Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.
I’ve got at least one more post here before I inevitably have to crawl back into the finals burrow. Since I’ve been out of the office lately, here are my graphics from the past few weeks:
11/9/25:
- “Anti-Curse” – boygenius
- “100 Horses” – Geese
- “Berlin Got Blurry” – Parquet Courts
- “Jellypop Perky Jean” – Julian Cope
- “Just Be Friends” (Soccer Mommy Version) – SASAMI & Soccer Mommy
11/16/25:
- “Leash Called Love” – The Sugarcubes
- “The Wait” – Built to Spill
- “Milk Cow Blues” – The Kinks
- “Toe Cutter – Thumb Buster” – Thee Oh Sees
- “Run the Races” – Santigold
11/23/25:
- “Whippings and Apologies” – Sparks
- “Disparate Youth” – Santigold
- “Body Building” (feat. Eldbjørg Hemsing) (from Frankenstein) – Alexandre Desplat
- “Spectre” – Radiohead
- “teeth” – mary in the junkyard
This week: What half of Britpop’s Big Four frontmen are up to these days, peak goth drama, and I finally find out why Joe Talbot was hiding out in that Gorillaz exhibit like Where’s Waldo.
Enjoy this week’s songs!
SUNDAY SONGS: 11/30/25
Pulp recently put on an absolutely showstopping performance at NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert. I still have only a handful of Pulp songs that I really know, but even as a budding fan that initially knew only 1/4 songs in their setlist (that one being “This Is Hardcore,” yet another shoutout to my amazing dad for showing me that one!), their performance was an absolute joy. Even in the confines of said Tiny Desk, Jarvis Cocker has the most enigmatic, fluid stage presence that defies being simply Britpop and has transformed into a timeless charm. And now I have three more Pulp songs on my rotation!
“Something Changed” hooked me more than the rest, and it reminded me that I really just need to get over myself and listen to Different Class already. Themes of social and sexual frustration aside (see: “Live Bed Show”), Pulp seemed to have an uncanny ability to create such pure, resonant anthems without making them cloying or insincere. I never got around to talking about “Disco 2000” last year, but that song feels like the platonic ideal of a pure, passionate love song—it’s a small wonder that nobody’s used it in the end credits of a rom-com yet. (Maybe that’s for the best? It’d need a really good rom-com.) “Something Changed” has that same quality in softer shades, with Cocker crooning about the nature of chance against a backdrop of swelling, sunlit strings: “Do you believe there’s someone up above/And does he have a timetable directing acts of love?” For someone with a sense of humor as sardonic and often cynical as Cocker, it’s a display of sincerity that feels anything but inauthentic—you can tell that, to some degree, there’s a genuine feeling of being wonderstruck by the chances that led him to this point in time—and this whirlwind romance.
“Something Changed” starts at 8:05. While you’re here, though, the 7+ minute rendition of “This Is Hardcore” stopped me dead in my tracks. One of the best Tiny Desk Concerts this year, for sure.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Time and Time Again – Chatham Greenfield – “Oh, I could have stayed at home and gone to bed/I could have gone to see a film instead/You might have changed your mind and seen your friend/Life could have been very different but then/Something changed…”
I never find Melanie songs organically, I just leech them off of TV shows about once a year (see: “Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma” thanks to We Are Lady Parts). This one in particular came from the season 1 finale of Bad Sisters, and without spoiling anything, it rang out as a bitterly triumphant anthem for the culmination of a season’s worth of work to try and eliminate a man equivalent to Satan incarnate from the face of the earth. Season 1 has been out for a few years, but I’ll still refrain from spoilers.
But some needle drops get better and better the more that you think about them. Melanie fit along with the musical feel of Bad Sisters, primarily featuring needle drops from great women-fronted bands and musicians (Bikini Kill, Nancy Sinatra, Wet Leg, and of course, the theme song and score composed by the iconic PJ Harvey). Many of them feel more atmospheric other than a handful of very purposeful ones, but “Any Guy” relates so much to the character of Grace to me. A lot of Melanie’s earlier fame centered around how childish she looked—this was pre-“Brand New Key” and people derailing childhood innocence into Freudian nonsense, but there was a clear correlation between what people saw as an unassuming young woman and the talent that resided inside of her. That image remains after her death, but for me, Melanie’s her best when she lets loose—think of the righteous fury at the end of “Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma!” That final belt at the end! Reckoning! “Any Guy” has that same explosive moment at the end; beneath the veneer of placid strings, Melanie stews about getting involved with a two-timing guy and feeling disposable, until her waver breaks into an impassioned howl of “Is she as pretty as me, huh?” Nothing’s better than when Melanie snaps and lets the full force of her voice free, and what better song to soundtrack a similarly unassuming, underestimated woman finally breaking free. Even when she’s singing of breaking away, there’s a waver in her voice, and that’s more Grace than anything—and there’s no shame in having a waver in your voice when you’ve finally mustered the courage to speak your mind.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The Heartbreak Bakery – A.R. Capetta – breakups, miscommunication, and one very fateful batch of magic brownies…
“The God of Lying” (feat. IDLES) – Gorillaz
Guess who’s getting tickets to L.A. the minute that they announce when the House of Kong exhibit is coming?? Prepare for me to be INSUFFERABLE and IN CALIFORNIA
Back when they did the story on the London House of Kong exhibit over the summer, they showed the collage on the wall of all of Gorillaz’s collaborators over the years. There were tons of familiar faces: De La Soul, Yasiin Bey, Shaun Ryder, St. Vincent, et cetera…but I swore that I could see Joe Talbot peeking out from between the faces. And it got me thinking…had I missed something? Mind you, this was before The Mountain was announced, so I had no idea what was a head. But now that it’s here, I’m so excited for this pairing! As is the ritual with most modern Gorillaz rollouts, the singles are hit or miss. “The Happy Dictator” was loads of fun, but “The Manifesto” is somehow two different songs, and none of them are particularly good. And here we see the post-Humanz Gorillaz “where’s Damon?” problem—it’s all the collaborators and barely him.
Thankfully, “The God of Lying” fixed this issue swiftly, with Albarn trading off verses with Joe Talbot of IDLES. Gorillaz have been mining the state of dystopian discontent that we’re in for quite some time now, but if there’s anyone more fit for an antidote, it’s Talbot. As he coolly assesses the sorry state of the world (“Are you deafened by the headlines?/Or does your head not hear at all?/Are you pacified by passion/Are you armed to the teeth?”), Albarn’s distorted voice professes that we’ve all reached for some comfort beyond the bad news, but that it’s so overwhelming that we can’t even comprehend that hope is still possible; we’re actively “running to the exit” because we somehow fear the notion of hope existing even while trapped in an endless cycle of doomscrolling and horrific news. Albarn said this to BBC Radio 1: “I suppose I’ve kind of got in my head what happened a few days ago with Mamdani in New York. And one of the things he said that really kind of stuck out for me is that ‘Hope is alive’. And in this track, Joe and I are kind of we’ve been chased by hope. And I thought, Oh, that’s nice.” First off, since I was hunkered down doing homework when it happened…THAT’S MY MAYOR! (I’ve been to NYC a grand total of one time in my life…anyways.) Second, what a poetic assessment—we haven’t just abandoned hope, we’re being pushed away from it, pacifying the weight of carrying every bad thing in the world with fleeting pleasures and addiction. It’s a poignant statement for both Albarn and IDLES, enduring proof that love remains to be the fing.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
No Gods, No Monsters – Caldwell Turnbull – “Are you pacified by passion?/Are you armed to the teeth?/Are you bubbling at the surface of what’s cooking underneath?/Are you dying for an answer for what they call good grief?”
“A Night Like This” – The Cure
Another album that I need to listen to: The Head on the Door, apparently! As the result of being brought up by gothy parents who went to high school in the ’80s, I’ve practically listened to the whole thing. The same can be said for a fair amount of their albums. (From The Head on the Door in particular, I have a specific memory of my parents showing me the “Close to Me” video and thinking that the puppets were really funny.)
How perfect it was that I remembered “A Night Like This” right after Halloween. Frankly, every season is The Cure season if you can get with the drama 24/7, but you can’t deny that it’s the ideal fall or winter soundtrack. This track in particular represents the peak of what I love about The Cure—oh my god, the drama. I mean that without any irony, because there’s such an art to throwing yourself into it fully without looking insincere. You have to make a bit of a fool of yourself to sell it, but Robert Smith never looked the part to me—it was so intentional, and so clearly from a place of love. Lyrically, that’s what sells the glut of the song for me, but musically, what pulled it back from my memory was that guitar tone—so incredibly rich and full, and yet cavernous in a way that it couldn’t be considered goth without. It’s the closest I feel a guitar can sound to a cello without Jonny Greenwooding it with an actual cello—there’s a depth to the sound that feels like it could only come from an instrument with a hollow body. It’s all an undeniable spectacle of romantic (capital R Romantic and the usual sense) passion.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Red City – Marie Lu – “It goes dark, it goes darker still/Please stay/But I watch you like I’m made of stone/As you walk away…”
I just put Julie Doiron on the graphic since she’s the main artist on this song, but I wanted to credit the rest here. I just don’t think I could fit everybody else in the tiny text in that tiny little rectangle, and I’m not about to give anybody eyestrain.
I found out about this soothing song through Black Belt Eagle Scout, who played several shows with Julie Doiron earlier this month. (Happy to see that they’re well enough to play music again!!) Either way, I was immediately charmed by the nostalgic calmness of this song; it’s a six-minute, lazy stroll down memory lane, buoyed by a series of multilayered harmonies. As Doiron strings together a series of vignettes about crushes on boys and late-night driving, she gives them the feeling of blurry, sun-bleached photos with the edges curled up from wear. Towards the end, as all four of their voices fall artfully out of sync, repeating “Can you say it how I remember/Will you say it how I remember/Can you sing it how I remember/Will you sing it how I remember?”, it brings into sound the feeling of memories tangling together in your mind, timelines hazy and blurred, but just as pleasant as they were in the moment.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Amelia, If Only – Becky Albertalli – “Get in the van, we’re late for a show/Still got four more hours to go/Road maps, glovebox, no phone/I need to pull over, I wanna call home…”
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!
The Bookish Mutant 