Tag: The Seep

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 12/14/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

Since I had to hunker down for one more week for finals, here’s my graphic from that week:

12/7/25:

This week: Even more songs from Bad Sisters, circling back to Forever is a Feeling, and getting unexpectedly chucked back to November 2019.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 12/14/25

“Mother Whale Eyeless” – Brian Eno

Sorry, folks. It’s too early for me to draft my New Year’s Resolutions, but they probably won’t include “shut the fuck up about Brian Eno.” You’re in for a long few years.

Back in November, at the behest of my older brother, I finally got around to listening to Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). Pardon the hyperbole, but to call it just an album feels like a disservice, mostly because there’s just so much crammed in there. It’s a whole stuffed Thanksgiving turkey of esoteric references and inspirations; the main defining threads are loosely centered around the Chinese Communist Revolution and general themes of warfare, but even that somehow doesn’t scratch the surface. Plane crashes, a Belgian town whose population is outnumbered by the patients in its local mental asylum, and a play dating back to the Chinese Communist Revolution (from which the album took its name) are just some of the scattered subjects that Eno covers in its 48-minute runtime. He verges from a campy satire of the military on “Back in Judy’s Jungle” to punk-precursor “Third Uncle” to the deeply moving “Taking Tiger Mountain,” a song that closes the album with the same huddled, melancholic yet triumphant feelingI always get listening to The Beach Boys’ cover of “Old Man River.” (Blame it on Fantastic Mr. Fox.) And yet, with all of those disparate images clanking about, it’s so cohesive. The thread, I think, is both Eno coming into his own as a solo artist, as well as his riotously creative imagination—it’s an album with such a distinctive style that could never be authentically replicated, no matter how hard somebody might try. There can never be another Eno, and there can never be another Tiger Mountain. It’s just so singular in its uniqueness.

Something that bubbled up in me while listening to Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy was that although many of the lyrics are abjectly nonsensical, I found myself getting emotional out of nowhere. For “Taking Tiger Mountain,” I could pinpoint a more easily categorized reason—it’s got the feeling of relief, of victory at a steep cost, of the tearful end of a film. The other that got me misty on the first listen was “Mother Whale Eyeless.” Eschewed by the delightfully stream-of-consciousness lyrics, there’s something about a fundamental change—many have interpreted it as a relationship that can’t go on and the mounting fear of the inevitable implosion. Either way, something’s on the horizon, and it’s a shadow of dread—as in a “cloud containing the sea,” or the formidable shadow a whale might cast upon a school of passing fish. Yet what gets me about this song is that there’s some sort of near-euphoric feeling of ascent to it—you get the feeling like it’s piercing the very atmosphere like a rocket breaking the sound barrier; the only way it can go is higher, higher, higher still. There’s something anticipatory about it, yet there’s no explosive finale—you just break the sound barrier and are left with the fallout. The fallout is the euphoric journey that Eno takes you on, through winding turns buoyed by his Oblique Strategies (you’ll really get the meaning about his emphasis on repetition and/or lack thereof after listening to this song). Phil Manzanera’s guitar soars, aching of Low-era Bowie before it even existed, and Phil Collins’ pattering drums add jet fuel to the anticipatory nature of the track. (Also, I swear the electronic background noises in the very beginning sound a lot like the intro to St. Vincent’s “Big Time Nothing.” Just me?)

But the centerpiece for me is the refrain sung by Polly Eltes. This is where I got choked up out of nowhere. The entrance of Manzanera’s fuller guitar work allows for a breather and opens up the curtain for Eltes’ voice, in which she sings: “In my town, there is a raincoat under a tree/In the sky, there is a cloud containing the sea/In the sea, there is a whale without any eyes/In the whale, there is a man without his raincoat.” (I swear her voice reminds me a little of Régine Chassagne.**) There’s an uncanny feeling of poignant simplicity of it; it feels like a nursery rhyme, or a proudly recited line of an epic poem. To me, it almost feels like a declaration of purpose: an open defiance of interpretation, a thesis that even the most dreamlike and esoteric lyricism can be just as emotional as something that tackles a subject head-on. Either way, there is no denying the feeling that “Mother Whale Eyeless” gives me.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Mad Sisters of Esi – Tashan Mehta – I promise I’m not putting this in here solely because of the whale…but I’m not saying they’re not connected. Either way, that surreal, imaginative quality of Eno pairs well with Mehta’s writing.

“Bullseye” (feat. Hozier) – Lucy Dacus

When Forever is a Feeling first came out, I felt like her having a Hozier feature added to the feeling that Lucy Dacus had begun to sell out. I suppose the overlap between their fanbases (read: gay people) was essentially a circle, so it probably was inevitable anyway. No disrespect to Hozier though—very talented guy, and I love his voice, but his music isn’t always my cup of tea.

