimera of spare and found parts. And through it all, Björk’s signature, growling belt rings like a cry of confidence, a declaration (of independence?) as she struts the cyberpunk catwalk, hungry for tactile sensation, branching her feelers out for anything they can grasp. Björk described it as “[being] greedy, to be eager to consume a city,” and “Enjoy” feels like nothing but riotous consumption, something swallowing whole continents in its wake in a search for something to feel.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Translation State – Ann Leckie – this novel features an alien character with a deep desire to experience the same sensations of other intelligent life that have been excluded from them; the overwhelming urge to seek out the tactile of “Enjoy” radiates through here as well.

“Chapter 8: ‘Seashore and Horizon'” – Cornelius

I’m a warm-weather creature at heart. I can’t get too warm, but I tend to come back alive once the sun comes out. I’m practically a reptile in that regard—I take any crumb of warmth that I can get, then I soak it up for the rest of the day like stolen nectar. Similarly, I find myself gravitating to sunnier, more summery music in these chillier, gloomier months. Here I am, looking out my window: all the trees are bare as can be, there’s half-melted snow sliding off the neighboring rooftops, and the ground beneath my feet is a mess of slush, dirt, and who knows what else. If you squint, there’s a tiny pocket of blue between the clouds, but it’s gray as far as the eye can see. But in these times, I turn to musical sunshine for my fix. I’m thinking back to last year, and that’s around the time when I was playing Fishbone’s “Everyday Sunshine” more often than not. Now, we’ve got some sparkly sunshine in the form of a trip to the beach.

Up until now, I only knew two Cornelius songs (“Mic Check” and “Smoke”), both collages of synth, samples, and brightly-colored, digitized sparkle. What I’ve taken away from looking into his background is that Cornelius (a.k.a. Keigo Oyamada), is, if nothing else, a student of The Beach Boys, to the point where he put a picture of himself dressed as Brian Wilson in the liner notes of Fantasma, the album where we get “Chapter 8.” Somehow, it never once dawned on me while listening to this song, but it’s like a sledgehammer in the face of Pet Sounds influence once you realize. This is literally just The Beach Boys if they had a few more synths and discovered sampling. And like what made Wilson and co. famous, “Chapter 8” feels like if warm sunshine over an endless, golden beach were channeled into just under three and a half minutes of music. Combined with the equally peppy powers of Robert Schneider and Hilarie Sidney of The Apples in Stereo, there’s no adequate words to describe this song other than carefree. You can almost see Schneider and Sidney nodding their heads in time as one strums an acoustic guitar, with animated sea creatures dancing around them. But what elevates the joy of this song is the way their high-pitched harmonies dance together, feather-light.

What a joyous, whimsical song! Sure would be a shame if…oh, for fuck’s sake, Cornelius did WHAT? Jesus Christ…at least The Apples in Stereo are good people…

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Sea Sirens (A Trot & Cap’n Bill Adventure) – Amy Chu and Janet K. Lee – a brightly-colored trip into a fantastical world under the sea.

“The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead” – XTC

Everybody’s weekly Apple Music replays should be generating soon, if memory serves, and I’m just waiting to see which spot out of the top 5 that this song has occupied, because it’s kind of a given that it’s going to be somewhere in there. It’s an inevitability at this point. As evidenced by this post, there’s no space left in my brain for important stuff to occupy, because it’s all been clogged with Björk, The Smile, and this for 2 weeks straight.

For XTC, it’s easy to see why. Andy Partridge always had aspirations of being a pop star, weaned on ’60s groups like The Monkees, whose style inspired his quirky musical career. And although he never got the Monkees-level fame that he’d always dreamed of (maybe that’s for the best? Who would want to have a fake show centered around you and then have to own up to not playing any of the instruments on live TV? Maybe that’s just me…), his pop craft is unmistakable. Their hits were more on the side of…well, ADHD, valium withdrawal, and poking sticks at God than “Daydream Believer,” but, as he frequently insisted, the music he and the other members of XTC was pop—it was just confined to the fringes, for the most part. “The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead” feels like it could have been the crowd pleaser at sold-out stadiums in some alternate universe where fawning girls had posters of Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding in mop haircuts on their walls. It’s a tragic and biting song, but it’s got the command of a song made for people to wave their hands along, raised in prayer in a mass mourning for Peter Pumpkinhead. The song did, in fact, start out as a smaller version of that kind of pity; the Peter Pumpkinhead character was inspired by a jack-o-lantern that Partridge had proudly carved, then slowly watched rot day by day, which led him to not only pity the poor thing, but toy with the concept of a person who was purely good, and therefore, according to Partridge, “I thought, ‘god, they’d make so many enemies!'” And it’s easy to see—not to be cynical with it, but most governments despise the idea of Peter Pumpkinhead-like people simply because he’s everything they’re not—charitable, kind, and just purely good, and capable of letting every criticism bounce off of them (“plots and sex scandals failed outright/Peter merely said ‘any kind of love is alright!'”). The music video, which was later heavily edited for us Americans, didn’t just expand on the allusions to Jesus in the song’s final verse (“Peter Pumpkinhead was too good/Had him nailed to a chunk of wood”), but straight up recreates the JFK assassination. Not just a few references or anything, no. It’s literally just JFK’s assassination, complete with a Marilyn Monroe lookalike, a flashing image of Cuba superimposed onto a picture of a pig, and a weeping Jackie Kennedy sprawled out of the back of the car. Certainly a ballsy move, but not even the ballsiest move they made when it came to American audiences. If being memorable was the aim, then they succeeded. But even without it, “Peter Pumpkinhead” has pathos in spades, the kind that brings people to their knees.

Hooray for Peter Pumpkinhead, indeed. He’s got my vote, but I feel like we already established that he’s not the kind of guy to run for public office, so I’d just shake his hand.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Last Human – Zack Jordan – being the last human in the galaxy tends to make you too many enemies, even if you don’t deserve it. Also tends to happen when you’re a teenage girl.

“The Party” – St. Vincent

Oh god. God. Help me. St. Vincent wiped her entire instagram and posted a video setting aside the blonde wig from the Daddy’s Home tour H-E-L-P. HELP ME. I AM NOT OKAY.

