The Familiar – The Bookish Mutant

Sunday Songs: 8/3/25

Posted on August 3, 2025 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: even if Wilco wasn’t ever-present in The Bear, we’d have to physically restrain Jeff Tweedy just to stop him constantly cooking in that kitchen. Plus: lots of top tier album intros and some lyrics I probably should’ve reconsidered playing in the presence of my guitar teacher.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 8/3/25

“Lovely Head” – Goldfrapp

Both Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory had been musically active before they joined forces, but even then, to come right out the gate with a single like this is so impressive for a band just getting its start. “Lovely Head” was the first single that Goldfrapp ever released and eventually became the opening track for their debut album, Felt Mountain. The U.S. didn’t seem to see the wave of popularity it eventually gained, but in the U.K., it was used liberally in film, TV, and commercials in the early 2000’s. But if there was ever a song that was meant for all of those things, it’s this one. Everything about it is cinematic, from the Ennio Morricone-like whistling intro to the soaring, theremin-like melodies, which wasn’t actually a theremin at all—just Alison Goldfrapp’s voice filtered through a synthesizer. It’s just so deliciously eerie, cool and distant, with lyrics that seem romantic only from the furthest distance, but disaffected and almost scientific once you examine them more closely. “Frankenstein would want your mind/Your lovely head” is probably only romantic for…y’know, a serial killer, or something, but it’s the precise effect that I think the song is going for—a love song penned by a cold-blooded killer.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Catherine House – Elisabeth Thomas – an eerie atmosphere, eerie interactions with eerie people, all in an eerie, secretive college.

“Devereaux” – Car Seat Headrest

I promise I’ll shut up about Car Seat Headrest for a few more months after this week. Well…I can’t make any promises.

Though I never got around to writing an album review for The Scholars (or any other of the amazing albums that have come out this year…oops. Phonetics On & On is the only album to come out in 2025, folks! Rejoice!), I feel like it’d be a crime for me to not talk about “Devereaux” at some point. After the back-to-back slew of excellent singles, “Devereaux,” along with “Equals,” is the song I’ve come back to the most from The Scholars. It’s what duped me into thinking that the album was going to be a re-hash of Teens of Denial, but even though it calls back to the song, the rest of the album proved me dead wrong…though I wouldn’t complain about Teens of Denial 2: Electric Boogaloo. Despite being from the perspective of one of Will Toledo’s many characters, a crocodile named Devereaux, the themes of living under the roof of religious bigotry and longing for escape could’ve been plucked straight out of his early discography. Anthemic and pleading, I see it becoming a future crowd-pleaser at shows—the kind I’d see the fans emphatically jumping up and down to. Hell, I saw them doing that on this tour, and it was only the second song in the setlist. Toledo’s soaring vocals meld the yearning, melancholic lyrics into a cry of longing: “I wasn’t born to be this, I was born to fight dragons/With a cowl on my face/With an auspicious birthday.” If there was ever a more air-punch worthy song, chock-full of lyrics meant to be yelled into the spacious walls of a sturdy venue, or simply into the darkness of a firefly-tinged summer night, “Devereaux” is it.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Agnes at the End of the World – Kelly McWilliams – “In the land beyond me and you/A bunch of kids who don’t know what to do/We all wait in the silence to hear…”

“One Tiny Flower” – Jeff Tweedy

BREAKING: water is wet, the sky is blue (sky blue sky, even? [gets dragged offstage by a comically large cane]), and Jeff Tweedy cannot stop cooking. Seriously! Even within a band, how is it possible that in the last five years, this man has put out one solo album, two albums (one of which is a double album) and an EP with Wilco, three reissues of past albums, and now a triple album out this September? It’s been a while since I’ve read Tweedy’s book, How to Write One Song, but if that kind of insane output—not only prolific, but consistently good to boot—doesn’t convince you that he can, in fact, teach you how to write one song, then I don’t know what will.