To my surprise, “Bullseye” has become one of my most played songs from the album. There’s something so tender about it that reminds me of Dacus’ older work. I think what sets Dacus’ songwriting is that every emotion comes through in the most unexpected vignettes—the opening lines of “Next of Kin” (“Reading in the phone booth/Sucking on a ginger root”) come to mind. She has such a keen, observational eye that decorates her songs with the most unique setpieces, like some kind of musical bowerbird building a nest. While the ones in “Bullseye” stand out as more obviously romantic (carving locks into initials on bridges, reading annotations in your lover’s books), it’s so clear how much it shapes her songwriting. She admits it herself: “Found some of your stuff at my new house/Packed it on accident when I was movin’ out/Probably wrong to think of them as your gifts to me/More like victims of my sentimentality.” She’s a kind of museum curator of fleeting, stolen moments, which make up the core of “Bullseye.” And although Hozier isn’t normally my cup of tea, his voice with Dacus’ makes up such rich, heartstring-tugging harmonies that give the song an added layer of tender warmth.

Though I wasn’t able to catch her on this tour, the highlight has been seeing her perform this song, not just because of how lovely it is. She’s been making it her mission to duet with as many people as possible—David Bazan, Samia, Stuart Murdoch, and Jay Som, among others!

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Lakelore – Anna-Marie McLemore – “You’re a bullseye, and I aimed right/I’m a straight shot, you’re a grand prize/It was young love, it was dumb luck/Holdin’ each other so tight, we got stuck…”

“People in the Front Row” – Melanie

For the next two songs, we enter what I’m calling the Bad Sisters section. If I had a nickel for every Melanie song I’ve ripped from a season finale of Bad Sisters, I’d have two nickels, etc., etc.

Like many of Melanie’s more iconic songs, “People in the Front Row” is an anthem for sticking to your guns, even in the face of critics. It’s much more literal than others, and although her voice falters in wobbly ways, given the belts she’s capable of, it’s full of the same impassioned fervor of hits like “Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma.” The odd laugh-singing aside, it’s such a poignant, determined ode to the people who support your art through thick and thin, no matter how much critics kick you down.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

You Should See Me in a Crown – Leah Johnson – “You know I looked around for faces I’d know/I fell in love with the people in the front row/Oh, how my predicament grew/Now I got friends, and I think that my friends are you…”

“Billie Holiday” – Warpaint

Warpaint have historically been hit-or-miss for me; I’ve loved their cover of David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes” since middle school, but most of their music has been rather lukewarm for me. I have a specific memory of trying to listen to their self-titled album on a whim several years ago and being, disappointedly, quite bored. But every once in a while, they’ll snag me out of nowhere (see also, from this EP: “Burgundy”).

This one came out of the blue in a scene in season 2 of Bad Sisters, ironically placed, given the context; it matches the eerie, melancholic tone of the scene, in which Becka finds out that she’s unexpectedly pregnant and, instead of telling her boyfriend, does what any sensible person does and…cheats on him with the guy that she’s insisted she’s over with. Naturally. (What the hell, Becka?? She’s a hot mess, if you couldn’t already tell.) There’s a deep irony behind using this song, which repeats various platitudes about staying loyal: “Nothing you can buy could make me tell a lie to my guy/Nothing you could do could make me untrue to my guy/I gave my guy my word of honor to be faithful and I’m gonna/You best be believing, I won’t be deceiving my guy.” [Ron Howard voice] Becka did, in fact, deceive her guy.

Maybe there’s a layer of irony to that beyond Bad Sisters, as although the melody is entirely original, around half of the lyrics, including the ones above, are interpolated from Mary Wells’ “My Guy.” When that much of the song is interpolated, it almost feels like cheating, even if the proper credit was given to Wells (as well as Smokey Robinson, who wrote the song). Yet it’s an entirely different atmosphere that they’re placed in, like a zoo animal let loose in a completely foreign biome; as opposed to Wells’ cheery, Motown organs, “Billie Holiday” is draped in reverb, misty strings, and acoustic guitars. It’s like wandering through a thick fog, where Wells’ song is as bright and clear as day. I suppose it’s a similar deal to Spiritualized’s use of “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” but that, to me, felt much more transformative, and used only one verse (as opposed to the three verses of Wells’ that Warpaint used). Easy way out it may be, but at least the end product is appropriately distinct, and compellingly dreamy.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Funeral Songs for Dying Girls – Cherie Dimaline – “As I walk this line, I am bound by the other side/And it’s for my heart that I’ll live/’Cause you’ll never die…”

“One Wing” – Wilco

Do you ever have those moments where a song hits you out of the park with some deeply vivid place in time that you didn’t see coming? Leave it to Wilco to throw another unexpectedly emotional curveball right into my face out of nowhere. Instantly, I had this feeling of being cold, of being in a gray parking lot. My mind placed it in November of 2019, by some uncanny instinct. I can’t place why, but I only just remembered that I had a borderline religious experience at the front row of a Wilco concert…in November of 2019. Maybe that parking lot was in the chill of the Mission Ballroom at night. My brain, inexplicably, just knew to place it at this time, even if “One Wing” isn’t in the setlist.