Through my unceasing hyperventilation, I’ve come back to some of her older genius through a scattered few songs from her (slides on hipster glasses) sophomore album, Actor, and its timeless gateway into the singer and guitarist that she’s become. It’s uplifted the quirky art-pop of Marry Me into something sharper, at times more sinister (“Marrow”), and at times more heartfelt (“Laughing With a Mouth of Blood”). Only two years into her solo career, and she’s already got a full brass section at her back, but even that couldn’t stop her as a singular, meteoric force; Actor proved that she had the plentiful talent to command a room and supercharge it with artfully jagged energy, always lingering on the edge of ecstasy and fear. Compared to some of the other tracks, “The Party” isn’t necessarily the captivating explosion of some of the other tracks, but it’s still an explosion in its own right. Like “Laughing,” it’s more downtempo both in instrumentation and lyricism; for the glut of the song, Annie Clark is only joined by spare drums and specks of tasteful piano chords as she wistfully recalls tired companionship with someone as a party winds down. There’s a kind of delirious drunkenness to it as Clark watches her subject fade through her fingers in the form of scant memory: “I licked the ice cube from your empty glass/Oh, we stayed much too late/’Til they’re cleaning the ashtrays.” Lines like “oh, that’s the trouble/of ticking and talking” are straight out of the cheeky, red-lipstick mannerisms of Marry Me, but as the song unfurls like a creature hatching from an egg, it’s a concentrated specimen of her growth in the years since. As her voice fades out of lyrics and into chorus, joined by a choir rising like fog, it feels like she has her finger lingering over the button to unleash chaos, a nuclear release of creativity. Drums skip beats and fade out of line, synths blip and crackle like they’re struggling to hang on, and Clark and her chorus rise from the waves like Aphrodite rising from the sea. For a section that occupies such a small space in the song, it crams so much dare I say cosmic fervor into only a minute and a half. If “Marrow” and “Actor Out of Work” are explosions, “The Party” is an explosion in slow motion, the kind you watch from afar as debris arcs over your head and flames balloon outwards into oblivion. It’s even more evident watching it unfold in Pitchfork’s Cemetery Gates series (why did they ever stop doing those, by the way?)—there’s no other way to hear the meticulous chaos, especially in its extended form, than in an old church, where surely, Clark’s talent reverberated through the walls like the aftershocks of an earthquake.

What I’m trying to say is that there is a right way to close out an album, and this is how.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Gilded Wolves – Roshani Chokshi – the image of a dying party and the faint, tender moments shared between the narrator and the unnamed character remind me of Séverin and Laila sharing a tense (but romantic) moment amidst magical glamour.

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!

Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 12/31/23

Posted on December 31, 2023 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

Whew, here we are on New Year’s Eve! What a year it’s been, huh? The fact that there’s 2/5ths depressing songs in this batch was entirely unintentional, but I’m of the firm opinion that the last one is a good way to close out 2023. Also—no, somehow the Phoebe Bridgers song this week isn’t one of the depressing ones, bizarrely. Who would’ve thunk.

Enjoy the last songs of 2023!

SUNDAY SONGS: 12/31/23

“Garden Song” – Phoebe Bridgers

This song, like a good song does, came back like an old, loyal dog when I needed it most. But before I get into it, I remembered that I reviewed Punisher when it came out. So let’s see what I thought about it back in 2020:

This was the first single to be released out of the whole album. When I first listened to it, something about it got under my skin, but as I’ve listened to it more, something about it has grown on me (no pun intended). A nostalgic, dreamlike opener to the album. (Rating: 7/10)

…huh. Well, I thought I’d have…more to work with there, but 2020 me wasn’t necessarily wrong. I’d certainly bump up the rating up to at least an 8 or an 8.5, though. It’s what this song deserves, upon a few more years of reflection. It’s a way-homer once you get past the age of 16.

Yes, there is some sad bastard music coming soon in this post (buckle up), but contrary to what…95% of Phoebe Bridgers’ discography would have you believe, this isn’t one of them. Pigeonholing an artist into being just a “sad girl” has a multitude of pitfalls, but one of them is that automatically assuming that slow = sad. In fact, I think this is one of her most hopeful songs. I remember taking a while to warm up to it at first—the startlingly low, Matt Berninger-esque backing vocals, probably several octaves below Bridgers, felt off at first. (In fact, the voice belongs to Jeroen Vrijhoef, her tour manager, who she described as sounding like “Dutch Matt Berninger.”) It’s a stark contrast—Vrijhoef’s rumbling bass almost becomes the unstable ground that Bridgers’ frayed-silk high notes treads over, but it grows on you after a while.

One thing that writing these posts this year has taught me is that I can see more clearly how I approach music; it’s always the music itself first, and unless something immediately jumps out at me (or if I come in expecting it), the lyrics follow on subsequent listens. That’s certainly what’s happened with this song. The dreamlike calmness has never failed to soothe me, but the lyrics have a soothing quality to them as well. The sleepily rambling second verse, where Phoebe Bridgers describes a meandering dream, has the murmur that you would only expect when she’s just woken up and is scrawling the non-sequitur fragments into her journal. (Not to project onto a complete stranger, but I feel like she’s the kind of person to keep a dream journal. I just get that vibe.) But even beyond that, “Garden Song” really is about growth. It’s the soft space where you can look back on your life, recognizing the good and bad, and see it as the soil for other things to grow. It’s the sad smile that you can see as you recall the painful times in your life, but also the comfort in realizing that your sprout has gone beyond that and bloomed, and the hope that there’s blooming yet to do. I find myself going back to 2020, a few months after Punisher came out, when it seemed like all of the lead-weight things pinning my shoulders down would never lift, and inevitably feeling heavy again, but remembering where I’m sitting now, and where my feet have taken me since then. The path was winding and full of twists, but it led us all here. As Bridgers herself said, “…if you’re someone who believes that good people are doing amazing things no matter how small, and that there’s beauty or whatever in the midst of all the darkness, you’re going to see that proof, too. And you’re going to ignore the dark shit, or see it and it doesn’t really affect your worldview. It’s about fighting back dark, evil murder thoughts and feeling like if I really want something, it happens, or it comes true in a totally weird, different way than I even expected.” There’s no denying the darkness, but it is never all there is.

“Garden Song” came back to me towards the end of finals, and of course, I had to sit a while in my spinny chair and sit with it. To me, it’s the perfect song to take with us to the new year—to reflect on how you’ve grown through everything, and that there is so much left to grow through. I’ll leave it with these lines:

“I don’t know how, but I’m taller
It must be something in the water
Everything’s growing in our garden
You don’t have to know that it’s haunted
The doctor put her hands over my liver
She told me my resentment’s getting smaller
No, I’m not afraid of hard work
I get everything I want
I have everything I wanted.”

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet – Becky Chambers – even if the gentle, muted instrumentals didn’t perfectly mesh with the homey atmosphere of this novel, the stargazingly hopeful attitude certainly would.

“Ruined” – Adrianne Lenker

Alright, here’s a blanket. This one’s from another sad girl, and it’s very much actually sad.

If there’s one thing that Adrianne Lenker can write well, it’s a heartbreak song. Unlike most of her solo work that I’ve listened to, there’s no acoustic guitar in sight. This time, Lenker has opted for something equally sparse and solemn: the classic solo piano ballad, aided by some faint, synthy notes in the background, apparently credited as “crystals.” It could’ve easily blended in with the acoustic-dominated landscape of most of her other music, but somehow, the slowly marching piano chords leave the song room to take every rattling breath. Thanks to the music video…I…yeah, I think I’ve now seen more of Adrianne Lenker than I ever needed to see, but this song provides more of that in the metaphorical sense, which I much prefer. She’s a soul-bearer. Something about the plaintive, ever-present waver in her voice seems to age her—it’s not like much time has passed between her solo work, but the shake in her voice seems to indicated that whatever inspired this song aged something inside of her, certainly. Poor thing. Whether or not this song will eventually be a part of an album or remain adrift in Lenker’s discography, it would make a wonderful, thematic addition to the end of an album—it wouldn’t even need to be the very last song, but it would fit in at least the final three or four. The opening lines lend themselves to an album fading into the ether, of both love and music slipping through your fingers—”I wish I’d waved when I saw you/I just watched you passing by.”