I had a feeling why he continues to be so prolific. In my experience, creativity blossoms most when you’ve got something impelling it: not necessarily spite, anger, or negative emotion, but any kind of passion that pushes you to put something new out into the world. Give yourself into it too much, you lose the outside world, and you lose the reality that must be grounded to; lose sight of it, and you forget that everything pushing against you in the world, positive and negative, can be a source to revive that creativity. Tweedy put it this way in a statement about the album: “When you choose to do creative things, you align yourself with something that other people call God…and when you align yourself with creation, you inherently take a side against destruction. You’re on the side of creation. And that does a lot to quell the impulse to destroy. Creativity eats darkness.” Tweedy saw the veritable tsunami of strife, fascism, genocide, and all the other ills plaguing the world, and put up arms against it by means of art. For me, and for so many people who feel helpless, it’s all we can do. My mom shared this wonderful Ted Talk by Amie McNee about how making any kind of art, political or not, is an act of resistance in this hellscape just by virtue of the fact that you’re putting your time and attention into creativity and not giving money to corporations by endlessly scrolling on social media or participating in other capitalist activities. It comes to mind when I think about the upcoming Twilight Override: now that’s an act of resistance. 30 songs! That monstrous length is also intentional to Tweedy: “Whatever it is out there (or in there) squeezing this ennui into my day, it’s fucking overwhelming. It’s difficult to ignore. Twilight Override is my effort to overwhelm it right back. Here are the songs and sounds and voices and guitars and words that are an effort to let go of some of the heaviness and up the wattage on my own light. My effort to engulf this encroaching nighttime (nightmare) of the soul.” 30 songs is hard to keep consistency with, but nevertheless, I welcome Jeff Tweedy as the musical champion of (twi)light in the overwhelming darkness.

Out of the four singles that have been released so far, “One Tiny Flower” seems most like Tweedy’s mission statement with Twilight Override. It’s not his most lyrically complex song, but it evokes the most classic imagery of resistance and resilience possible: a tiny flower sprouting out from the concrete. It’s an ember of joy, a labor of intensive hard work to make the roots hold onto concrete, and a fuck you to whoever poured the concrete over the space where they didn’t want more plants to grow. Even without the rest of Wilco, “One Tiny Flower” reeks of Cousin, shifting from understated, softly sung acoustic melodies to a jingling, entropic dissolution before straightening itself back up again. The other three songs veer between different sides of Tweedy’s range, but if there are any more songs like this one, then I’ll be satisfied with Twilight Override.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Half-Built Garden – Ruthanna Emrys – a quiet, hopeful tale of climate change and first contact.

“Psychosis is Just a Number” – Guerilla Toss

I’m surprised that I’ve never talked about Guerilla Toss on any of these posts, but I think it’s mainly because my main heyday listening to them ended right around the time when I started making these graphics, several months after their last album, Famously Alive, came out. I don’t tend to habitually revisit them, minus most of the tracks from Twisted Crystal (see: “Come Up With Me,” which I swear needs to be the theme song for a quirky Cartoon Network show with a plucky girl protagonist on a bicycle exploring a magical realm). But even though I’d never place them among my most-listened to bands, I’m always happy to hear something new from them. You’re Weird Now comes out this October, but the truth is, Guerilla Toss have been weird all along—and that’s what makes them special. They’re doing nothing but their own thing, pasting together surreal lyrics with electronic and rock beats frankensteined together. “Psychosis Is Just a Number” mashes together thrumming bass and a surprisingly smooth brass section—I’d never think to compare Oingo Boingo and Guerilla Toss musically, but the madcap, off-the-walls excitement of this track is so wonderfully reminiscent of them. They throw everything at you (the chorus is borderline overstimulating if you listen to it over and over) but that’s just how their unfiltered, raw excitement and creativity shines through.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Finna – Nino Cipri – this is a highly specific situation, but strangely, Guerilla Toss seems like the ideal soundtrack to being trapped in an interdimensional, legally distinct IKEA full of monstrous furniture.

“The Width of a Circle” – David Bowie

I’ve loved “The Width of a Circle” for at least a few years, and I’ve been interested in learning how to play it on guitar. Unfortunately, though it has been a wonderful experience, I made a…uh, slight oversight, and didn’t realize how painfully awkward it would be to be in my guitar lesson and have my guitar teacher go through the whole “He swallowed his pride and puckered his lips/And showed me the leather bound ’round his hips” bit. Whoops.

As you probably gathered, “The Width of a Circle” is about as freaky as they come. Though the actual subject is somewhat ambiguous, it’s about Bowie encountering either God or Satan…and proceeding to have the most earth-shattering gay sex with him. (I’m more inclined to the Satan interpretation, as the figure fools the Bowie character into thinking he’s a humble, young God, then opens up the pits of Hell.) Even though The Man Who Sold the World didn’t get a ton of attention when it came out, it’s impressive that this got through any kind of censors and was released all the way back in 1970—just as impressive as the fact that Bowie was slaying in that dress on the front cover of the album. It’s honestly one of the queerest songs in his catalogue to me, and this was even before he made a whole album about a queer alien. The Man Who Sold the World didn’t gain much notoriety until Bowie’s career started picking up in earnest, but in retrospect, it’s the album where his storytelling really took a turn for the truly artful. Though the sound isn’t as cohesive, you can see the leap he took into going more daring places with his songwriting. “The Width of a Circle” truly is an epic in every sense of the word; originally two separate songs, it was tied together by the connective tissue of Mick Ronson’s jamming, expanding it into an eight minute long behemoth of a tale. The theatricality that would come to dominate Bowie’s work in only a few years blossoms here as he takes a journey through innocence and into shock and revelation. Even if it came to my disadvantage in that guitar lesson, this is the first time in Bowie’s career where his imagery takes on the quality of being so startlingly evocative—he’s a master of weaving worlds through song, and whether or not he’s selling them, each song is a Faberge egg of allusions and stunning songcraft.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Familiar – Leigh Bardugo – “And I cried for all the others until the day was nearly through/For I realized that God’s a young man too…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be 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: 3/30/25