The brain truly fascinates me sometimes. There’s a part of me that wants to know everything about why it remembers what it does, and why it innately attaches feelings and memories to music out of nowhere. But somehow, I feel like that would ruin the magic of these fleeting, unexpected moments. I love the way my brain plays with memory and image the way it does, the way even the faintest whiff of an old tube of lipgloss or the notes of Nels Cline’s guitar is instantly transportive. I think it would ruin everything if I knew the precise logic of why my brain shuffles the cards and comes up with these vivid, dreamlike images. Sometimes, I think we ought to bask in that mystery. Tip our hats to the strange phenomena, etc. What a lovely, strange organ we have.

Oh, wait, I’m talking about a song, right? Oops. And what a song it is—I don’t know how this one completely passed me by, but Wilco always has the most moving surprises up its sleeve. From what I’ve heard of Wilco: The Album (featuring “Wilco (The Song),” there’s a lot of conflicting themes—said band theme song, more songs about murder, and determined love songs; but for an album like that, it makes sense for the songs to run the gamut of the range of the band. Next to “I’ll Fight,” “One Wing” makes clear sense—I’m not sure if it’s directly about Tweedy’s relationships, but there’s a clear undercurrent of wanting to rekindle faltering love and repairing something broken. (I’ve also seen interpretations that the “wings” allude to the divisions in American politics—literally the left and right wings—and while the broken relationship makes more sense to me personally, it makes me see things in a new light. A precursor to “Cruel Country” and “Ten Dead,” maybe?) That late-fall chill feels deliberate in the face of the haunted longing in “One Wing”—as the chorus picks up steam, it feels like icy wind buffeting against your cheeks, plucking tears from your eyes as you cling to someone for comfort. Nels Cline’s guitar, with a soaring tone reminiscent of A Ghost is Born, is as plaintive as Jeff Tweedy’s lyricism, all channeled into a plea for forgiveness against the friction of the world: “One wing will never ever fly, dear/Neither yours nor mine/I fear we can only wave goodbye.” It digs at such a tender, weak part in my soul…ouch, Jeffie.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Seep – Chana Porter – “We once belonged to a bird/Who cast his shadow on this world/You were a blessing and I was a curse/I did my best not to make things worse for you…”

*”oh, haha, a goofy kid’s song!” without a shred of irony, this is an absolute banger. Somehow, it ended up being my most-listened to song for November, according to Apple Music. Never underestimate the power of They Might Be Giants writing about numbers.

**In other music news I haven’t gotten around to talking about…I try not to be in the active practice of hoping for people to get divorces, but I am so, so glad Régine Chassagne got out of there.

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

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 9/28/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: You know what’s better than Monday? That’s right, Sun—[gets dragged offstage by a comically large cane]

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 9/28/25

“The Happy Dictator” (feat. Sparks) – Gorillaz

This song came out at the tail end of a terrible day for me…even though I’d experienced some pretty awful events in the past 24 hours, at least there was Gorillaz at the end of it. And a new album with Sparks, IDLES, and Yasiin Bey on it??? EVERYBODY SAY THANK YOU, GORILLAZ! March can’t come soon enough…

From the looks of it, Sparks are having a better 2025 than most of us, what with releasing MAD! and an accompanying EP—collaborating with Gorillaz just seems to be the cherry on top for them. It’s surprising that it’s taken so long for them to collaborate. Either way, they’ve come together to sprinkle some healthy satire and upbeat tunes on this dystopian hellscape, and I am all the better for it. As always, Albarn has an eye trained on…well, the trajectory of most of the world right now, but he weaves a tale of opulent tyranny, of dictators who shroud their dirty deeds in illusions of placidity, peace, and universal happiness; it was specifically inspired by a visit to Turkmenistan with his daughter, where the former dictator, Saparmurat Niyazov, “wanted everyone in Turkmenistan to only think happy thoughts and sleep unaffected by the doom of the world, and just keep everything upbeat, so he kind of banned all bad news.” Even though his rule ended decades ago, echoes of it can be heard the world over, and Gorillaz is once again here to critique them: “In a world of fiction, I am a velvet glove/I am your soul, your resurrection, I am the love.” It’s…well, frankly, if I emptied out all the parallels, this post would be impossibly long and I would be even more dismal about the news than I already am. At least, in these turbulent times, we can count on Gorillaz to weave some excellent art out of the collective suffering. Plus, if Russell Mael is the dictator in this situation, then y’know what? All hail our new overlord.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Sunrise on the Reaping – Suzanne Collins – …need I really say more?

“Glider” – Japanese Breakfast

I promise I’ll stop blabbering about Japanese Breakfast soon, but the concert’s had me on such a kick of their music since the beginning of the month. I wasn’t familiar with any of Michelle Zauner’s soundtrack work before the concert, and I wasn’t familiar with the video game Sable at all. (I’m fairly video game illiterate, but it looks super cool, honestly—from what I can tell, you’re basically exploring the ruins of an ancient civilization on a desert planet, and the art was inspired by Moebius. You had me at Moebius!) This game was Zauner’s first foray into soundtracks.

