Happy Thursday, bibliophiles! Happy Leap Day too, I suppose.
Already the end of February, huh? Good riddance honestly. Not that I had a bad month, but I’m just ready for all this gross, slushy weather to be over with.
Let’s begin, shall we?
GENERAL THOUGHTS:
February’s definitely still been busy, but now that I’m more used to my schedule and able to keep myself on track, it’s all good. Things are getting into gear with my classes, I’ve been able to make time to write and make art and hang out with friends, and the weather is starting to warm up. Key word is starting. We’ve had snow almost every Friday or weekend without fail for…probably a month or two? Colorado. The meteorological indecision never ends. But luckily, other than that first week, I’ve been able to blog somewhat steadily.
Reading has been similarly good—sadly, most of the books I’ve read for school so far haven’t been my favorites (apologies in advance to all the Jane Austen fans here), but other than that, there have been very few misses! I also shifted my focus to books by Black authors this month for Black History Month, and I’ve read both familiar and new-to-me authors and had tons of fun. I also ended up having two five-star reads in a month, so I’d call it good! I’m glad that I’ve been able to keep up my reading schedule, because there’s so many books I’m excited to read soon! A whole bunch of holds from Libby have been pouring in, all of which I’ve been eagerly anticipating…
Other than that, I’ve just been cranking out tons of writing, drawing here and there, watching Abbott Elementary, BEEF (absolutely SHAKESPEAREAN lemme tell you), The Bear (ngl I’m mostly just in it for the needle drops), and Constellation (WHAT IS GOING ON 😀), and being in a near-constant state of being on my toes since I never know when we’re gonna get dumped with snow.
Oh, and I think we have the best possible end to a month that I’ve had in several months…BABE. WAKE UP. NEW ST. VINCENT JUST DROPPED. WE’RE GETTING THE ALBUM, TODAY’S THE DAAAAAAAAAAAY
APRIL 29TH CANNOT COME SOON ENOUGH.
READING AND BLOGGING:
I read 17 books this month! Definitely more than I expected to read, but I’m about at the point in the year where I’m familiar enough with my schedule that I can squeeze in more time for reading. There were definitely a few stinkers in the mix, but I had not one but two five star reads this month, which was pretty incredible! My eternal thanks to Audre Lorde and R.F. Kuang.
Huzzah! No more black and white color palettes! Color has returned! And somehow, I’ve managed to cram way too many songs that I’ve had on repeat into a single post, so get ready for some rambly paragraphs. Also: music that changed the game (several games, in fact), people who really liked the ’60s, and me freaking out over an Instagram post that’s already over a week old.
Before we get into that, here are last week’s songs:
I already rambled about this song plenty on my review of Wall of Eyesfrom last week, but if you haven’t read that, take my word for it. “Read the Room” was half the reason I was excited for the whole album in the first place just because of how arresting it was to hear it live for the first time without knowing they’d been cooking it up. From that, I thought I was going to destroy my hopes for this song because I’d hyped it up so much, but no. It’s still hypnotic in every way possible. Just listen, okay?
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
To Shape a Dragon’s Breath – Moniquill Blackgoose – massive egos and magic rainbows aplenty, but this time in the form of gaslighting and colonial pressures surrounding Anequs, an Indigenous woman fighting to make her voice heard.
Finally. I’ve finally gotten around to listening to Post, and with every song I come back to, I keep hitting myself for not listening to it sooner. Not just because some of my favorite Björk songs (and no shortage of childhood nostalgia, courtesy of my parents and their wonderfully indie taste) were on it, but just because I’ve seen it held on so high of a pedestal for so long. Normally, that’s not a primary motivator for listening to an album unless I’ve had it recommended by someone I trust, but if it’s Björk, talent of talents, that’s being held on said pedestal, then why shouldn’t I? Now that I’ve listened to it, I’m struck by the feeling that Post sounds simultaneously like nothing I’ve ever heard and everything I’ve ever heard. Every song sounds so unique, and yet screams of everything that’s come after it, whether you’re looking at the world of rock, trip-hop, or electronic—a route that Björk took on this album when she felt that rock music held little opportunity for the experimentation brewing inside of her. And that experimentation was truly wild—wild in the naturalistic sense, in the sense that she’s always meant when she’s said that she isn’t necessarily inspired by the music of her native Iceland, but of the volcanic landscape of Iceland itself. There’s musical eco-brutalism rife in this album, a full-frontal fusion of the natural and the industrial that grinds together into something that feels both alien and familiar, but wholly captivating. Maybe eco-brutalism isn’t quite the right word—I’m sure there is a word for this, but the “brutalism” part, although it is distinctly industrial in some places, feels sleeker and more technological. Post feels like that picture of a bunch of bright green plants crawling out of the dirt, but they’re planted inside of the headlight of a car; both images are strikingly different from each other, but they were always meant to be distinctly harmonious without bleeding into each other.
“Enjoy” was one of the songs that I hadn’t heard previously, and now, I’m practically waiting on its every beck and call. I just cannot stop listening to it. With something so simple as a walking, looping synth to provide its chrome backbone, “Enjoy” becomes a kind of cyberpunk catwalk, a confident strut through metal and neon lights. It’s no surprise that Tricky (who Björk had a short-lived relationship with at the time) had a hand in this track; it’s got trip-hop written all over it, but even that couldn’t place it as anything but purely Björk. With brass blasts punctuating the spiraling web of synths thickening every note, it feels like the formula that she’s molded like clay for her whole career—taking two distinct things that would sound horribly out of place in the hands of any other artist, but in her hands, sound like they were made to mesh together, a cyborg chimera of spare and found parts. And through it all, Björk’s signature, growling belt rings like a cry of confidence, a declaration (of independence?) as she struts the cyberpunk catwalk, hungry for tactile sensation, branching her feelers out for anything they can grasp. Björk described it as “[being] greedy, to be eager to consume a city,” and “Enjoy” feels like nothing but riotous consumption, something swallowing whole continents in its wake in a search for something to feel.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Translation State – Ann Leckie– this novel features an alien character with a deep desire to experience the same sensations of other intelligent life that have been excluded from them; the overwhelming urge to seek out the tactile of “Enjoy” radiates through here as well.