Posted on March 30, 2025March 30, 2025 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: new music from 2025—both released this year and overheard before a Soccer Mommy show.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 3/30/25

“Triumph of a Heart” – Björk

I’ve finished the Sonic Symbolism podcast, and all it’s left me with is a rabid desire to do a deep dive of the rest of Björk’s albums. Medúlla is enticing as it’s the next one chronologically (even though I’ve given up on listening to her albums chronologically), but also because of the uniting concept behind it. Inspired by primal, prehistoric imagery of motherhood, family, and storytelling around campfires, Medúlla was constructed almost entirely from the human voice. Aside from some synths and piano, it’s almost all a-capella, but not in the way that you’d think. Each voice becomes percussion, scattered onomatopoeia, and rising tidal forces that lift something primal from your soul. And every possible voice ends up featuring on this album—Tanya Tagaq (throat singing), Rahzel, Dokaka (beatboxing), and Mike Patton (deep backing vocals that Pitchfork described as “demonic”) all feature in the varied vocal tapestry. I ended up being too busy to write about “Pleasure Is All Mine,” but that song, in its simultaneous feminist ode and playful toying with women’s capacity to be selfless, really does succeed in digging into something innate, almost instinctual within me.

In concept, “Triumph of a Heart” is almost as ridiculous as the music video. (Fun fact: Björk’s cat husband in this video spawned the “I should buy a boat” meme from way back when.) Forming the percussion of the song, alongside Dokaka’s melodic beatboxing, is what can only be described as restrained raspberry noises and sounds that are almost akin to somebody who’s only heard a cat once trying to make cat sounds. Yet it all works in such a familiar yet alien synchronicity that comes together in a way that only Björk can make it. The track is an ode to how music can make you feel and the joy of dancing, a pleasure shared since early humans were able to whack sticks together and harmonize around the fire; maybe it’s an obvious choice for this album, but using only bodily instrumentation is the perfect medium to explore the visceral nature of music and dance, the way that it sometimes vibrates your soul: “The nerves are sending shimmering signals/All through my fingers/The veins support/Blood that gushes impulsively towards/The triumph of a heart.” I always see such sentiments of people undervaluing the arts, even as they consume it by the truckload and think nothing of it; it’s not a viable, useful profession, more fodder for AI and mindless listening. It’s so easy for us to forget that art in all its forms, the same as the need for medicine and food, is innate to us, and has been since we were gathered in the shelter of the first fires.

As a bonus: here’s some behind the scenes footage of the recording of “Pleasure Is All Mine”:

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Binti – Nnedi Okorafor – this novella also falls into that merging of preserving cultures that have survived for thousands of years and alien technology, and it blends into a bizarre, delightful trilogy.

“Honey Water” – Japanese Breafkast

For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) sadly fell under the She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She curse on this blog, which roughly translates to “I wanted to write about at least 2-3 of the singles, but they all ended up landing on weeks where I didn’t have time to write.” Shame, really, because “Orlando in Love” and “Mega Circuit” were silk-drapingly romantic and creepily artful, respectively. Now that I’ve listened to the whole album, at its best, it embodies those qualities, oscillating from semi-autobiographical, tragic stories to some of the more fictional songwriting that Michelle Zauner drew on for Jubilee. She simultaneously leans into the notion of the “sad girl” while critiquing the fact that women are so often pigeonholed into this description (see the title), embroidering her own dramatic melancholy with orchestral arrangements and references to Greek mythology. Though it wasn’t always successful and the end dragged (see: “Men in Bars,” an faux-earnest, ballad-y duet with…Jeff Bridges? Huh?), For Melancholy Brunettes was, for the most part, an artistic leap that was a good 75%-80% successful in its feats of daring. It acknowledges its place amongst the traditionally emotional role of female musicians, but also acknowledges the light that peers in through the cracks (see: “Here Is Someone”—for maximum enjoyment, transition it with “Frosti” by Björk).