At the Japanese Breakfast show, Zauner whipped this one out of nowhere solely because she’d heard somebody humming it before the show, which should tell you everything about how cool she is as a person. The instrumentation is fairly different than most of her work—it’s much more synth-based, but it works well with something like “Posing in Bondage.” It has a chiming, starry quality to it, just the kind of music I’d imagine hearing while wandering the desert on a sci-fi glider. Once her lyrics fade out of the recognizable and into the more abstract, pulled apart like putty by autotune and editing, it takes on an almost Cocteau Twins quality to it, but if they had been transposed into glaring sunlight and not the wintry sound palettes I usually associate with them. “Glider” is weightless, always looking skyward, yearning and hoping.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Light at the Bottom of the World – London Shah – I feel like “Glider” fits in a multitude of sci-fi settings, but somehow, it feels particularly at home in London Shah’s vision of a flooded England and submersible races.

“Better Than Monday” – Ginger Root

Opening bands are always a gamble, but somehow, I’ve had unusually good luck with them this year—Hana Vu, Tyler Ballgame, and Black Country, New Road are some of the standouts. I went to Japanese Breakfast with a dear friend of mine, and neither of us really knew Ginger Root, and the only person we knew who knew him was a mutual friend. We looked on his Spotify bio, where he described his music as “aggressive elevator soul.” So, in a word, our expectations were…lowered? But we were morbidly curious.

Honestly? I wouldn’t go back and listen to everything of Ginger Root’s, but at the end of the day, I can’t deny how creative of a guy Cameron Lew is. Not only does he have this very polished indie pop act going, he’s also got an entire short film, which he played excepts of during his show. He’s a talented musician, and his band is too, and god, he’s got his hyperspecific vibe down to a science, so I can’t fault him for that. It ventured from more soul-oriented songs to instrumentals that sounded like they should’ve been in the background of MarioKart, but dammit, the guy’s got a vibe going. Plus, anyone who puts absolutely everything into getting an action shot of a melodica solo has my approval…as much as I hate to admit it. “Better Than Monday” was my immediate standout—the bassline is just so propulsive and bouncy, and it’s just such a bright, sleek song. It’s one of those songs where you know from the get-go how much fun Lew and company had making it—the enthusiasm radiates from every note, and that was half of the fun of their opening set. Catchy songs are great on their own, but they’re even catchier when you know that every part of the process was a blast.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Finna – Nino Cipri – it feels odd to say that Ginger Root works perfectly for a book set in an inter-dimensional, legally-distinct IKEA, but life is full of surprises.

“Sunken Treasure” – Wilco

A song with the line “music is my savior” and a refrain repeating adages about rock n’ roll is bound to be a crowd favorite—hook, line, and sinker. Yet none of this song strikes me as cliched. Just because it rouses a crowd doesn’t mean there’s no truth to it. And who could be better than that than Jeff Tweedy?

That’s not even the real sunken treasure of “Sunken Treasure.” I’d only remembered this song when I saw Wilco play it live back in August, but it’s so jam-packed with showstopping lyrics that it made me astounded that I hadn’t listened to it more attentively when I’d heard it in my dad’s car…because I definitely had. It was an inevitability that I’d come back to this gem. Just…okay, it’s about to be a “just copying and pasting the lyrics” moment, because my god:

“There’s rows and rows of houses/With windows painted blue/With the light from a TV/Running parallel to you/But there is no sunken treasure/Rumored to be/Wrapped inside my ribs/In a sea, black with ink…”

The fact that I’m now picturing the Muppet talking houses notwithstanding, I am once again asking Jeff Tweedy to save some poetic talent for the rest of us. Come on. It’s one of those songs with such a near-universal theme—melancholy and relationships sputtering out—and painted it in a way no other artist has. To some extent, we all go through a handful of the same experiences in our lives, and yet nobody can retell it in the exact same way as the person next to them, despite sharing 99% of their DNA with them. “Sunken Treasure” makes me think of that, because I doubt anybody else would pair that feeling with “If I had a mountain/I’d try and roll it over.” Roiling in the background is a veritable red-hot pot of soup boiling over—it feels like a quieter precursor to “Via Chicago” with distorted, crumbling-brick guitars collapsing in the background, strings pulled to the limits. It’s the instrumental epitome of insisting that you’re fine and unbothered, but deep down…there’s no sunken treasure rumored to be wrapped inside your ribs, etc.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Seep – Chana Porter – “But there is no sunken treasure/Rumored to be/Wrapped inside my ribs/In a sea, black with ink/I am so/Out of tune/With you…”

“midori” – mary in the junkyard

With the steady breadcrumb trail of singles that mary in the junkyard have been putting out since the end of last year, I can only hope that this mean that there’s an album on the way…or an EP, at the very least. Paired with “drains,” which came out this summer, they’re surely building up to something…something! But in the meantime, I’m just pleased to be getting new music from this burgeoning talent every few months. They’re like little spooky, rock treats.