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Even Though I Knew the End – C.L. Polk – I don’t think Adrianne Lenker would mind the inclusion of vampires, but this is certainly the kind of love that ruins you.

“I’m Not Feeling Human” – The Olivia Tremor Control

My musical wish for 2024: BRING BACK SLIDE WHISTLES, DAMMIT!

I’ve been riding off my dad’s high of Elephant 6 musicians after he recently watched the Elephant 6 Recording Co. documentary (hence the recent spike in Apples in Stereo-related content). There’s something so pure about so much of the music that they put out in the early days. Well…okay, maybe not on Neutral Milk Hotel’s part, but Robert Schneider (of the Apples) and Will Cullen Hart and Bill Doss (of The Olivia Tremor Control) certainly knew how to juice playful simplicity out of synths and all manner of catchy melodies. The Apples in Stereo have a space-age, almost scientific quality to their pop songs, but to me, The Olivia Tremor Control has always come across as something just as whimsical, but in the way of flat colors and simple shapes that bounce around. I’ll die on the hill that this song deserves some kind of Chicka-Chicka Boom Boom-style music video to go along with it. The patchwork of goofy instruments scattered around (including the aforementioned, glorious slide whistle) gives it a delightful whimsy that calls to mind stacks of building blocks. Even the slight discomfort of the lyrics seem to be delivered with a wry smile—”Don’t I feel, don’t I feel like a mineral?/Don’t I feel, don’t I feel like a vegetable?” Maybe it’s the rhymes, or maybe just the fact that I’ve always found the phrase “animal, vegetable, or mineral” funny for no reason (I blame it on what little I remember from The Magician’s Nephew), but even vague alienation has a childlike whimsy to it in the hands of The Olivia Tremor Control. Probably the slide whistle, though.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The World of Edena – Mœbius – colored in with the same flat but vibrant colors that “I’m Not Feeling Human” is shaded in.

“Crash” – The Primitives

Okay, we’ve got one more peppy song before the depression hits…let’s ride the high while it lasts.

“Crash,” other than being a nostalgic, smiling thing popping up in my brain’s whack-a-mole system of remembering songs, feels like the better side of late ’80s pop. By then, the oversaturated synths and gated reverb had probably spread faster than the plague; I can’t speak from experience, given that…y’know, I wasn’t alive, but it had to have gotten obnoxious by that point. This song could have easily been that, but The Primitives seemed to know just the right balance to hit to make something instantly catchy, but that also managed to date itself in a way that wasn’t plasticky and corny. It’s distinctively ’80s without being distinctively ’80s, if you get what I mean. The guitars are bright, but not polished into oblivion, and yet there’s no denying the authentic, cartoon stars coming off of the opening riff. It’s practically begging to soundtrack a confident, reckless heroine with a slick jacket and and a pair of rollerblades, the kind with sparks that fly off with every turn she makes. Tracy Tracy, dolled up like some kind of new wave Marilyn Monroe in the music video, knows that she never needed to over-exaggerate her voice—the warmth of it, combined with the fiery embers self-contained in a tidy two and a half minutes, made for a song that’s unmistakable as a hit.

And they put this song in Dumb and Dumber? Huh?

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Little Thieves – Margaret Owen – Vanja Schmidt is certainly the kind of reckless firebrand that doesn’t know when to slow down—and it takes her to some unexpected places…

“Motion Picture Soundtrack” – Radiohead

Another thing I have my wonderful dad to thank for: we watched a few episodes of Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth (it’s all on Youtube, go watch it), and besides the plentiful, earth-shattering truth bombs, for lack of a better phrase, about the nature of life and myth (and how those two aren’t really separate things after all), a quote from the second episode stood out to me when I was reminded of this song. At about 42:48, after he and Bill Moyers are discussing the manifestation of god in everything, and by extension, machines, Campbell examines the inner framework of a computer and remarks, “have you ever looked inside one of those things? You can’t believe it! It’s a whole hierarchy of angels…and those little tubes, those are miracles.” For the sake of not derailing this post so I can actually publish it on Sunday, I’ll holding back from expanding on all of the aforementioned Campbell capital-T Truth bombs, which he seems to produce with the same frequency as the other Campbell’s soup cans, but I can’t help but think of this song when I think of computers and angels. There’s no other word besides “angelic” to describe the distorted chorus of electric voices that begins at 2:15. That sound couldn’t have come from any other place save for the miraculous angel tubes. There’s some kind of gospel to this song, I swear.

Unless something absolutely drastic and apocalyptic happens, I doubt I’ll ever stop singing the praises of Radiohead. I’m long past caring about how inevitably insufferable I am as a result, but all the language I have about them ends up being hyperbolic. Kid A is probably somewhere amongst my favorite albums—I haven’t formally organized them past top 10, but I’d say that this lands somewhere in the 20s or 30s, at least. OK Computer, even if their chronological placement has doomed them to comparisons as long as there are music critics to do so, will always be the favorite child in my mind, but the special quality of this album can’t be understated. Like Punisher, another red, blue, and black-colored album that I listened to during the summer of 2020, it’s a signpost for a hyper-specific time in my life, and one of the most cohesive showcases of the talents of Thom Yorke and company. But as much as “Everything In Its Right Place” and “Idioteque” hold uncontested places in my heart, “Motion Picture Soundtrack” will wield the ultimate trophy as far as Kid A goes, and for my standards of music in general. Right now, it’s my favorite album closer of all time. (Before anybody says anything, I know, ackshually ☝️🤓 “Untitled” is technically the closer, but at this point, it’s basically a cooling-down extension to this song). As I brought up before, there’s an undeniable air of gospel about it—the synths that press in at the beginning sound like pipe organs run through a dystopian starscape, and if that’s the case, then the choir is certainly the angels dwelling just out of view in the pews.

“Motion Picture Soundtrack” was marinating in Thom Yorke’s massive cauldron of glorious music since the mid-nineties, where it was an acoustic lament befitting of The Bends. After that, it became a deeply solemn piano ballad somewhere in the depths of the OK Computer sessions, but I, for one, am glad that this is the definitive version, even if we were robbed of what was originally the third verse: “Beautiful angel/pulled apart at birth/Limbless and helpless/I can’t even recognize you.” (OW.) “Motion Picture Soundtrack” was always meant for cosmic grandeur; even though the opening mentions of “red wine and sleeping pills” ground us in the dim hours of planet Earth, the sprawling emotion of it all is the definition of all-consuming. It feels like the final leap off the cliff from death to rebirth, watching your feet slip and the gravel crumble beneath them as the electric, harp-like notes fill your ears like an endless field of stars. Within the infinite sprawl of sorrow, you can’t help but see the staggering beauty of life itself blossom in front of you. I’ll go out again and say it: I doubt we’ll ever come close to the tearjerking final line of Kid A: “I will see you in the next life,” and the pleading waver of Yorke’s soul-caressing voice makes it resonate all the more.