“Honey Water” was one of the standout tracks. I never thought of Japanese Breakfast as someone who could necessarily conjure up eeriness. Sure, she’s written plenty about all manner of unpleasant feelings, but I’ve never gotten dread as one of the most prominently featured ones. Zauner’s signature, breathy whisper takes on the feeling of a carnivorous plant laden with dew, ready to ensnare all manner of insects. Yet she’s not the one doing the ensnaring in this song—the narrative, toeing the line between fiction and reality, as her songs often do, speaks of an unfaithful lover repeatedly leaving her for someone else: “The lure of honey water draws you from my arms so needy/You follow in colonies to sip it from the bank/In rapturous sweet temptation, you wade in past the edge and sink in/Insatiable for a nectar, drinking ’til your heart expires.” The dread that Zauner dredges up is more a kind of stagnation, the sinking feeling of seeing the inevitable unfold around you, and yet somehow feeling powerless to move—or leave. The closing refrain, as the guitars rise in a crashing, insectoid drone, echoes Slaughterhouse-Five’s famous tidbit: “So it goes/I don’t mind”; the narrator convinces herself that all of her partner’s unfaithful transgressions are a fact of life. That tired powerlessness is what makes the dread so palpable, the music swallowing her as she mutters the last repetition of her exhausted mantra.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Familiar – Leigh Bardugo – “In rapturous sweet temptation, you wade in past the edge and sink in/Insatiable for a nectar, drinking ’til your heart expires…”

“God Knows” – Tunde Adebimpe

Remember how I was halfway chiding myself for hoping that Thee Black Boltz was just going to be TV on the Radio 2: Electric Boogaloo? Now that “God Knows” is out, I think that might honestly just be what the album is like regardless of expectations. “Magnetic” introduced us to a familiar, nostalgic sound full of energy, “Drop” was the point where Adebimpe seems to diverge, and now we’ve got “God Knows,” which sounds straight off of Nine Types of Light or even Dear Science. It’s giving me some perspective on how much Adebimpe made TV on the Radio—Dave Sitek constructed the scaffolding, but Adebimpe was the heart of it all, without a doubt. Balancing sharp acoustic strumming with synths that ripple and bubble, this track adds to “Drop” in the sense that both songs feel like they’re floating. It fits with the album cover for me—as Adebimpe clings to his geode island in the middle of an undefined void, he’s buoyed through it, like an ocean, propelled by nothing but the endlessly catchy hooks he’s been producing of late. “God Knows” stands out to me as the strongest of the three offerings so far—like “Magnetic,” it’s been sharpened to its tightest point to make indie rock tracks that wouldn’t be out of place 10 or even 20 years ago. Tunde is timeless.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Full Speed to a Crash Landing – Beth Revis – “God knows you’re the worst thing I’ve ever loved/And you’re bad news/But we still got to have our fun…”

“Whole Love” – Wilco

Man, YouTube comments are so funny sometimes. I hope the Latina woman who posted “I love this white song, don’t tell my homegirls I listen to this” is doing okay and still listening to Wilco happily. Wilco really is the great unifier.

Here’s an album that I’ve probably listened to in full, but only remember about half of. The Whole Love soundtracked many a car ride to school or piano lessons and whatnot back in 2011. I even remember popping my dad’s borrowed CD into my old Hello Kitty CD player while I was playing with my Build-A-Bears in my room. That should give you a picture of the kind of hipster child I was, but I digress. The resulting tour was also the first time I saw Wilco—and my very first concert, at Red Rocks at the age of eight. So even if I haven’t mapped it out fully, The Whole Love was integral to my childhood, whether it was watching the music video for “Born Alone” on my dad’s old laptop (I distinctly remember saying that it “made my head spin”) or sitting on my dad’s shoulders on that summer night. Really, it boils down to my dad. Raising me on all that Wilco made me turn out alright, I think.

Back to “Whole Love” in particular. The song already carries a metric ton of nostalgia for me, but it never gets old with any successive playing. As far as The Whole Love goes, it feels like one of the more accessible tracks—it’s classic Wilco, but with the artsy twist that the album presents. There’s a passage in Steven Hyden’s This Isn’t Happening: Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ and the Beginning of the 21st Century that talks about the significance of album openers setting the tone for the album as a whole. Hyden points to “Art of Almost” as an example—with all of the Thom Yorke-esque synth weirdness, it signals to the listener that this is gonna be the weird Wilco album. That experimental nature leeches into the most “accessible” sounding tracks—like this one. Even as Jeff Tweedy brings his gentle, acoustic sway into fruition, the background can only be described as fluttering—they jitter and judder like the freshly-dried wings of just-hatched butterflies, creating tiny fractals in the background. Yet even if you stripped that weirdness away, “Whole Love” would still be a classic—whether it’s craft or my nostalgia talking, there’s something so innately comforting about the layered harmonies, folded on top of one another like layers of fine fabric.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Heart of the World (The Isles of the Gods, #2) – Amie Kaufman – “And I know that I won’t be/The easiest to set free/And I know that I won’t be the last/Cold captain tied to the mast…”