I’m a warm-weather creature at heart. I can’t get too warm, but I tend to come back alive once the sun comes out. I’m practically a reptile in that regard—I take any crumb of warmth that I can get, then I soak it up for the rest of the day like stolen nectar. Similarly, I find myself gravitating to sunnier, more summery music in these chillier, gloomier months. Here I am, looking out my window: all the trees are bare as can be, there’s half-melted snow sliding off the neighboring rooftops, and the ground beneath my feet is a mess of slush, dirt, and who knows what else. If you squint, there’s a tiny pocket of blue between the clouds, but it’s gray as far as the eye can see. But in these times, I turn to musical sunshine for my fix. I’m thinking back to last year, and that’s around the time when I was playing Fishbone’s “Everyday Sunshine” more often than not. Now, we’ve got some sparkly sunshine in the form of a trip to the beach.
Up until now, I only knew two Cornelius songs (“Mic Check” and “Smoke”), both collages of synth, samples, and brightly-colored, digitized sparkle. What I’ve taken away from looking into his background is that Cornelius (a.k.a. Keigo Oyamada), is, if nothing else, a student of The Beach Boys, to the point where he put a picture of himself dressed as Brian Wilson in the liner notes of Fantasma, the album where we get “Chapter 8.” Somehow, it never once dawned on me while listening to this song, but it’s like a sledgehammer in the face of Pet Sounds influence once you realize. This is literally just The Beach Boys if they had a few more synths and discovered sampling. And like what made Wilson and co. famous, “Chapter 8” feels like if warm sunshine over an endless, golden beach were channeled into just under three and a half minutes of music. Combined with the equally peppy powers of Robert Schneider and Hilarie Sidney of The Apples in Stereo, there’s no adequate words to describe this song other than carefree. You can almost see Schneider and Sidney nodding their heads in time as one strums an acoustic guitar, with animated sea creatures dancing around them. But what elevates the joy of this song is the way their high-pitched harmonies dance together, feather-light.
What a joyous, whimsical song! Sure would be a shame if…oh, for fuck’s sake, Cornelius did WHAT? Jesus Christ…at least The Apples in Stereo are good people…
Everybody’s weekly Apple Music replays should be generating soon, if memory serves, and I’m just waiting to see which spot out of the top 5 that this song has occupied, because it’s kind of a given that it’s going to be somewhere in there. It’s an inevitability at this point. As evidenced by this post, there’s no space left in my brain for important stuff to occupy, because it’s all been clogged with Björk, The Smile, and this for 2 weeks straight.
For XTC, it’s easy to see why. Andy Partridge always had aspirations of being a pop star, weaned on ’60s groups like The Monkees, whose style inspired his quirky musical career. And although he never got the Monkees-level fame that he’d always dreamed of (maybe that’s for the best? Who would want to have a fake show centered around you and then have to own up to not playing any of the instruments on live TV? Maybe that’s just me…), his pop craft is unmistakable. Their hits were more on the side of…well, ADHD, valium withdrawal, and poking sticks at God than “Daydream Believer,” but, as he frequently insisted, the music he and the other members of XTC was pop—it was just confined to the fringes, for the most part. “The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead” feels like it could have been the crowd pleaser at sold-out stadiums in some alternate universe where fawning girls had posters of Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding in mop haircuts on their walls. It’s a tragic and biting song, but it’s got the command of a song made for people to wave their hands along, raised in prayer in a mass mourning for Peter Pumpkinhead. The song did, in fact, start out as a smaller version of that kind of pity; the Peter Pumpkinhead character was inspired by a jack-o-lantern that Partridge had proudly carved, then slowly watched rot day by day, which led him to not only pity the poor thing, but toy with the concept of a person who was purely good, and therefore, according to Partridge, “I thought, ‘god, they’d make so many enemies!'” And it’s easy to see—not to be cynical with it, but most governments despise the idea of Peter Pumpkinhead-like people simply because he’s everything they’re not—charitable, kind, and just purely good, and capable of letting every criticism bounce off of them (“plots and sex scandals failed outright/Peter merely said ‘any kind of love is alright!'”). The music video, which was later heavily edited for us Americans, didn’t just expand on the allusions to Jesus in the song’s final verse (“Peter Pumpkinhead was too good/Had him nailed to a chunk of wood”), but straight up recreates the JFK assassination. Not just a few references or anything, no. It’s literally justJFK’s assassination, complete with a Marilyn Monroe lookalike, a flashing image of Cuba superimposed onto a picture of a pig, and a weeping Jackie Kennedy sprawled out of the back of the car. Certainly a ballsy move, but not even the ballsiestmove they made when it came to American audiences. If being memorable was the aim, then they succeeded. But even without it, “Peter Pumpkinhead” has pathos in spades, the kind that brings people to their knees.