That being said, “midori” feels slightly weaker than some of their other singles. It’s not bad by any stretch—the fact that this is weak for mary in the junkyard is a testament to how consistently good they are—but it feels like it could’ve been one of the songs from this old house – EP. It’s a double-edged sword: it could’ve been a great addition to last year’s EP, but I fear that at their worst, this song doesn’t stray as far from their older ones. On the other sides of their discography, “drains” took their sound to an extreme and “this is my california” took it in a softer, more introspective direction. Granted, they have an EP and a handful of singles to their name, so I hesitate to really call it a formula—only nine songs doesn’t really give anybody the full idea of their sound or what they have left in store.

And even if they’ve got a formula (which, again, very hesitant to say), it’s a damn good one. I say that as if I’m not eating up pretty much everything they do…mary in the junkyard are proving themselves to be masters of their atmospheric craft. Their electric guitars sound like they’ve been draped in a decaying bridal veil and left to get haunted for a century or so—everything echoes and brims with an untold history. “midori” was written entirely about plants coming out of concrete, and Clari Freeman-Taylor manages to transform the subject into the angstiest thing possible: “Could you help it?/With no god to bow down to/And no soil to grow down in/Could you help it?” Feeble sprouts become desperate, mewling spirits in her hands, and the echoing guitars and strings turn urban nature into a sweeping and creeping epic, shrouded in ivy with leaves wilting at the tips. It gives the air of something waiting to be free—you can just barely hear some squealing sounds in the background, the sound of something desperate to claw free—exactly the kind of fare mary in the junkyard expertly deals in.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Maid and the Crocodile – Jordan Ifueko – “Though I am concrete-bound/I am fragrant/I get old and get out/I am fake and dead…”

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

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 7/27/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: Aquarium gravel music, driving-in-the-summer music, and music that I would’ve made a badly-animated Warriors AMV for in elementary school, if I had the capabilities.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 7/27/25

“Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales” – Car Seat Headrest

Yeah, yeah. I will not shut up about the Car Seat Headrest show two weeks ago. This is a threat. Consider this me gripping the sides of your head and forcing you to look at this screen and listen to a painfully awkward gay man’s earth-shattering voice cracks. You WILL listen.

After talking about how he doesn’t play much of his old music anymore, namely that of Teens of Denial, Will Toledo said that this song was one of the more optimistic songs he’d written during that period, where he described himself as an “angry young man.” This is going to sound incredibly corny, but stay with me. I knew all the words to “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales” for years, but it wasn’t until then that it really hit me. That’s when I knew them. Granted, I was 13 and focused more on the enigmatic wails of Will Toledo and the raw wave of emotion that swept me up in the undertow, but I never quite considered that, in the midst of an album steeped in substance abuse, self-hatred, and depression, that this is a much more optimistic outlook on it all. (Speaking of said substance abuse, I really think that listening to Teens of Denial so much when I was younger was unironically very good drug prevention for me. Sure, a good 50-75% of their songs up to 2016 are about drinking and drugs, but they’re all about just how deeply miserable Toledo was while drinking and doing drugs. They need to implement this album in schools instead of D.A.R.E.) I wouldn’t be surprised if “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales” was the last song of the album written; it takes a more retrospective look at the cycle of self-hatred and bad decisions that color Teens of Denial as a whole, and it offers a knowing look, a hug, and a rallying cry: “It doesn’t have to be like this.” From the outside looking in, Toledo looks at the wreckage of everything he’s done up to this point, and professes this to his own anxieties:

“Here’s that voice in your head/Giving you shit again/But you know he loves you/And he doesn’t mean to cause you pain/Please listen to him/It’s not too late/Turn off the engine/Get out of the car/And start to walk.”

GOD. OW. That’s another way homer. I suppose it’s taken years for it to hit me like it was likely intended to, but that’s probably for the best. I think of recent times, when I was so wrapped up in my own anxiety that I didn’t even realize that I could make the choice to work with it, to create a life for myself that would result in me being a happier, healthier person. I’m still on that road. Every day, it’s a little more effort. But it’s all worth it, brick by brick. As Toledo says, “But if we learn how to live like this/Maybe we can learn how to start again/Like a child who’s never done wrong/Who hasn’t taken that first step.” The power is always in your hands, whether you realize it or not. You can’t make every negative thing in your life disappear into thin air, but you can make those choices, take control of the wheel and start to steer your life in a better direction. It takes a monumental, gradual effort, but IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS. It never does. Looking back to a year ago, I can’t be more proud of myself for taking that leap, of leaning into my support system to try little by little to end the cycle of anxiety that I was falling into. This song couldn’t have come back to me at a better time. You can always learn to start again.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Seep – Chana Porter – learning to break free of a state of societal complacency in disguise as betterment, and learning to live with grief, love, and every other complicated emotion.

“Stay” – Shakespears Sister

There’s a brief window in every decade where the signature sounds haven’t yet been cemented. It’s a limbo that allows for the final bastions of the last decade’s sound to grab ahold. This song comes to mind, because this is quite possibly the most ’80s song of the ’90s.