Kid A is probably the pinnacle of hopeless sad bastard music, but I can’t help but feel some kind of embryonic hope resting in the egg yolk of this song. “I will see you in the next life” is a release from all the mindless, sorrowful things that the rest of the verses lay out, and the promise of a starry new beginning. The closing of a chapter, the setting of a book back on the shelf, knowing that if you ever go back and read it, nothing will ever fully be the same, but knowing that isn’t always a bad thing.

What a way to end the year, huh? Just like “Garden Song,” I’m glad this song returned to me when it did. Radiohead is the gift that keeps on giving (me too many feelings to handle).

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Darkness Outside Us – Eliot Schrefer – this book takes “I will see you in the next life” very seriously. One of my favorite love stories of all time, and one of my favorite sci-fi books of all time as well.

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

That’s it for the last Sunday Songs of the year! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves.

Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (12/18/23) – You Have a Match

Posted on December 19, 2023 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Ever since I read Tweet Cute and loved it about three years back, I’ve been meaning to read Emma Lord’s follow-up, You Have a Match, for ages. I’m not sure if I can just chalk it up to “I shouldn’t read anything that’s languished on my TBR for more than 3 years” because it seems like most of the Goodreads reviewers I’m seeing found it just as disappointing, but either way, this one was a miss for me.

Enjoy this week’s review!

You Have a Match – Emma Lord

Abby mainly decided to give a DNA service a go as a joke. But the results tell her that she has a secret sister—Savannah Tully. And Savannah isn’t just an ordinary sister—she also happens to be an influencer with a seemingly perfect life. Desperate to find out about the sister her parents hid from her, she hatches a plan to meet up with her at summer camp. But distractions from Leo, her best friend (or something more?) and co-chef at the camp, and drama between her and Savannah threaten to throw a wrench in her plan to find out why her parents separated her sister.

TW/CW: grief/loss, mentions of substance abuse, anxiety, mentions of abandonment, brief descriptions of injury and illness (broken bones, pneumonia)

I was banking on You Have a Match being at least decent just because of the memory of how good Tweet Cute was, but I really should’ve run for the hills the minute I saw the Reese’s YA Book Club sticker on it. But whether or not I’m looking at Tweet Cute through rose-colored glasses or if Emma Lord just took a dip in quality, You Have a Match was not nearly as sweet—or even enjoyable—as its predecessor.

The main issue with You Have a Match was that it didn’t seem to know what it wanted to be. The premise (and partially the title, although it definitely applies to both) was advertised mostly as a kind of coming-of-age story of sisterhood, but the book itself also wanted to shove a fully-developed romance plot in between it all. The thing is, both of these stories could have been great as separate books—one about finding your lost sister, one about falling in love at summer camp. And I really believe that Lord could’ve succeeded with both of those stories. But even though it could have been possible to merge the two, You Have a Match felt like it didn’t know where to put the emphasis. As a result, the story felt like it needlessly jumped all over the place, making both of the plots cease to be cohesive. It really feels like a case of Lord biting off far more than she could chew.

As a result, the romance that was supposed to happen between Abby and Leo definitely suffered. So much attention was brought to the plot with Savannah and her friends that there was no room for their chemistry to develop, and by the end of the novel, none of the romance felt fleshed out in any way. All of it hinged on the reader believing the information that was very much told (certainly not shown…) that they’d had a beautiful friendship for years, and even that wasn’t enough to save the absolutely lukewarm romantic aspects of this book.

The pacing of You Have a Match didn’t help either of these issues—in fact, it was probably the reason that they were exacerbated. Once the characters got to camp, none of the timing made any sense. It felt like we were just being bounced along like a pinball from subplot A to subplot B without any room to breathe or make sense of what was happening. Everything felt transient and borderline pointless; 309 pages (for the Kindle edition) isn’t that short of a page count, but some points really did feel like filler. This is probably what could have solved the “this book doesn’t know what it wants to be” issue—cut all the filler and focus on developing the relationships between the characters, and chances are, I would’ve enjoyed it so much more.

Part of what endeared me to Tweet Cute was that the social media parts rarely came across as a Gen X author trying too hard to sound “hip.” As much as it can be, it felt real enough that the humor and romance could come through via that aspect. However, whatever internet savviness that Lord had was lost somewhere in the dust between Tweet Cute and You Have a Match. Maybe it was the shift in focus from Twitter to the whole mess that is the concept of Influencers, but it felt incredibly shallow in comparison. Despite her (eventual) redeeming qualities, Savvy came across as the most unoriginal, cardboard-cutout idea of an influencer (fit, makes green smoothies, immaculate hygiene, does yoga, etc.), but Lord could have easily subverted that idea with something that set her apart. All of the nuance came down to “influencers are people too, my life isn’t always perfect :(” and never went any further. Especially with the fact that Abby and Savvy were sisters all along, I feel like this could’ve gone so much deeper—or, at least, in a more interesting direction.

All in all, a coming-of-age, summer camp rom-com that wasted almost all of the potential that it had. 2 stars.

You Have a Match is a standalone, but Emma Lord is the author of several other novels, including Tweet Cute, Begin Again, When You Get the Chance, and the forthcoming novels The Break-Up Pact and The Getaway List.

Today’s song:

if I listen to this enough time, will I just forget that winter exists?

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

Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 12/17/23

Posted on December 17, 2023 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

I’m finally out of finals hell! Hopefully I’ll have more time to write and read in the next month or so, but I’ll certainly be sleeping. As a celebration: songs for the beach, songs for the ocean, and songs for when you need to cry and dramatically drape a hand over your forehead. You’re totally in a movie for the latter. Totally.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 12/17/23

“Let You Break My Heart Again” – Laufey & Philharmonia Orchestra

Seems like I’m somewhat late on the Laufey train, but then again, she’s young and she’s certainly got tons of records ahead of her, so I suppose I’m not that late. She has, however, swept the internet for doing something almost unthinkable—her noble cause of bringing jazz to Gen Z. It’s an incredible cause to spearhead in your musical career, what with jazz being up there with country at the butt of every “I listen to everything but this” joke and not selling well as a genre for decades. I say this as somebody who falls into the former category with both of those genres, but from the scope of what I’ve heard, Laufey’s brand of jazz isn’t the kind of bland smooth jazz you hear in a spa and never hear about again. It’s the kind of dramatic, emotional vocal jazz sung by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday—two artists who she cites as some of her biggest musical influences.