Hooray for Peter Pumpkinhead, indeed. He’s got my vote, but I feel like we already established that he’s not the kind of guy to run for public office, so I’d just shake his hand.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The Last Human – Zack Jordan – being the last human in the galaxy tends to make you too many enemies, even if you don’t deserve it. Also tends to happen when you’re a teenage girl.
Oh god. God. Help me. St. Vincent wiped her entire instagram and posted a video setting aside the blonde wig from the Daddy’s Home tour H-E-L-P. HELP ME. I AM NOT OKAY.
Through my unceasing hyperventilation, I’ve come back to some of her older genius through a scattered few songs from her (slides on hipster glasses) sophomore album, Actor, and its timeless gateway into the singer and guitarist that she’s become. It’s uplifted the quirky art-pop of Marry Me into something sharper, at times more sinister (“Marrow”), and at times more heartfelt (“Laughing With a Mouth of Blood”). Only two years into her solo career, and she’s already got a full brass section at her back, but even that couldn’t stop her as a singular, meteoric force; Actor proved that she had the plentiful talent to command a room and supercharge it with artfully jagged energy, always lingering on the edge of ecstasy and fear. Compared to some of the other tracks, “The Party” isn’t necessarily the captivating explosion of some of the other tracks, but it’s still an explosion in its own right. Like “Laughing,” it’s more downtempo both in instrumentation and lyricism; for the glut of the song, Annie Clark is only joined by spare drums and specks of tasteful piano chords as she wistfully recalls tired companionship with someone as a party winds down. There’s a kind of delirious drunkenness to it as Clark watches her subject fade through her fingers in the form of scant memory: “I licked the ice cube from your empty glass/Oh, we stayed much too late/’Til they’re cleaning the ashtrays.” Lines like “oh, that’s the trouble/of ticking and talking” are straight out of the cheeky, red-lipstick mannerisms of Marry Me, but as the song unfurls like a creature hatching from an egg, it’s a concentrated specimen of her growth in the years since. As her voice fades out of lyrics and into chorus, joined by a choir rising like fog, it feels like she has her finger lingering over the button to unleash chaos, a nuclear release of creativity. Drums skip beats and fade out of line, synths blip and crackle like they’re struggling to hang on, and Clark and her chorus rise from the waves like Aphrodite rising from the sea. For a section that occupies such a small space in the song, it crams so much dare I say cosmic fervor into only a minute and a half. If “Marrow” and “Actor Out of Work” are explosions, “The Party” is an explosion in slow motion, the kind you watch from afar as debris arcs over your head and flames balloon outwards into oblivion. It’s even more evident watching it unfold in Pitchfork’s Cemetery Gates series (why did they ever stop doing those, by the way?)—there’s no other way to hear the meticulous chaos, especially in its extended form, than in an old church, where surely, Clark’s talent reverberated through the walls like the aftershocks of an earthquake.
What I’m trying to say is that there is a right way to close out an album, and this is how.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The Gilded Wolves – Roshani Chokshi– the image of a dying party and the faint, tender moments shared between the narrator and the unnamed character remind me of Séverin and Laila sharing a tense (but romantic) moment amidst magical glamour.
Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.
That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Apologies for a lack of Sunday Songs this week. I’ve just been busy with schoolwork, and I didn’t have time to polish anything for this week. I was, however, already about halfway done with this post by the time Sunday rolled around, so hopefully I can throw you a bone here.
My high school love of Radiohead predictably went down the pipeline to The Smile back in 2022, when their first album, A Light for Attracting Attention, was released. (I was going to review it then, but it ended up getting sidetracked by several other albums that were coming out at the time. Sadly, the Arcade Fire only took a few months to age like milk. Believe survivors.) Either way, A Light was one of my favorite albums of 2022, and I even had the incredible privilege of seeing them on that tour—that was a concert where I definitely cried a little once I’d gotten into the car. It was a beacon after I’d gotten through my first semester of college. Thom Yorke’s music isn’t one that I usually categorize as uplifting, but I remember saying—and thinking—that seeing them live was the happiest I’d been in a long time. And I meant it. Something mended a part of my soul that night.
So of course I lost my mind when I figured out that they were releasing Wall of Eyes so soon! And even more so that “Read the Room” would be among the ranks, which I’d been eagerly waiting to hear since December of 2022. I was afraid that I’d overhyped the whole shebang for myself because of how rosy those memories of seeing them were, but, as they often do, they did not disappoint—in fact, Wall of Eyes feels like a more refined effort after A Light, sharp and distinct in ways that make a colorful but cohesive record.
Let’s begin, shall we?
WALL OF EYES – THE SMILE
Release date: January 26, 2024 (XL Records)
TRACK 1: “Wall of Eyes” – 8.5/10
After A Light for Attracting Attention, The Smile’s trademark became the jazz-rock acrobatics that they regularly performed: unique time signatures and rhythms that were ever so artfully off-kilter. That’s part of what separates them from most other Thom Yorke or Radiohead-related projects, but the title track of this album proves that not every track has to be this way. Sometimes, they can revel in quiet, almost-acoustic numbers and make it feel as innovative as anything they’ve put out. “Wall of Eyes” adds another landscape of alienation to the general…well, absolute menagerie of those kinds of landscapes that Yorke has put out over the years, but this time trades uneasy synths for the strumming of an acoustic guitar, spare orchestral notes, and faint, rumbling synths that ripple like water reflected onto an unpolished ceiling. It’s a track that easily lets you drift into the immaculate world that Yorke, Greenwood, and Skinner have concocted, full of fainting pulsating lights and shadowy figures drifting in and out of focus. And Yorke’s fading, sinister laughter puts the icing on the already decadent cake, pulling this track into a haze of uncertainty and unwilling vulnerability.