My mom knew exactly what she was doing when she played this for me. I feel like I was around 8 or 9 when she first played it for me. I wished I remembered more of the specifics, because I definitely had some kind of elaborate Warrior Cats AMV planned in my head set to this, but I remember just being so enraptured. It was one of those songs that instantly marked its place in my memory: I was in the backseat of the car, at a gas station, and the sky was overcast, and I’d just had a revelation. My mom and I are definitely interlinked at critical points in my music history, and the more I think about it, “Stay” was absolutely one of them. Like…how did I not know that the album was called Hormonally Yours? I mean, what else is there to say other than fuck yea, that’s an album title??

“Stay” is pure drama, and as over-the-top and gloriously camp as it is, in the right amount, that’s my absolute catnip. Funny that I should mention catnip, because despite the ubiquitous lyrics, it was meant to be part of a concept album, all based around [checks notes] this ’50s sci-fi movie called Cat-Women of the Moon. (Hence this song.) “Stay” was intended to be about the love story between one of said Cat-Women and one of the human male crew members of the ship to the moon, with Marcella Detroit being the Cat-Woman in love and Siobhan Fahey taking the part of, one of the other Cat-Women who shuns their romance. Despite Shakespear’s Sister not being able to execute the concept album as they wanted to, “Stay” retains the high drama and yearning present in the original idea. Over-the-top as it is, I can’t help but be enraptured by it, the same way that I was when I was a little kid. The dueling voices of Detroit and Fahey craft a story of operatic proportions, cranking the yearning up to 11.

Even though the Cat-Women of the Moon never saw the light of day, what did survive is glorious—namely the music video for “Stay.” Instead, we’ve got a vague sci-fi setting, where Detroit is doting over a comatose man, and Fahey is Death tempting the man to come to the other side, complete with a star crown and some absolute Harley Quinn crazy eyes. It’s so camp. God, I love it.

Jenny Joyce could never.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Death’s Country – R.M. Romero – I’m aligning more with the music video interpretation here, but what’s more high drama than going into the underworld to save your girlfriend from the brink of death?

“Re-Hash” – Gorillaz

Nothing like a great pop song about how much pop music sucks.

Gorillaz, at least in the early days, was a study in artificiality. The project famously came about because Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett had been watching a lot of reality TV and hearing the much more manufactured aspect of pop music at the time (“It’s the sweet sensation over the dub/A one-off situation that don’t wanna stop”), and wondered if they could take it to the extreme: an entirely artificial band. In a way, “Re-Hash” was them slyly taking a shot at what Albarn viewed to be the state of pop music at the time, before blowing it out of the water and making the most artful indie-pop music possible. That first album is almost a no-skip album, and there’s no shortage of tracks that I constantly revisit. I hadn’t listened to “Re-Hash” in quite some time, and I’d forgotten just how incredible of an opener it is. Admittedly, my association with their self-titled album will always be of summer, since I’m pretty sure I first listened to it in July or August back in high school, but everything about “Re-Hash” is soaked in sunshine, with a combination of acoustic guitars mixed with drum machines that begs for a rolled down window. That Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-aaaaah repetition towards the last third of the song is just infectious—without a doubt, a very recent holdover the more playful side of Blur’s discography. What a propulsive start to such an iconic album.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Hammajang Luck – Makana Yamamoto – I’m going more off of vibes and atmosphere than lyrics, but this would fit right in with the more lighthearted sides of Yamamoto’s sci-fi world.

“Miami” – Cate Le Bon

Oh my god, CATE LE BON!! Reward is an excellent album as a whole—I’d say that it’s just about equal to Pompeii as far as consistency, creativity, and the uniqueness of the soundscape. Although she’d begun to transition into the more synth-dominated part of her sound here, Reward has a more naturalistic feel to it. Even if the album cover didn’t have her bent over, walking over the contours of a time-worn cliff against an overcast sky, it has this inherent aura to it that feels like having the wind toss your hair as you walk along a pebbly beach as a storm brewing in the distance. The comparison that jumped out immediately to me was Damon Albarn’s The Nearer the Fountain, the More Pure the Stream Flows, an album with similarly rocky shore imagery on the album cover and throughout the lyrics. I wouldn’t expect such a feeling to brew in me from an album dominated by artsy brass and woodwinds and synth in equal measure (lots of great clarinet and saxophone action here, similar to Albarn).

In my exploration into her music, I’ve found a constant in Cate Le Bon’s more recent work: she’s damn good at making an opening track (see also: “Dirt on the Bed”). “Miami” sounds like being in a goldfish bowl. The bright, percussive synths in the background bubble like an aquarium filter, while others sound like water sliding against glass. Some of the more recognizable percussion hushes like aquarium gravel crunching in the palm of your hand. It’s all so strangely aquatic, even with the steady blast of saxophones in the background. It honestly feels far more appealing than the actual Miami, but then again, my only experience of Miami was a grotty hotel, so maybe that’s my overall Florida bias. But I’d be hard-pressed to think of a song on Reward that’s better suited to open up Le Bon’s peacefully avant-garde soundscape than this one. It lulls you into a state of calm while enticing you forward with breadcrumbs of her signature, off-kilter charm. The lilt of her voice is as much an element of the ecosystem as the brass or the synths; if anything, it’s the goldfish in this metaphor, her voice like the smooth, effortless flap of fins underwater.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Letter to the Luminous Deep – Sylvie Cathrall – a gentle and tender dispatch from a submerged world.