Some of her other tracks (“From the Start” and “Falling Behind” comes to mind) spread like wildfire across social media this year, but although they weren’t enough to lift out of slightly out-of-the-ordinary background music for me, I’ll admit that my heart’s been fully captured by “Let You Break My Heart Again.” It’s the absolute best sort of high drama; the swelling instrumentation of the Philharmonia Orchestra in concert with Laufey’s low, honeyed voice make it just the sort of thing to listen to while imagining yourself leaning out the window and pretending you’re in a movie. It practically begs for flowing dresses and a hand artfully draped over your forehead. (Oh! I’m fainting…into your arms…) I’ve never been one for Disney, much less their musicals, but this song almost seems like the kind of princess’s solo number that stands the test of time. I’m also not a jukebox musical kind of person, but having this as the emotional climax while the lead actress laments into the spotlight doesn’t sound like a terrible idea. With every soft flutter in her voice, you can feel the yearning and heartache creep through the windowsill like golden-hour sunlight. I just can’t help but dramatically twirl around and collapse into my (imaginary) ballgown with every listen.

In closing, the genius who paired this song with this video deserves a raise at whatever job they’re in:

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…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue – V.E. Schwab – for all your dramatically-draping-yourself-from-the-window-in-a-flowy-dress needs. And for the heartbreak.

“Glowworm” – The Apples in Stereo

I keep having to say this, because it needs to be said: The Apples in Stereo seriously tapped into the wellspring of indie-pop magic, and we barely seem to have acknowledged that. No other band of their ilk, that I can think of, has managed to consistently produce the sheer amount of glimmering pop capsules that they have in the lifespan of their band. Under-appreciated genius, for sure.

“Glowworm” falls into that perfect category of songs that seem to be shaded in the same colors of the album cover. In this song’s case, this song glows with the same bright yellow-greens of the album art for Fun Trick Noisemaker, just like the gentle, greenish flicker of the titular glowworms and fireflies. And like the bugs it’s named after, this song feels like a swarm of gentle lights illuminating the summer night, sparking and glowing with lively energy (no pun intended). Robert Schneider’s soft voice jumps and bounces around the almost nursery rhyme-like opening lyrics (“Put a penny in the pot/Put a nickel in your pocket/Every nickel that you’ve got/Is a nickel in the slot”), opening like a storybook into a glittering tale of yearning after a reckless lover—”You just had to spend it all/Every hour, every minute/You had to make it all/Wonderful, beautiful.” Like the fleeting glow of the worm, it’s a there-and-gone kind of love—”You lived to burn.” But the ecstatic burn is one that you can instantly feel in your heart—the song makes you travel on a trail of light up into the night sky, just like fireflies.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Nothing Burns as Bright as You – Ashley Woodfolk – the song is decidedly more lighthearted (at least, that’s how it sounds) than the book, but the feeling of falling in love with a fiery, reckless person remains the same. This book, however, deals with the fallout.

“Genius of Love” – Tom Tom Club

“Genius Of Love” has found its way everywhere—most prominently sampled in Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” (oh, look, we’re mentioning her in December without mentioning…okay, I’m not gonna say it, that’s too easy)—and I feel like it has almost made us forget how delightfully bonkers it is. Heck, here I am in my dorm, looking at the boygenius picture that I cut out of a magazine and pasted on the wall, and it’s captioned with “genius of love.” It’s everywhere. If this song had a physical representation, it would probably be some kind of collage, but the kind that looks mindless from a distance—a bit of yarn here, some googly eyes there, and some brightly-colored but dried-out markers to color the background—but with a closer look, clearly has all the intention in the world. And yet, it’s such a meticulous pop song. I’d expect nothing less from half of the Talking Heads.

I mean, this starts off with Tina Weymouth doing a playful spoken-word segment with the affectation of a 50’s housewife in a grainy commercial: “What you gonna do when you get out of jail?/I’m gonna have some fun/What do you consider fun?/Fun, natural fun.” The delivery of that last line seriously makes me think that I’m about to be sold some kind of unnaturally green jello salad or something. But it all works so ridiculously well together. After the whole housewife bit, Weymouth’s gorgeous voice really has the chance to shine—the sincere sweetness of it makes every repetition of “I’m in heaven/With my boyfriend, my laughing boyfriend” seem nothing but genuine, like there’s a halo of cartoon hearts and bluebirds circling around her head. And the synths—they really feel like you can touch them. They pulsate and bubble and twinkle in every part of your ear. It’s no wonder that this song is one of the most sampled songs of the 80’s, especially in hip-hop and R&B from the 90’s up until as recent as last year. I’m getting mixed signals from the internet about the exact amount of times it’s actually been sampled—the sources range from around 50 to a whopping 179, but either way, the legacy of “Genius of Love” cannot be overstated. The synth heard ’round the world.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Victories Greater Than Death (Unstoppable, #1) – Charlie Jane Anders – this was a super tough one, but I figured that Charlie Jane Anders’ sparkling, neon space opera world would mesh nicely with all those bubbly synths.

“O.K., Meet Me Underwater” – Jay Som

I’ve had a brief kick of collecting random Jay Som singles for my hoard, and I haven’t regretted a single second of it. Even if the songs weren’t as good as they are, I’d still come out the other side with song titles like this. This one is like a “Crocodile Tears and the Velvet Cosh” situation—if there every is another song called “O.K., Meet Me Underwater,” it’ll be copying this one.

Besides being so charmingly memorable, “O.K., Meet Me Underwater” has the advantage of being made for a Jay Som song. Her trademark of slightly off-kilter electric guitars and synths and the water-smooth ripple of how it all sounds together was made for a song title like this. All of the instrumentals already could have sounded like they were recorded from just under the surface, only slightly to the left of being muffled by a stream of bubbles rising from the depths. As Jay Som sings the chorus of “If you’re feeling okay/Meet me underwater,” every word feels like it’s being spoken just before she dips her head back down into the waves, beckoning you to follow her to some kind of colorful coral reef kingdom befitting of the cheerful glimmer of her music. Even that deliciously bouncy riff starting at 1:04 sounds like something you’d hear in the background of an ocean-themed episode of Really Wild Animals (PLEASE tell me somebody else remembers those), or even just some cartoon they play in the background of an aquarium, complete with smiling dolphins and clam shells opening and closing to the beat. The neon yellow on the cover of the single doesn’t do nearly enough justice to the summery glow of this song—you’d need a whole, pastel-oceanic palette to capture the whole song.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Girl from the Sea – Molly Knox Ostertag – not to double-dip on the Jay Som/graphic novel comparisons, but…it’s right there. Meet me underwater.

“Catamaran” – Allah-Las

I know a somewhat clever band name when I see one, but I also see a contentious one when I see it as well. The wordplay is great, but upon further reading, it looks like the Allah-Las, a band consisting of predominantly white, non-Muslim dudes from California, mostly picked the name because it was “holy-sounding.” They have faced some criticism for the name from the Muslim community over the years, and they’ve clarified that they never meant any ill will or disrespect by it, but even then, there’s still an undeniable uncomfortableness about a bunch of white guys from LA slapping the name on themselves with what seemed like very little thought behind it.