TRACK 2: “Teleharmonic” – 8/10
“Teleharmonic” (if there could ever be a more Smiley song title) is where Wall of Eyes breaks out of its shell and begins to bristle and hum. Crackling with static and vibration, you can almost see the delicate waves strung through it, the kind of physical sound that feels like would shy away from your touch if you tried to lay a finger on it. Yorke’s voice is made to echo like he’s trapped in a digital cavern, resonating like words through a canyon distorted by a wool sweater of synths. Skinner’s thin, precise drumbeats seem to speckle the melody like falling bits of hail, melting into the kaleidoscopic vision that “Teleharmonic” plunges us headfirst into. If “Wall of Eyes” was the steady hand that eased you into the album, then this track is when the hand is wrenched away, leaving you to fall face-first into truly alien territory.
TRACK 3: “Read the Room” – 10/10
That’s your opinion
That’s how the story goes,
A magic rain, a magic rainbow,
So big it bends the light…
The Smile, “Read the Room”
Mark my words, this will not be the last time you’ll hear about this song from me. I’ll try to keep it short so I don’t find myself sounding like a broken record, but I can’t resist. This was my most anticipated track from Wall of Eyes, and I am elated to say that it did not disappoint in the slightest. Continuing the general theme of unrest (political, personal, and otherwise) and surveillance, it falls in the vein of “A Hairdryer” with its commentary, with its mentions of “magic rainbow[s]/So big it bends the light” and “massive egos.” To that, there’s no poetic response that Yorke has defined himself with; it’s gone so far that all there is to say is “I am gonna count to three/Keep that shit away from me,” as though to chide a child. And…well, yeah, at this point, that’s the only way you can probably speak to some our world leaders today, but it’s potent either way. “Read the Room” also feels like the smoothest, sleekest track to come out of The Smile’s catalogue, chrome-shiny but with all the same bite that they usually have. The intro is genuinely intoxicating to me, instantly loopable and blooming. Just as captivating as it was live.
TRACK 4: “Under Our Pillows” – 9/10
Episodes wiped clean,
This is major league make-believe.
The Smile, “Under Our Pillows”
Like “Read the Room,” “Under Our Pillows” opens with plucky, off-kilter guitar notes that could masquerade as synths just as easily. It gives the whole track the feel of watching a candy ad from the 2000’s, like I should suddenly be surrounded by Dippin’ Dots raining from the sky—everything is round, smooth, and full of artificially vibrant color. With a similar frantic, skipping beat as “Thin Thing,” it radiates both enticing sweetness and pent-up, anxiety, but there’s no denying that “Under Our Pillows” is full of energy—and a sinister energy, of course. (What else would it be, it’s The Smile! The Smile was always full of rotting teeth!) And to match the candy-colored vibrance is the promise of handshakes cloaked in lies—”A slate wiped clean, a white loss of feeling If you’re ready and willing.” Somebody’s taking the current environment of real, necessary change being nearly impossible to make because every politician you can think of has sold their soul and shoved themselves deep in somebody’s linty, corporate pocket well, huh? Guess he’s taking it well as any of us can. The western world may be an absolute joke, but at least Thom Yorke is here to pen some absolutely glorious music.
TRACK 5: “Friend Of A Friend” – 8/10
cannot stop thinking about the fact that Jonny Greenwood plays piano like a Peanuts character
Oh, what was that I was saying about politician’s being in corporate pockets? Oh…oh! Oh. Yeah. Comin’ atcha with round two.
“Friend Of A Friend” continues not just the political theme, but the pairing of said theme with enticing instrumentals to drive the hypnotic lyrics home. No pun intended, but just like the allure of money and the easy descent into corruption, this track is about as friendly as a Smile song can get, with its gentle, bass-driven start and Thom Yorke’s thin, resonant vocals, almost unchanged since at least 1999. It’s amazing how little (by little? okay, I’ll shut up) his voice has changed over the years; I wouldn’t call it deepened, but there’s undoubtedly a fullness that wasn’t all there in the post-Bends days. The pool was already full of his soaring, gut-wrenching falsetto, but the pool has only continued to overflow with his talent. The combination of Greenwood’s gentle piano and the soft hiss of Skinner’s drums only adds to the feel of the song being the last thing you hear before slipping into the trance, like someone’s put you under a spell, and the last thing you see before you go under is their eager eyes staring down at your prone body.
TRACK 6: “I Quit” – 7/10
I try not to worship the ground that Yorke, Greenwood, and Skinner walk on, but don’t worry, I still have criticisms of both this album and A Light for Attracting Attention. The main issue of the latter was that many tracks, despite being well-crafted and atmospheric, had the tendency to blend into each other—the same (no pun intended…oh god, I need to stop) jazzy, low-key rumbles that bled into each other too easily, like watercolors left to spill and blend into a muddy mess; every color was beautiful on its own, but they faded far too much into each other. For a title like “I Quit,” I completely expected it to be in the Bends-callback style of “You Will Never Work in Television Again,” but in actuality, it’s the slowest track on Wall of Eyes—I suppose the title makes a different kind of sense if the quitting in question is more from exhaustion and giving up as opposed to towel-throwing anger—”This is my stop/This is the end of the trip.” Drenched in delay on every possible instrument, “I Quit” has a lethargic crawl that could fit right in with A Light, but on this album, provides a calm respite from some of the more skittering, uptempo tracks. I see why it’s the subject of many critics’ ire, but I’d argue that this sleepier track has its place.