“Get Away” – Yuck

This song played before Soccer Mommy came on when I saw her a few weeks back, and for a split second, I confused it for some Apples in Stereo song that I somehow hadn’t heard in my childhood. Turns out, there’s probably no Apples in Stereo song that I missed when I was a kid, hence why I didn’t recognize it. (Cut me some slack, it was loud in there…) Yuck doesn’t have the same electronically-oriented whimsy as the Apples in Stereo, but they seemed to branch off of the indie sound of the early 2010’s, with their synth-like guitars, ’90s distortion, and the nasally vocals of Daniel Blumberg. Those guitars were what made me nearly mistake them for the Apples in Stereo, but they’re clearly more students of, say, Sonic Youth or Dinosaur Jr. But they had that sun-soaked, 2010’s indie aesthetic down to a science; even without the yellow filter on their music video, “Get Away” just oozes the sensation of a dream of being on a road with no speed limits while the sun beats down through the windshield. Even as Blumberg laments that he can’t get away, wrestling with negative thoughts, the track speeds along with a carefree freedom, kicking up gravel as it forges its own path. Certainly fits right in with Soccer Mommy’s sound too—she’s got an eye for good indie, that’s for sure….

…and so does the Academy, apparently? You’re telling me that this guy just won an Oscar for his original score for The Brutalist? That’s a connection I didn’t expect to make in this post…good for you, Daniel Blumberg!

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester – Maya MacGregor – “Summer sun says get out more/I need you, I want you/But I can’t get this feeling off my mind/I want you, I need you…”

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

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

Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 2/23/25

Posted on February 23, 2025February 23, 2025 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

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

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 2/23/25

“Long Snake Moan” – PJ Harvey

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

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

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

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

“Ride” – The Vines

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

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

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

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

“Best Guess” – Lucy Dacus

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

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

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

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

“There, There” – Radiohead

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

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

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

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

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

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

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

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

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

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

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

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

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

Monthly Wrap-Ups

June 2024 Wrap-Up 🐻

Posted on June 30, 2024 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

Halfway through 2024…no! No we aren’t 😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀😀

Let’s begin, shall we?

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

After how busy and hectic my sophomore year of college was, June has been a time to recharge in more ways than one. I went on a quiet vacation at the beginning of the month (Ouray and Black Canyon of the Gunnison—the latter is a very underrated national park, I highly recommend it!), and I’ve taken the rest of the month to…well, rest. I’ve tried to be on social media less and focus on art, writing, and generally nourishing my creativity. In preparation for Camp NaNoWriMo (I only ever do the July camp these days because November and April are both abysmally busy times for me now that I’m in college), I’ve decided to round out my sci-fi trilogy and write the first draft of book three; at this point, I’ve beefed up the outline like a grizzly bear before hibernation, so at least I’ll have some sense of direction…wish me luck!

My reading month started out slower, and it’s had some dips, as always, but I ended up reading loads of fantastic queer books for pride month! Predictably, one of my vacation souvenirs wasn’t something related to where we went…no, I bought a copy of The Familiar at a local bookstore (support ’em!) knowing that it would take eons for my hold to arrive at the library. Worth it. I also figured it was as good a time as any to re-read my favorite series from when I was a kid—the WondLa trilogy. My verdict? It healed my soul and reinvigorated my creativity. Some kid’s books don’t age well, but WondLa never gets old.

Other than that, I’ve just been making art, playing guitar, going to pride (so much fun!), watching Hacks, Succession (nearly finished with season 1, and all it’s done is made me fear business majors even more than I already do), and…morbidly, Apple TV+’s new show that they decided to call WondLa. I’m three episodes in, and it’s like watching a train wreck. Expect a retrospective on the WondLa trilogy and possibly a review of…whatever that show is that definitely isn’t WondLa.

On a lighter note, photos from my vacation and pride:

(The bear on the title of the post is in honor of a bear we saw crossing the road in Black Canyon. Could also represent bears in general? Happy pride.)

READING AND BLOGGING:

I read 18 books this month! It’s been another relaxed reading month, and although I had a slump towards the end of the month, I read several incredible books for pride month!

1 – 1.75 stars: