Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.
This week: ROCK AND ROLL IS DEAD…
BUT THE DEAD DON’T DIE!!!
THEDEADDON’TDIETHEDEADDON’TDIETHEDEADDON’TDIETHEDEADDON’TDIE
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Enjoy this week’s songs!
SUNDAY SONGS: 10/5/25
“Lou Reed Was My Babysitter” – Jeff Tweedy
Man, I’m so glad that this dystopian hellscape hasn’t beaten the joy out of Jeff Tweedy. He saw everything crumbling around us and decided to make an expansive, emotional triple album—Twilight Override—as a kind of musical knight against the forces of darkness: “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.” Honestly, it’s what we all ought to do—you don’t have to make a whole triple album, but keep on making art, dammit! Admittedly, I’ve only been able to go through all nearly 2 hours of the album once through, and it hasn’t quite sunken in yet (“Mirror,” “Caught Up in the Past,” and “New Orleans” are some of my highlights), but “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter” became a favorite as soon as it was released as a single.
It feels, in a warped way, like one of Wilco’s whole albums was: an ode to joy. Sonically, it’s very different from…well, about 75% of that album, but the spirit is so similar and still so necessary. I mean, maybe it’s all just a vehicle for Jeff Tweedy’s commendable Lou Reed impression, but I swear, it just feels like a riotous celebration of joy, of dancing, of togetherness. A triple album gave Tweedy loads of room to pack in even more of his ever-potent lyrics, but something about “‘Cause rock and roll is dead/But the dead don’t die” just makes me so giddy. It’s an ode to jumping around at a concert or in the basement of someone’s house, to getting a little sweaty and dancing next to a bunch of sweaty people, but having a blast together, goofing off, and embracing the mess of it all. From the varied voices that yell out the chorus to Tweedy’s growled “WOOOOO!” at the end of every verse, it’s a song that’s sole purpose was to be played loud and played joyously.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Gearbreakers – Zoe Hana Mikuta – there’s definitely some of the messy, rough-around-the-edges joy in the friendship dynamic throughout this book.
“EVERYTHING” – The Black Skirts
I think I may have miraculously listened to “EVERYTHING” for the first time in the exact circumstances that it was meant to be listened to. My dear friend was driving us home after a concert. The day was fading away, and the only light came from the buildings along the highway and the headlights of the cars on the road. With this song as the soundtrack, it felt like the day was gently closing the curtain, preparing to fold itself into something new, just as this song came on shuffle.
I can never know if any of the translations of the lyrics online can ever really evoke the original intent and feeling of the song (apart from the chorus, “EVERYTHING” is sung entirely in Korean), but the power of real evocative music is that sometimes, you can feel the intent and the heart without understanding the lyrics. It’s such an effortlessly intimate and tender piece. There’s something sleepy-eyed about it, like a voice note to your lover before you go to bed while you look at the stars. Even the gentle reverb of the guitar feels yearning somehow. And though the first half of the music video does admittedly feel a bit like those dead wife montages in movies with the blurry filter, it really does fit the atmosphere of “EVERYTHING”—fading, rose-colored memories drifting through your heart.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
To Be Taught, If Fortunate – Becky Chambers – the dreamlike quality of this song could easily be applied to drifting through space…existentially, of course.
I just can’t get enough of shoegaze. Part of it is, for me, that I love a song that feels tactile. (I can’t make any concrete promises, but I’ll probably be talking more about that quality next week with another album that came out in September 26th alongside Twilight Override.) Sometimes the lyrics hit me, but I can’t get enough of bands that set out to make songs that aren’t just songs, but fabric swatches of color, texture, and atmosphere. Shoegaze was the epicenter of that quality, in my opinion—just take the rich, all-consuming soundscapes of bands like Spiritualized or Slowdive. Either way, I’m just glad there were so many students of the Cocteau Twins School of Atmospheric Music.