That aside, if there’s one thing white guys from California are good at doing, it’s making songs about the beach, and man, the Allah-Las nailed it. It’s not necessarily the kind of bouncy Beach Boys song that you’d expect from that descriptor—”Catamaran” takes plentiful notes from the other side of the sixties, a summertime, surfy beach walk by way of the Kinks. It’s got all the ingredients for a slightly left-of-the-dial 60’s dial bubbling in the pan—bright, jangly guitars, gentle percussion, and the kind of lyrics that sound like they could have just as easily slipped out of the mouth of the likes of Jim Morrison: “I’m an oyster pearl’s locked up in a shell/You better bring that diving bell.” What plucks the Allah-Las out of the 60’s is the kind of flat, disaffected vocals running rampant in every white guy who has ever pursued a career in indie pop—like TV Girl, it gets on my nerves for the most part, but in the sun-baked sepia of the rest of the song, it almost makes sense.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Immeasurable Depth of You – Maria Ingrande Mora – before everything goes sideways, this would be an appropriate soundtrack to being in an old houseboat floating in the Florida mangroves.

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!

Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 10/8/23

Posted on October 8, 2023 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

Last week was unintentionally heavy on the sad girl fall music, but fear not! I’ve got more than a little room for joyous whimsy and glorious poetry this week. The color palette borders on my contractually obligated, monthly blue period, but I’d say it’s more periwinkle than blue. Periwinkle. I’ve always loved that word. It’s just such a delightful wonder of the English language. Plus, it reminds me of the cat from Blues Clues, which is always a plus.

Anyways, here’s Wonderwall.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 10/8/23

“Sunlight Ends” – Wilco

The time has come! Wilco’s newest album Cousin came out last Friday, and honestly? It’s such a treat. I wouldn’t expect anything less from one of my most-loved bands, but this one has some of my favorite songs that they’ve produced in the past 5 years or so. It really was a struggle to try and pick just one song to think about—there’s the ear-popping chaos of opener “Infinite Surprise” that truly lives up to its name, and the swirling explosion of color that is “Pittsburgh,” to name a few. But this one keeps coming back to me like a cat nuzzling against my leg, and who am I to deny it?

Whoever hired Traceloops for the visuals for the lyrics videos for Cousin needs a raise. The feel is so spot-on—especially for this one. The hazy, gently pulsating pops of color perfectly capture the tactile feel of the whole album. The sound production really does feel tactile in places, thick enough to pull apart and wring in your hands like a clump of wool. “Sunlight Ends” lives up to its name; from the first opening notes, lazy and tumbling over each other, it creates a hypnotic atmosphere like no other. The melody opens with all of the delicateness of a flower bud gently cracking open, shedding off bits of frost and morning dew as it awakens. (The frost from all those frozen flowers on the album cover, maybe?) It has all the sparkling haziness of seeing stars at the edges of your vision. And as with any given Wilco song, you bet that they have the poetic chops to match the song’s atmosphere in spaces. Saying that songs are just poems set to music is common enough, but it takes a lot to distinguish a songwriter as a poet. Jeff Tweedy, however, is an easy pick for a poet. There’s usually enough lines to spotlight, but…I might as well just paste in the entire song. Not only is it so well married to the music, every line is nothing short of a masterpiece. The way that the bass dips down as Tweedy sings “You dance/Like the dust in the light/And I’m following/Until the sunlight ends”? “You’re the kind of flashing sign/That only gets you lost”? The way that the carefully-crafted atmosphere subtly tears apart at the seams as Tweedy sings “And I’m lost”? It’s nothing short of gorgeous. And if it’s anything to any of you, the lyrics stood out to me so much that I nearly stopped in my tracks on my walk to the dining hall. That’ll do it.

“Here” (Pavement cover) – Soccer Mommy

Speaking of bands who’ve been cranking out fantastic music prolifically for the past few years…

~~My wife~~ Soccer Mommy has had a productive few years! Barely a year after her incredible third album, Sometimes, Forever, she’s got a wonderful covers EP called Karaoke Night. It’s a lovely set of covers. Everybody from R.E.M. to Slowdive to Sheryl Crow meshes with her signature style, and she’s even managed to dupe me into liking a Taylor Swift cover. Rest assured, this is the only time I will willingly listen to Taylor Swift. (it’s a great cover, though. Sophie Allison can do it all.)

Anyone who knows Soccer Mommy well knows that the 90’s are visible everywhere on her. Even if almost all the covers of Karaoke Night weren’t from that decade, it would be easy to see the threads of many an alt-rock band from that decade rubbing off on her. And even though I’m not as familiar with Pavement, this cover was the perfect match—Allison said in a recent Instagram post that this song was her first exposure to the band, and remains one of her personal favorites of theirs. Stephen Malkmus’ laid back singing style was an easy translation for Allison, who sells every somber, quiet note. Her voice really is nothing short of luscious, and it fits with the vibrant but restrained guitars like two puzzle pieces. The whole cover has such an enchanting atmosphere for a song so full of 90’s indifference and ennui. And once the heavier guitars kick in, Allison’s voice rings stronger than ever, displaying everything that I’ve ever loved about her—the angsty soul she breathes into every note, the glow it seems to emanate, and the endearing way that she pronounces her W’s as softened V’s whenever she gets really into the lyrics. I’m glad that I’m living in this period of prolific output from Soccer Mommy, original or covers. Her music is always a gift.

“Go” – The Apples in Stereo

In the back of my mind, I always thought that this song had an exclamation point in the title. “Go!” It just seemed to be genetically embedded in the music. They do scream “GO!” like that in the chorus, anyhow. I don’t know. Just a suggestion. About 15 years too late to send my suggestions to Robert Schneider and co., but better late than never, I guess?

Exclamation point or no exclamation point, the infectious catchiness of “Go” is undeniable. From the first cry of “Go!” as the horn section kicks in, there’s nothing that can stop the runaway energy (no pun intended) of this song. It’s a song that’s just clawed its way out of a cardboard box, and will do anything to stay wild and free. Ever since I remember hearing it, most frequently in the car when I was in elementary school, it’s never failed to nudge at least one little shoulder sway out of me. It really is infectious. And the lyrics have that same air of anxious freedom—the subject is confronted with all sorts of trials (“When you go into the shop/Lady watches like a cop”) and tribulations (“She don’t like the way you look/So she treats you like a crook”), but all of them are met with a riotous burst of horns and Schneider’s rallying cry of “You know you wanna go (go, baby!)”. It’s impossible not to feel the rush of freedom from the end of the chorus: “You’re such a/Pretty, pretty, pretty little girl/Let’s blow this/Ugly, ugly, ugly little world!” And nothing beats the true chaos of the breakdown from 1:46-2:28—for a band characterized by tight, mathematical precision in every beat, they make the squealing, crunching mess of guitars, drums, and screeching flutes work just as well as anyone.

“She Flies Away With My Love” – Jim Noir

I don’t necessarily think about musical coherence whenever I put these posts together. It’s mostly just what I’ve been listening to lately, and whether or not the album covers at least somewhat fit together. But jeez..this song fits so well with The Apples in Stereo. Almost too welel. I feel like any given Apples song would fit spectacuarly with any given Jim Noir song. Like bread and butter. Peanut butter and jelly. Aziraphale and Crowley, but not before the last episode of season 2. (I’m still in pain.) Me on a Friday night and an episode of The Great British Bake-Off.