TRACK 7: “Bending Hectic” – 8.5/10
“Bending Hectic” was the very first single to come out of Wall of Eyes, and I reviewed it when it was released back in July (why, why, WHY did none of you tell me THAT I SPELLED THE SONG WRONG IN THE GRAPHIC AND THE POST?? WHY???) In concert with the rest of the album, it feels just as seamless and cinematic as it did when it stood alone. Now, bridged between the rambling quiet of “I Quit” and the uneasy shoulder-tapping of “You Know Me!” (see below), it feels like an elongated cat’s stretch, reveling in the softer moments but crashing like a volcanic explosion and letting the fiery debris rain down upon our ears with reckless abandon. Like “Read the Room,” it remains as gene-altering in real time as it felt seeing it live without knowing anything else about it, a swirl of sharp colors. And god. I can’t shut up about Jonny Greenwood’s guitar work, can I? I won’t. It never ceases to amaze me just how many innovative ways that this man can manipulate the instrument into something truly colossal.
TRACK 8: “You Know Me!” – 8.5/10
You are standing in my light,
You have wound yourself around me
Like you know me…
The Smile, “You Know Me!”
I wouldn’t have expected anything less from The Smile, but god, what a gloriously eery way to end the album. It has the feel of a latter-day Radiohead track, but with a much more modern sensibility—the lyrics are full of manipulation and trickery, which could just as easily be how it feels to be surrounded by advertising on social media in the corporate world, or just a sour relationship. Given Yorke’s history with this kind of thing (see: OK Computer), I’m gonna go with the former, but either way, the culmination is chilling, with echoing, distorted instrumentation and piano that sounds like it’s being transmitted from somewhere underwater. With the addition of the lyrics, “You Know Me!” feels like a boa constrictor slowly wrapping itself around your chest to suffocate you, but whispering in your ears that it’s for the best with every breath that it squeezes out of you: “None of this is mine/Always ‘you know me.'” Even the exclamation mark in the title feels like a corporate smile of misplaced trust, like a “we’re here for you!” as they lay off hundreds of their workforce. How’s that for an album closer, huh? Take notes.
I added up my scores for each track, and they came out to an 8.4! It’s really a shame that Wall of Eyes came out so early this year, because it’s going to be hard to compete with this album. (At least their competition is just as exciting—Chelsea Wolfe, IDLES, and…St. Vincent? Be still, my beating heart…) Now that they’ve slimmed down their track count and refined—and redefined—their sound, The Smile sounds as fully-realized as ever, brimming with sharp commentary and truly alien, expansive soundscapes full of vibrant colors. The talents of Yorke, Greenwood, and Skinner could never be called into question, but if they ever were, Wall of Eyes is a testament to their work as a truly powerful trio, cohesive and boundary-pushing in equal measure. (Why yes, I have had this on repeat for a solid week and a half, why do you ask?)
Since this is an album review, consider the whole album to be today’s song.
That’s it for this album review! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Happy Wednesday, bibliophiles! I hope this month has treated you well.
First month of the year is over, whew! I don’t wanna jinx it, but I think the rest of the year will be good.
Let’s begin with the first wrap-up of 2024, shall we?
GENERAL THOUGHTS:
January’s been a good start to the year so far, I’d say. The first half was wonderfully relaxing, what with the joys of how long winter break is in college, so I was able to recharge, catch up on reading, and get some sleep in before school started back up again. As for school, I think it’s shaping up to be a great semester! I’m finally taking some classes for my newly declared women and gender studies minor, and I’ve been enjoying those, along with the amazing English classes I’m taking for my major. It was disgustingly cold for a solid week, but at least my school had the sense to call a delay (would’ve preferred a snow day, but beggars can’t be choosers, I guess), but now it’s…unusually warm? It’s nice to be able to wear a t-shirt in the afternoons, if you ignore climate change.
As I said, January has given me the chance to get back on my old reading and blogging schedule. I still didn’t blog as much outside of my regular schedule (these scholarships I’m applying for aren’t gonna write themselves), but it was much nicer not having to do that outside of schoolwork. Fingers crossed, my workload is reasonable at the moment, so I’m soaking up all the time in the honeymoon period of the semester that I can. The reading batch I had was fantastic, for the most part! I had a streak of no books that I really didn’t like for a solid three weeks, and even after that, it’s mostly been 3-5 star reads all around! Anticipated reads, books I’ve been meaning to read for a while, and re-reads—it’s been a good bunch this month. I put my reading goal at 150 books this month, which my middle school self would probably declare something along the lines of “cowardly,” but to her I’d say to wait until college.
Other than that, I’ve just been catching up on sleep (for the first half of the month, anyway), drawing, watching Abbott Elementary (so comforting and delightful!), seeing Robyn Hitchcock live (dude’s a complete weirdo, but an insanely talented weirdo), and stocking up on hot chocolate and tea in equal measure in preparations for the permanently indecisive Colorado weather. Somebody’s gotta keep us on our toes.
READING AND BLOGGING:
I read 18 books this month! Winter break gave me a good head start for the first half of the month, but I’ve been able to keep up some of the momentum through the end. And it’s been a great batch too—I’ve only read one book this month that I really didn’t enjoy, and I re-read a favorite that got even better on the second go-around!
Apologies for the lack of Sunday Songs last week; the only reason I was able to get the other two posts I made last week was because they were both at least 95% pre-written—otherwise, they would have been gone, reduced to atoms, by the absolute chaos hell week of pre-finals. (Why is the period right before finals always the worst? No, it’s…no, that’s just coming back from break and having to Do Things. Yeah.) Either way, that time has given me some space to think about a change that I’ve been kicking around for a bit—adding some more to my Sunday Songs. Although these posts were originally inspired by my brother, it’s really been a fruitful experience to write about music more—The Bookish Mutant is still a book blog, but I’d be remiss if I denied that part of me. And yet…the books always come back. It’s in my nature. So now, you get your songs with a book paired to each—similarities in plot, similarities in vibes, or just similarities that bounced around my head for no reason other than free association. Bon appetit!