If anybody was studying especially hard there, it was Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson, the driving forces behind Lush. Though their lyrics are…hmm, about 30% more comprehensible than the average Cocteau Twins song, they’re cloaked in a vibrant, pink and purple glow of feedback and layers of reverb that feel like thin sheets of cocooning around you. Miki Berenyi’s vocals are borderline angelic, crystalline against the vivid, tapestried echo swirling around her. It feels like being caught in a bubble trail—almost like a Minecraft one, complete with that whooooosh (you know the one), but if we’re talking video game graphics, it’s always pixellated at the edges, but they’ve rendered in layers of sparkles along the surface of the water, glistening and bluish. It’s enchanting. Chances are, somebody’s eventually going to remaster that music video, but I say it needs to be kept as grainy as it was in the ’90s—Lush, in both music and in visuals, is nothing if it isn’t fuzzy and grainy.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The Stardust Grail – Yume Kitasei – I guess this cover does almost have the same color scheme as Gala, but there’s a lot of vibrant, cosmic imagery here that would be befitting of Lush.
You thought I was done talking about Japanese Breakfast? Well…technically, yeah, I am. For now. But this song was a holdover from the songs they played before the show (along with “Telegram Sam” and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” so…automatically based).
Strangely, I had some inkling of who Lykke Li was; she’s there with Waxahatchee in my mind. I always saw her lingering in the recommended portion of my iTunes library in middle school whenever I played St. Vincent or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs over and over, standing next to a legion of women I halfway knew. Her name was always there. Granted, the only other thing I know her music from is…uh, whatever this was, but my point is that I’d end up hearing one of her songs eventually. That eventually came, as I said, at the Japanese Breakfast show, and I’m glad that it snuck up on me like it did. I love how the intro just builds and burbles—it gives me the same antsy anticipation as the intro to Blur’s “Swamp Song,” though what comes after couldn’t be more different. (I guess they both have bodies of water. That could explain where they diverge.) Maybe I got nostalgia-baited by the very early-2010’s indie production, slick and cavernous, but I love that cavernous quality of “I Follow Rivers”—everything, from Li’s voice to the guitars, which sound piped in from the bottom of a cave lined with icicles. Tarik Saleh clearly clicked with the vibe of this song when directing the music video—it’s all very watery, but frosty and icy. The same goes for the breathless protagonists of the videos—”I Follow Rivers” is a sprint down the winding path of a river, leading who knows where.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Sing Me to Sleep – Gabi Burton – “Oh I beg you, can I follow?/Oh I ask you, why not always?/Be the ocean, where I unravel/Be my only, be the water where I’m wading…”
The Spoon drought since 2022 (or 2023, really…lest we forget how good their cover of “She’s Fine, She’s Mine” was) has certainly been felt, and it looks like we may feel it for a little longer…but not much longer. Britt Daniel has confirmed that they’re working on their first album since Lucifer on the Sofa, but it’s not finished yet. While recording the sessions, Daniel and company decided that two tracks—this one and “Guess I’m Fallin’ In Love”—needed to stand on their own from whatever else they’re currently cooking. And any new Spoon is bound to be good Spoon—and these songs certainly are!
Sometimes, I don’t know how much I miss a band until they release new music. We really did need “Chateau Blues”—we needed Britt Daniel, we needed those crunchy, bluesy guitars, and we needed that relentless indie rock spirit. This track has a sandpapery edge to it, but it’s a timeless piece that could’ve come straight off of Lucifer on the Sofa, squeezed right next to “The Hardest Cut.” But if this is indicative of where they’re going next, I’m intrigued—they’ve seemed to pare their sound down to a grainier texture, calling back to their blues and rock forefathers that they frequently reference. And man, I’m here for it. If anybody else did that spoken-word “Where you wanna go today? I’m down on the drive, c’mon, get in 😏” interlude, I’d be totally annoyed, but Britt Daniel has built up such a genuine, troubadour-like stage presence that I didn’t even bat an eye. That’s just pure Britt Daniel right there—and so is “Chateau Blues.”
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Light Years from Home – Mike Chen – “If it’s a moment in time/How come it feels so long?/And it’s a moment in time/You’re paid in full/How could it really be so wrong?”
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 