I was compelled to go back and listen to Jim Noir’s delightful Zooper Dooper EP the other day while I holed up in my dorm while a football game went on. Not that I expected anything less, but as always, it’s a pure burst of spacey, Britpop delight, served up with a side of absolute whimsy. Like half of my album/EP experiences, songs like the hopeful favorite “Map” and the oddball story of “Car” overshadowed this one, so much so that I forgot that it existed altogether. But now I’m embarrassed that I even thought of turning the other cheek away from this song—”She Flies Away With My Love” is a pure delight. Really. Again, this is your PSA to check out Jim Noir’s catalogue in general, because if you’re in gen z, chances are that he’s appeared more times in your childhood than you think. This song in particular feels sanded to smooth perfection, hitting a euphoric, whimsical balance between sharp, driving drums and bass and deliriously bubbly synths. The two parts feel like they’re in rooms right next door to each other, working in tandem but being exceedingly distinct from each other in the process. The opened-soda-can fizzing of the electronics and the pitched-up backing vocals sound miles away from the heavy punch of the drums once the verse kicks in, but they work in such harmony that could ultimately be crafted by mastermind like Jim Noir.

“Your Personal Penguin” – Davy Jones

Compared to last week, this week’s selection of songs ended up being a lot more light-hearted and bubbly, at least in terms of sound. The color scheme screams less of the decay of fall and more of fresh-washed sheets and flowers. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t end this ensemble with the epitome of comfort.

Sure. Kid’s songs are generally meant to be silly and joyous, and they generally don’t deviate from that. But there’s a certain subset of kid’s songs that go past that and remain bastions of comfort for the rest of your life. “Your Personal Penguin” crossed that threshold long ago— I mean, here I am, now in my twenties (how’d that happen, huh?), still nodding along to this sweet little tune. Say what you want about Gen Z and nostalgia, and yada yada yada (as if every generation hasn’t had some kind of romanticization of the past, and we’re only pointing the finger at Gen Z because the Internet has exacerbated how widespread the phenomenon actually is, etc.), but going back to these kinds of songs is like reuniting with an old friend. And this song really has been everywhere in my life. It soundtracked many a car ride to school when I was young, and on my 10th birthday, when I got my brand-new iPod nano (which is still kicking, somehow…thanks, Apple), I listened to this song while huddled under my grandma’s bathrobe while a thunderstorm rumbled outside. I had a Minecraft world on the family iPad where I built a house in the snowy mountains, and I tried to fit some of the lyrics of this song on a sign in front of it—the part about how “lots of other penguins seem to do fine/In the universe of nothing but ice.” (Suffice to say, it was too long to fit the whole thing on there. Pressing problems for a 10-year-old.) And yet, it took me until about a year ago to figure out that this song was based on a book—in fact, all of the songs on Sandra Boynton’s Blue Moo are. I’m surprised that I missed out on that part, but it really says something that this song gives me such warmth without the addition of the delightful penguin illustrations. Davy Jones just has that special quality about his voice—it borders on nasally, but it’s filled with such a playful, contagious joy that sets it apart—the silly smile this song wears can’t help but spread to you. The rollicking pianos and almost comically deep backing vocals make for an earnestly hug-delivering song.

And, for more joy to add to your life, here’s the song paired with the illustrations from Sandra Boynton’s original picture book:

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!

Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 8/6/23

Posted on August 6, 2023 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

Here we are in the heat of August, and I bring you a batch of songs with a Halloween color scheme. I say, it’s my birthday month and I get to choose to color scheme, and I say that every day is Halloween over here at the Bookish Mutant. It’s only fitting that we have the band who probably originated that phrase on here. Plus some vampires. A whole empire of them, as a matter of fact.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 8/6/23

“Vampire Empire” – Big Thief

With almost every Big Thief song that I hear, I’m convinced more and more to go deeper into their discography. Plus, the sisterhood of queer women growing out buzzcuts has to stick together. 🫡

As I clumsily tried to explain to my dad with some tired, T-Rex arm moves before dinner the night that this song came out, “Vampire Empire” is a song that really feels like it’s pressing down on you. After the curtain lifts on the deceptively silent opening, the steadfastness of this song never lets up. With each drumbeat, I feel like I’ve been sucked into a water wheel, bobbing along with its machinery. Each punch of the impeccably rhythmic chorus feels like a spoke passing over me: “You give me chills/I’ve had it with the drills/I’m nothing, you are nothing, we are nothing with the pills.” And if there’s anything I love in a song, it’s that quality where everything feels like it’s teetering on the edge of collapse, but is reconstructed just as quickly. From the pots-and-pans banging sound of the percussion to the way that Adrianne Lenker’s voice strains, soars, then screams in the final verse: “You say you wanna be alone, and you want children/You wanna be with me, you wanna be with him.” Even if the now beloved version that they performed earlier this year on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert excelled in its indie tightness, the barely-contained fury of this version matches matches the lyrics so much more, with its unpredictable, pressing highs and lows. And as much as I loved the original “I’m a fish and she’s my gills” lyric, the way it was squashed right at the end of the chorus did feel like it was interrupting the flow of an otherwise impeccably rhythmic song.

“Swim to Sweden” – Co-Pilot

Rotate has been getting great reviews ever since it came out about a week ago, and even before that—and I’m so happy. I don’t know as much of the context behind Leonore Wheatley, it makes me so happy to see Jim Noir FINALLY getting more of the recognition that he deserves! If there’s anybody who deserves to have their album called “the album of the summer,” it’s him and Leonore.

Co-Pilot (Leonore Wheatley and Jim Noir, a.k.a Alan Roberts) make the perfect music for getting things done; I normally put on an album when I clean out my bathroom, but there are some albums that are…shall we say, better than others for doing such things. (Cue an Arrested Development-style cutback to me crying into the sink to “Don’t Give Up”.) I don’t know much about Leonore Wheatley or her other projects, but Jim Noir always makes that perfect kind of music—it can tickle your brain in a pleasantly creative way, but it makes for the perfect soundtrack to washing down the bathroom mirror or shelving books at the library. So Rotate was bound to be just like that, and that’s exactly how it turned out to be. But as with anything by Jim Noir, it’s so much more than just quirky background music—it’s the sonic equivalent of a Russian doll, layered with oodles of hidden samples, sounds, and fun. “Swim to Sweden,” the Rotate’s second single and opening track, is the perfect display of that explosive, wondrous weirdness. It’s a whole sensory experience; all of the many, layered synths make sounds that crackle, writhe, and, as the title suggests, swim around in your head as the song plays. It’s like a stimulating massage for the brain: the music grows fingers that wiggle all around you, invoking images of bubbles and pulsating lights. I’d be remiss if I didn’t say anything about Wheatley’s contributions, even with my minimal context; I don’t know how much of the instrumentation was from her, but her voice was clearly the anchor that steadied the whole record, richly lilting and magically suited to everything surrounding it. Wheatley and Noir’s vocals weave effortlessly together, diving and darting through the current between the synth melodies like fish.