I so wanted to talk about last week’s songs, but as I said, last week was chaos, so I never got the time to write anything about them. But because they’re still fantastic songs, have them + last week’s graphic:
I’ve only listened to two full Lisa Germano albums (Excerpts from a Love Circus, where this song is from, and its follow-up, Slide), and I’ve discovered a method to listening to them; if you don’t want to feel the milieu of misery seep into you like mold, give it only one or two listens all the way through. Let it sit, then the individual songs (and their genius) return to you in smaller bites. That’s what’s tugged me back to the parts of Excerpts for the past month and a half since I listened to the full album for the first time—said misery notwithstanding, there’s something undeniably intoxicating about almost every track.
While it’s just as rust-smelling and heavy as most other Lisa Germano song you can pull out of a hat, what makes “Bruises” stand out is the folksy, almost Celtic sway that surrounds it. After the interlude of plaintive mewling, courtesy of her cat Dorothy (originally meant to bookend “A Beautiful Schizophrenic (‘Where’s Miamo-Tutti?’ by Dorothy)”, arguably the album’s most “mom, come pick me up, I’m scared” track), the first thing that jumps out at you is the dipping lilt of the violins; they passionately bay and lurch like dancers against the steadiness of the acoustic guitars and humming, cavernous synths, the same that frame another favorite of mine from the album, “Baby On The Plane.” And Germano’s voice, mainly defined by its wispiness in many of her songs, rises to meet the violins, her high notes ringing out in strained, rasping harmony as she cries out the chorus of “bruises, bruises, bruises, bruises,” dragging out the last repetition as easily as guiding the strings of a marionette. Her harmonies twist together like ghosts rising out from the cracks of the underworld, weaving through the violin strings. “Bruises” has the creaking sway of a rocking chair, but not in the way of being curled into grandmother’s lap while she reads a story; like “Crash,” the looping, ouroboros rhythm seeps into Germano’s words of repetition and depression, mindlessly going through the motions; the exhausted delivery of “make it better, alright” hammers in her struggle to wake from the stupor, sleepwalking through life as she struggles to even get out of bed in the first place. It has the rhythm of a slow dance, but all of the dancers are stumbling over their own feet, heads hanging, hands slipping apart and missing cues and steps.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:Summer Bird Blue – Akemi Dawn Bowman – even though this novel deals specifically with grief, the combination of Bowman’s very real, very heavy depiction of the lows of Rumi’s mental health and the way the melody seems to bob up and down like the waves of the ocean make this a solid fit in my eyes.
I’ve only come up with more recent songs as examples for this, but there’s something about adding animal sounds near the end of songs to add to the eeriness—sounds that wouldn’t normally be dread-inducing, but amp up the dread of the song. The most prominent example I can think of is the dogs barking at the end of Mitski’s “I’m Your Man”—the dog/hounds theme of the song notwithstanding, as soon as you start to hear them desperately baying in the background, interwoven with crickets and other nighttime sounds, you instantly get the feeling that something is very, very wrong. Fun way to end an album, huh?
The animals used in “Ptolemaea” are much more plainly sinister from the start—with the moaning, creeping dread that immediately swallows you only seconds into the song, the swarm of buzzing flies that trickle into your ears like a slow drip of poison shortly after is an immediate alarm bell. When I heard the flies, I heard them circling around something rotten. Something putrid is not too far away, and the flies have come to land on your skin feed on you next. Uncomfortably landing on your skin is something that “Ptolemaea” instantly does—it’s a truly astounding piece of art, but it’s astoundingly icky for all of its six plus minutes. And yet there’s something instantly, drowningly consuming about it—the instrumentation in the last half has a hard rock, almost goth tidal wave that wants to bring you down with it into the cold, unforgiving depths. And like a dog-eared, pocket Bible with a battered cover and flaking pages, the sonic layers seem infinite, from the chilling, low incantations of perverse, religious verses, to the blood-curdling cry of “STOP!” that marks the song’s halfway point. I can’t help but be in absolute shock at this song—I seem to remember being openmouthed with giddy surprise when That Part kicked in while driving with my brother. I can’t listen to this song too often, lest I get consumed by the creeping dread, and I also feel guilty having those giddy feelings about the second half of this song, when it’s so clearly alluding to some form of abuse and/or sexual assault. But from what I know about the whole Ethel Cain project, it was born out of a desire to explore a history of religious trauma, abuse, and queerness, and that is, at its best, is one of the best qualities of art—to weave all these things into something new to reach out to others; in Cain’s case, the results are unfathomably harrowing, but undoubtedly masterful.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:Extasia – Claire Legrand – would you like your creeping dread and explorations of queer girlhood and religious trauma with a side of towering entities in the woods?
Don’t you love doing mundane, peaceful things and listening to albums that are the exact opposite of mundane and peaceful? Nothing like cleaning up the bathroom and quietly rearranging my bulletin board while Joe Talbot is screaming in my ears.
I finally, finally got around to listening to Ultra Mono over break, and for the most part, it was sheer fun all the way through. Apparently, it’s regarded a little lower in the ranks for some IDLES fans; in contrast to some of their other albums, this seems to be where they went full in on the aggressively positive theme, and for a lot of people, it seemed to come off as corny. And…yeah, I don’t buy it. I understand the gripes about “War,” the album’s first track—the onomatopoeia is fun, but it doesn’t make sense at all. And as much as I enjoy it, I see where a lot of the criticism comes for “Ne Touche Pas Moi“—Riot Grrl did aggressive songs about consent first, and IDLES seems to have respected that history, but there’s something to be said for a bunch of aggressive, sweaty British men who look like they could beat you to a pulp singing about “Your body is your body/And it belongs to nobody but you.” (Plus, at least they had a woman—Jehnny Beth—shout the rallying cry of “ne touche pas moi.”) I’d feel safe walking home at night with these dudes. But either way, this is how I see it: we have a sea of songs this aggressive, but that are all about how edgy you are and how much everything sucks, so as far as I’m concerned, IDLES are a breath of fresh air. The screamy edgelords and their corresponding emotions have their place (sometimes), but they’ve had their moment in the sun. KINDNESS!
As the title suggests, this song pretty much sums up the entire IDLES ethos—aggressive positivity. If you isolated the lyrics from the song, you’d probably get some accusations along the lines of “you dirty hippie(s),” but that’s what makes it so memorable—it’s earnest, it’s loud, and it’s relentlessly optimistic. But this killing with kindness isn’t the kind you associate with smiling, doing nothing, and letting yourself be stagnant or stepped on—as Talbot declares, “Ain’t no doormats here/It doesn’t mean you have to bow, or say “Your Highness”/Just kill ’em with kindness/If you wanna beat the machine, keep your teeth clean.” And what better to cement that than circles of dancing, anthropomorphic flowers and a grinning, rubberhose-style Joe Talbot spoon-feeding some kind of kindness serum to a scowling beefcake who was beating up a bunch of other guys just a few minutes earlier? It’s nothing short of delightful. IDLES are a blessing.
…and I’m seeing them in May!! WOO!!
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT: Chameleon Moon – RoAnna Sylver – it’s not in the title, but it’s in the subgenre. What better word to describe both this and IDLES but hopepunk?
I’m 100% admitting to my status as a poser with regards to this song, because I haven’t even seen When Harry Met Sally, the movie where this version of “It Had to Be You” originally comes from. That being said, “baby fish mouth” has been permanently ingrained into my psyche thanks to my parents.
A fact that I always forget whenever I listen to this song: not only has Harry Connick, Jr. had a flourishing jazz career that starts as far back as recording in the studio for the first time at age 10, he’s also…
…yeah, oh my god. Dean has insane pipes.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:The Spare Man – Mary Robinette Kowal – I was 100% grasping at straws for this one, but The Iron Giantwould have objectively been cheating (and for once, the movie is objectively better than the book in every conceivable way). To be fair, I don’t read a whole lot of historical fiction, particularly the kind that would lend itself to this kind of big band drama, but with the lighthearted, noir feel (in space!) of this book makes me convinced that this song could’ve been in playing in the background of the bar on the opulent space liner where The Spare Man is set.
In terms of Jay Som’s catalogue, it seems that this song is one teeter away from disappearing into the ether—it was part of the Polyvinyl 4-Track Singles series (which has included artists such as Kishi Bashi, The Dodos, and of Montreal over the years) back in 2017, but as of now, the official audio on YouTube has only 10 likes (including mine, teehee) and nothing comes up when you google the lyrics. Well, nothing relevant. The top result is for the lyrics of “The Bus Song” (always fantastic), but by the time you start scrolling through several other Jay Som songs that aren’t “Lose”, it turns into…Jay Z and Coldplay, for some reason? Oof. Kinda rough. And although I’m all for being a petty hater and being bitter about songs I like getting popular and/or songs I like starting to be liked by popular people, there is no need for this song to keep going under the radar. It’s too delicately wonderful for such under-appreciation, dammit!
In my mind, the ascending notes that make up “Lose” fall somewhere between Wilco and the Beatles. It’s got that meticulous, stair-step climb in both the rhythm and the main riff that could have made up the framework for something off of Star Wars or Revolver just as easily. It’s a progression that immediately crawls into your brain, and I’d be lying if I didn’t enjoy every minute that it took up the space inside of mine. Jay Som’s signature dreamy haze of grainy lo-fi makes it sound like you can hear the gentle pitter-patter of rain trickling against the windows of wherever the song was recorded—regardless of whether or not it actually was raining, the flickering warmth that permeates through all of her songs shows its face here. Somehow, it’s the perfect soundtrack for being under a blanket forth while it rains outside. You’ve got a flashlight propped up in the corner, and it makes everything look gently orange and yellow as you uncomfortably squeeze yourself against the side of the couch you propped your blankets up against. There’s a bag of snacks somewhere, and now, your pillow feels just right.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:A City Inside – Tillie Walden – more in vibes than anything, but Walden’s art style, with its muted, flat hues and beautiful simplicity, lends itself to this drifting air of most of Jay Som’s music, even if this single didn’t have the album art that it has.
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!
Here we are, and once again, the year is nearly over…at least we have season 5 of Fargo to distract us from the inevitable passage of time.
Let’s begin, shall we?
GENERAL THOUGHTS:
Break aside, November has been on the busier side, but it’s been a productive one for me. It’s been chaos as far as my workload has gone, but part of that chaos was the editing that led me to send off two of my short stories for consideration to be published in some school literary journals! I won’t hear back for several months, but I’m so excited!! The initial impostor syndrome has faded (it’ll probably come back in a few months, mark my words…I’ve got my NyQuil ready), but either way, I’m really proud for taking this first step. Now, the workload chaos is in the form of looming final projects, which is not nearly as fun, but at least I don’t have to take a stats final at the crack of dawn like last year.