“You’re Damaged” – Waxahatchee

For all intents and purposes, I really should be into Waxahatchee. Stylistically, she’s often grouped in the company of Snail Mail, Adrianne Lenker, and Soccer Mommy, which should be a massive red cape to my sad indie rock bull. (In fact, my reigning association with her is this one tweet that reads “I would personally be afraid of snail mail because she’s friends with waxahatchee and waxahatchee looks like she open carries”) But the main thing that keeps me from enjoying her most of the time is her voice. It’s fully just personal preference, and I’m sure she’s very talented, but Waxahatchee feels like proof that singing in cursive isn’t exclusive to pop music. Please!! Sing without over-enunciating everything!! My god!!

Thankfully, there are exceptions to the rule. “You’re Damaged” fits snugly into the indie rock that I usually love, with Katie Crutchfield’s sparse, bare vocals. Here, her voice soars, free of expectations, dipping deftly from hard to soft as she runs circles around memories of a broken relationship: “And no I can not see into the future/No I cannot breathe underwater/Bit your last word, I call out to you/This place is vile, and I’m vile too.” It mirrors the album cover of Cerulean Salt, where Crutchfield is blurry and submerged underwater, her face obscured by her own hair and the ripples of the water; rambling through the misty glass shards of memory, she struggles to break away from an unhealthy relationship when she’s just as unhealthy as the other part, wanting them when everything around her screams for her to do the opposite. It’s the kind of song that only a raw voice and an acoustic guitar can capture, and it does so hauntingly.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Desert Echoes – Abdi Nazemian – “And no I can not see into the future/No I cannot breathe underwater/Bit your last word, I Call out to you/This place is vile, and I’m vile too…”

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

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

Posted in Monthly Wrap-Ups

May/June 2025 Wrap-Up 🧶

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Monday, bibliophiles!

Insert panicking about how 2025 is already halfway gone, yada yada yada. It’s always jarring to get to that point after you’ve spent the first half of it relatively unaware, but honestly? Given the truly magnificent shitshow 2025 has been…good riddance.

Let’s begin, shall we?

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

My school got out jarringly early, which was nice, but part of me is still reckoning with the fact that “summer” has now expanded to fit all but the first week of May in it. I shouldn’t complain. It’s given me a lot of extra time to read and do all of the things that I lamented not being able to do while I was in school. I picked back up with guitar lessons, started improving my knitting, listened to several amazing albums (while knitting), and honed down my drawing. It’s all I can do to keep the anxiety/boredom-depression that starts threatening to consume everything once I get too into a routine, but I’ve got a part-time job, so I’m throwing as much as I can at my brain to keep it occupied.

And Jesus, it’s hard to keep it occupied. Nothing’s changed since my last wrap-up, and my constant state of teetering over the edge of snapping thanks to the news is ever-present, especially this month (FUCK TRUMP AND GET ICE OFF OUR STREETS). There’s nothing like being on vacation and appreciating the splendor that Colorado’s public lands provide us with and then seeing that a bunch of senators wanted to sell off millions of acres of that “undeveloped land”. At least they’re not quite as on that anymore, though I urge everyone to keep the pressure on them, because there are far too many issues that they’re either exacerbating or ignoring. But especially during Pride Month, I have to remind myself that taking care of myself and giving back to my community is an act of resistance, especially as a queer, neurodivergent person, because a) the government doesn’t want us to exist (because why else would THEY SHUT DOWN THE LGBTQ+ SUICIDE HOTLINE? Inexcusable, comically mustache-twirling, depraved evil right there), and b) they want us to be over-individualistic so that we ignore what connects all of us.

But it hasn’t been all freaking out, I promise. I went on a lovely road trip to Crested Butte with my family, and I spent a week up in the mountains looking at so many wonderful wildflowers. Getting back to both my family and my hobbies has made me more centered—the foundation is still wobbly (because of…everything), but I can always count on them to keep me grounded and keep me in the present. I found solace in my community during Pride Month, though I didn’t end up going to any of the local parades because of either plans or the heat. (Denver, I love you, but I’m not standing out in 90+ degree heat. I’m here and I’m queer, but I’m also really pale and don’t want to get excessively sweaty or sunburned.) My existence is an act of resistance, and as much as I can, I will use it for good.

If anything, it’s at least good to have a summer where I actually have movies to look forward to (definitely Superman, and I’m on the fence about Fantastic Four, but I’ll see it, if only for Cousin Thing). Y’all…The Phoenician Scheme. It’s so beautiful, dude. Wes Anderson is physically incapable of making a bad movie. Go see it. GO SEE IT.

Also, I managed to knit my first functional thing in mid-June…here’s this bag I finished up before my vacation!

My magnum opus. Obviously. I’m now keeping a paused knitting project in it, so I hope it’s not one of those “gingerbread man living in a gingerbread house completely oblivious to the fact that he lives in a house of his own flesh” situation. I try not to think about it.

MAY READING WRAP-UP:

I read 13 books this month! In an absolute whiplash of ratings, I had two DNFs and two 5-star reads this month, but between them, there were some great reads. Surprisingly, the nonfiction books (both of which had red covers, coincidentally) were the stars this month!

1 – 1.75 stars:

Ninefox Gambit

2 – 2.75 stars:

The Death I Gave Him

3 – 3.75 stars:

The Resisters

4 – 4.75 stars:

The Ashfire King

5 stars:

Crying in H Mart

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times – 5 stars

Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times

REVIEWS:

SUNDAY SONGS:

BONUS:

JUNE READING WRAP-UP:

I read 16 books this month! Even with my part-time job, summer has given me more time to read, which is always welcome. Although there were some misses in the mix, I had a great bunch of (mostly) queer reads for pride month, both from familiar and new authors!

1 – 1.75 stars:

And They Lived…

2 – 2.75 stars:

3 – 3.75 stars:

The Library of Broken Worlds

4 – 4.75 stars:

Monk and Robot

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: Life Hacks for a Little Alien – 4.5 stars

Life Hacks for a Little Alien

REVIEWS:

SUNDAY SONGS:

BONUS:

Today’s song:

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

Posted in Books

🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈The Bookish Mutant’s Books for Pride Month (2025 Edition)🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Monday, bibliophiles!

Here in the U.S., June is Pride Month! I usually start off these posts with something about how the world is slowly getting kinder to queer people, but that, as always, the shadows of homophobia and transphobia loom large. Well…Christ, it sure is looming larger than ever. Misinformed voters have decided that they’re perfectly content to return us to an administration that has already required passports to revert to the carrier’s assigned gender at birth and has been emboldened to toy with the idea of repealing the right to same-sex marriage. Of course, here I am sitting on my comfy couch in my comfy blue state of Colorado that thankfully has a) a gay governor (shoutout to Jared Polis), and b) enshrined the right to same-sex marriage in the constitution, but that doesn’t mean that my heart doesn’t constantly ache. All of us in the queer community are deeply interconnected. What hurts one of us hurts all of us.

Book banning across the country has disproportionately targeted queer books, deeming the presence of such subjects in children’s, middle grade, and YA literature as pornography and grooming. And god forbid that a drag queen commits the incredibly sexual and predatory act of…[checks notes] reading picture books to kids at libraries. Republicans have their priorities twisted. That’s old, old news by now. Books and libraries were never meant to be war zones, but fascists have made it their mission, then and now, to declare the right to information and new ideas as the most dangerous threat to their power. This goes for books both queer and non-queer. But the power of queer books can’t be overstated. Even I, who grew up in an incredibly supportive, accepting environment (biggest thank you imaginable to my wonderful family for being that way), was enlightened and comforted when, in the short period when I was closeted, I found bisexual characters in books that reflected my story and my feelings. Queer literature is revelatory, and it saves lives. For queer people, it gives them the comfort that they aren’t alone. For others, it gives them a glimpse into perspectives that they might not have otherwise considered, and compels them to empathize with people who are different than them.

So this pride month, and all year round (as always), when you think of what you can do to support the LGBTQ+ community, consider picking up a book. Support queer authors. Buy from queer-owned bookstores, because they tend to be pretty cool places. Support your local library (because they need it now more than ever)—checking out queer books shows them that they’re in demand, and that encourages librarians to keep on shelving them. For us book bloggers and other social media-oriented folks: keep on reviewing and shouting out books. And for all of us: no president, no government, and no legislation can take away your queerness. No one has that power but you. Your queerness is revolutionary and beautiful. Keep on being queer.

So here is my annual list of great LGBTQ+ reads from all sorts of genres, backgrounds, and identities. If I’ve mistakenly identified something about a book’s representation, please let me know! I’ve mixed YA and Adult books here, and I’ve also added a nonfiction section for the first time, as I’ve done with my other recommendation lists.

A refresher on my key:

MC: Main character

LI: Love interest

SC: Side character(s)

For my posts from previous years, click below:

Let’s begin, shall we?

🌈THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S BOOKS FOR PRIDE MONTH (2025 EDITION)🌈

FANTASY:

Includes paranormal, magical realism, horror, and genre fusion(s)

SCIENCE FICTION:

Includes dystopia, speculative fiction, & genre fusion(s)

REALISTIC FICTION

NONFICTION:

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, what did you think of them? What are some of your favorite queer books that you’ve read recently? Let me know in the comments!

Today’s song:

lindsey…please tell me this is a sign that you’re cooking something…

That’s it for this year’s pride recommendations! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!