Bottom line: if you’re looking for something refreshing and perpetually exciting to listen to, go listen to Co-Pilot. Rotate is out now on all streaming platforms! I almost put “Move To It” as this week’s pick, but I’ll direct you to this one too—it samples the same keyboard track that C418 sampled for Minecraft’s “Chirp.” And while you’re at it, I’d once again encourage you all to support Jim Noir’s solo work via his Patreon, if you can.

“Stigmata” – Ministry

With these Sunday Songs posts, I hope to give you all a glimpse into my shuffle. Some weeks, it’s fairly curated. On weeks like this, it really does feel like my shuffle. And by that, I mean four tangentially related songs that sort of fit together, and one of the two (2) Ministry songs in my library. Gotta keep you all on yours toes somehow.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of most metal or industrial music, but as I’ve gotten older and started to appreciate more of it, I’ve noticed a pattern. I doubt I’ll ever completely warm up to all of it (there’s only so much screaming in my ears that I can handle), but for a fair amount of those bands that I’ve been exposed to, there’s always 2 or 3 songs that I just inexplicably love. For Black Sabbath, it’s “N.I.B.” For Nine Inch Nails, it’s “Terrible Lie,” “Head Like a Hole” and “Reptile.” And for Ministry, who famously inspired the name of the latter, it’s “So What” and this song. (Don’t think I’ll quite warm up to Iron Maiden, though. I’ve tried. Apologies to my dad and brother. Bruce Dickinson is undeniably a king, though.)

I don’t really remember enough Ministry to see what separates this song from everything else I’ve heard and passed by. But “Stigmata” came back to me in one of those joyous moments where my shuffle decided to dredge something from the dusty depths of my iTunes library, to my surprise. And instantly, I remembered the rush it gave me in my sophomore year of high school, when I first remember hearing it and liking it. I know the word “feral” is tossed around more often than not these days, but…that’s exactly the way this song makes me feel. The instant the drums kick in, I just start grinning from the anticipation. Then comes one of Al Jourgensen’s many raspy shrieks (which he can keep up for a surprising amount of time), and then it all comes crashing into you. From there, it never lets up—it’s the very definition of abrasive, but the kind of theatrical abrasiveness that never holds back. You can just picture this guy maniacally grinning and wiggling his fingers as he draws out “I’m chewing on glass/And eating my fingers.” Again, who knows what line my mind drew between this and the rest of Ministry, but this song is just so fun. I’ve heard enough to know that metal probably won’t ever fully be my cup of tea, but my brain knows exactly what it likes, no matter the arbitrary, inexplicable distinctions it makes.

“Evergreen” – Shakey Graves

This song and “Vampire Empire” seem to be cousins in a lot of ways. Both of them were famed, unreleased songs that became live gems and staples for their respective bands, and, lo and behold, were released on the same day. Even though I’m far more familiar with Shakey Graves, Big Thief overshadowed my listening, out of the two—as you could probably tell, I couldn’t get enough of it. But “Evergreen” is just as uniquely wondrous, even if I’m admittedly overdue in appreciating it.

No matter how many times I listen to this song, I always fall into the trap of turning the volume up for the quiet acoustic plucking that makes up the beginning of the song. Then, of course, in true, modern Shakey Graves fashion, it’s all gone in a flash and a bang of static as the true beginning of the song kicks in. It’s exactly like the image on the album cover of the forthcoming new album Movie of the Week (!!!)—the silhouette of Alejandro Rose-Garcia, arms outstretched in ecstasy like the black and white monster movie version of Victor Frankenstein declaring “IT’S ALIVE!” The rest of the track continues in that unexpected trajectory. “Evergreen” is a sea of purple-hued fuzz and distortion, dreamy and explosive. Like the trees it’s named after, it’s a song that seems to lure you into the woods, tinged with dreams but hiding something faintly sinister: “Let me rest, yeah let me be/Overgrown and evergreen.” Guess we were all feeling that “I need to go off into the woods and let myself be covered in moss” feeling. It feels like the next natural progression from Can’t Wake Up, which saw Shakey Graves leaning more towards the alternative in alternative folk, with its array of spooky, adventurous tracks (see: “Aibohphobia,” “Dining Alone,” “Counting Sheep”). The folk part was never lost, and judging from Garcia’s penchant for cowboy hats, I doubt it ever will be, but either way, “Evergreen” is surely an exciting window into what’s to come.

Wilco, Shakey Graves, and Mitski this September? BUCKLE UP! And I’m seeing the first two live later this year, so that’s even more fun! (I doubt I could ever do a Mitski concert. I……yeah, I’ve seen so many articles linked to the fandom’s weirder-than-usual parasocial relationships with her and FAR too many “mommy” comments on posts about her. I couldn’t do it.)

(more on Wilco next week…)

“Can You Feel It?” – The Apples in Stereo

Chances are, if you thought of a creatively-inclined person having a sudden change in their career to pursue their passion, it would go something like this: person gets stuck in an office job crunching numbers, person writes songs in their spare time, person quits job in order to pursue music. Happens all the time. But it’s hard to think that the opposite might be true. And that’s the case for Robert Schneider, frontman of The Apples in Stereo, Thee American Revolution, and one of the founders of the Elephant 6 Collective. As his indie rock music gained traction, his hobby and eventual passion was math; while on tour, his bandmates often recollected him scribbling his way through equations in his spare time. And now, he teaches math for a living: in a 2018 interview with Atlanta Magazine, he described the relationship between math and music as such: “Music, art, poetry, and mathematics—these have the feeling of mysticism and religion to me…It’s more than just something you do or something you’re good at. These are things that to me are fundamentally as important as something could possibly be.”

Looking back at The Apples in Stereo, a delightfully weird staple of my hipster childhood, with this context makes their entire sound make more sense. “Delightful” is always the word I end up reaching towards with their music, with their bubbly, electronic sounds and penchants for adding in backing vocals made to sound like a choir of robots. But even if they haven’t been as active in a little over a decade, every time I rediscover one of their songs, it’s simultaneously like reuniting with an old friend and unearthing something wholly new. Like “Stigmata,” “Can You Feel It?” got dragged in by my shuffle, bringing with it a whole slew of pure, joyous childhood memories. Many a car ride was soundtracked by this song, electronic happiness and the impressively swift maneuver of my dad turning down the volume down and back up again just in time for my brother and I to miss the word “bullshit.” And to this day, no matter how many times I listen to it, “Can You Feel It?” remains supercharged with that pure joy. Even if his passion turned out to be math, there’s no denying that Robert Schneider could write an excellent pop song—instantly hooking, it bubbles with infectious joy, calling on you to “drown out the static on the FM radio.” As the call to “turn up your stereo” fades to near-a cappella, something about said choir of robots keeps the excitement of the whole song at a fever pitch, waiting for the instrumentals to crash down once again. Whatever the case, I’d say that Robert Schneider and company found the equation for indie rock joy, and it’s never once lost its shine.

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!