My reading has been a bit slower this month (see above), but as far as enjoyment goes, I’ve had a much more successful month! I had another 5-star read in the form of Ceremony (me when mixed-race experience and themes of storytelling), and I only had one book in the 2-star range for this whole month! I ended up reading a ton of literary and literary-leaning fiction for no particular reason, but the ones I read this month were almost all hits. I’ve had some more time to blog, what with break and whatnot, so it’s been fun to write more frequently before finals hits me like a train.
Other than that, I’ve just been trying to draw and play guitar (when I can), watching Taskmaster and The Great British Bakeoff (hEY NOW NO SPOILERS US AMERICANS HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL FRIDAY FOR THE FINAL), trying to ignore how cold the weather is, and rejoicing the return of Fargo! FARGO! I FEEL ALIVE AGAIN!
…say, are we gonna talk about how utterly insane episode 3 was? Just me?
Also, for your casual amusement, here’s the mess that is my Apple Music Replay for this year:
READING AND BLOGGING:
I read 15 books this month! Again, slower than normal, but it’s impressive to me, given how much editing and pre-finals chaos has consumed me this month.
Brief rant: don’t you love it when Goodreads posts the nominees for the “YA Fantasy & Science Fiction” category and…there’s no science fiction books on the list? Not a single one? Thank you Goodreads 🥰
It’s been years since I’ve read anything by Kelly Barnhill; I read a fair amount of her middle-grade novels when I was younger, and there were hits (The Girl Who Drank the Moon) and misses (Iron-Hearted Violet). But either way, the road has taken me back to her adult novella, a chilling retelling of “The Crane Wife” that I thoroughly enjoyed.
In a distant future, a fifteen-year-old girl lives on one of the few remaining farms in the United States, growing cloned crops in order to make a living. Her father passed away when she was young, and now she manages the farm with her mother and takes care of her six-year-old brother, Michael. But when her mother brings home a new suitor, the girl is appalled to find that the suitor happens to be a giant crane—a crane intent on working her mother to the bone in order to produce tapestries to sell. As her mother succumbs to the wills of the crane and her family grows poorer, the girl knows that the only way out is to rid the house of the crane—and she’ll do anything to make sure the bird is out of the farm.
TW/CW: death of a parent, blood, abuse, animal death, child endangerment
It’s been at least seven or eight years since I’ve read anything by Kelly Barnhill, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that when faced with the (quite large) jump from stylistic choices between age groups, she does so with eery grace! The Crane Husband was a disturbing treat, quick but chilling.
I only had a vague notion of the original Japanese folktale of the Crane Wife that this book subverts, but even without that background, Barnhill weaves a haunting, dystopian fairytale like no other. It’s that lovely kind of book that falls into science fiction, but has just enough trappings of other genres to pass as something else. The magical realism element is heavier than the rest, and it rules the book—rightfully so, given the subject matter. But like a good fairytale, Barnhill’s ability to suspend disbelief made The Crane Husband all the scarier—scenes that would have otherwise seemed charmingly quirky or absurd were downright horrifying under her lens.
Barnhill’s writing was what sold how horrific the events of The Crane Husband truly were. The way she captured the voice of the unnamed, fifteen-year-old protagonist as she had to take her livelihood into her own hands in the face of the invading crane husband had such a tangible desperation, making the conflict feel real as all get out. Tension crept out from every word, and I found myself keeping my Kindle in a vice grip as I read. And that tension never wanes—in only 118 pages, Barnhill built up monumental tension that books three times the length have failed to uphold. The Crane Husband really was nail-bitingly eerie, and it was worth it all the way.
The way that Barnhill used this tangibly uncomfortable atmosphere to drive the point of this folktale’s subversion home was also masterful. The main twist in this iteration is, hence the title, that the protagonist’s mother brings home a giant crane who she takes as her husband. And instead of the crane wife wasting away to produce beautiful tapestries, it’s the human mother being forced by the crane husband to churn out tapestries like a machine. Abusive relationships were the main theme of the novella, and Barnhill’s depiction of abuse through this lens felt as authentic as it could be, from the strained, forced silence of the women of the family and the lack of support that the protagonist finds when she tries to seek help. Beyond that, The Crane Husband’s message about suffering for art was equally powerful and important; the emphasis on how the protagonist’s mother works to the point of near-death in order to create something that people will think of as “transformative” was commentary that I wasn’t expecting from the novel, but enjoyed wholeheartedly. Needs to be said.
That being said, my only major problem with this novella was that it directly referenced the original folktale that it’s retelling. Though it was in a flashback scene, it felt tacky and unnecessarily meta to hand it to you right there—and not only that, but basically delivering the twist right at your doorstep. I will admit that I loved the line about cranes making other creatures do the work for them, but at that point, it isn’t even foreshadowing anymore—it’s just whacking you over the head with the twist that it’s supposed to be hiding from you. It made me more than a little mad, but the rest of the novella was so good that I could almost let it slide. Almost.
All in all, a timely and truly disturbing retelling that packed a stinging punch with an impressively short page count. 4 stars!
The Crane Husband is a standalone; Kelly Barnhill is also the author of many books for children, including The Witch’s Boy, The Girl Who Drank the Moon, and Iron-Hearted Violet. She is also the author of When Women Were Dragons, her first full-length novel for adults.
Today’s song:
NEW SMILE ALBUM IN JANUARY EVERYBODY STAY CALM
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
The Bookish Mutant 