The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Every Tuesday, the Sounding Board is a space for a short-ish review of a recent-ish release and conversations about new-to-you music. I’ll get things started with a write-up about a newer, likely under-heard album, and invite you to share your music musings in the comments. I’m taking a break from the typical format for a mid-year recap and a quick look ahead.
When I think of 2025’s music landscape, I think of former President George Herbert Walker Bush. Like too many of my thoughts, it’s caused by a classic episode of The Simpsons.
In the Season 7 episode, “Two Bad Neighbors,” Bush (voiced by series regular Harry Shearer) uses a significant chunk of his post-presidential free time to complete his memoirs. After typing a hefty tome, he offers the even-keeled appraisal, “Hmm… good memoirs. Good, not great.” That absurdly milquetoast-but-complimentary reaction is still rattling around my head decades later, and it captures how I feel about the music of 2025 so far.
A lot of albums I like and admire have been released this year. There’s even been a couple of LPs I think will make my personal top 10 at the end of the year. However, there haven’t been many albums that have totally swept me off my feet, and looking at the release calendar for the rest of the year, I suspect that some of 2025’s best releases are ahead of us. However, there truly has been a lot to like, and I’ve written about a bunch of that likeable music in this space. That makes sense, because as a rule, if I write about an album for the Sounding Board, it’s because I expected to like an album, and I found myself with enough thoughts to sustain a short column. My general feeling is that the internet has hit its quota for snark and pans, and no one’s making me do this, so I might as well spend my time with music that brings me joy and sustains analysis.
In the interest of taking time to appreciate this year’s ample but relatively modest pleasures and to mark the midway point of the year, I decided to rank the 26 albums I’ve written about for the Sounding Board in 2025. I’ve included an excerpt from each column to provide a little context for each LP or EP. This isn’t a full-on clip show, though. I’ll also run through a few worthwhile albums that I didn’t cover here but was charmed by and spotlight some looming releases I expect to elevate this year’s cohort of music.
26. The Amazons- 21st Century Fiction
What I wrote: That synchronization between form and lyrical motif is a nice touch and speaks to an admirable level of thought and intentionality that went into the making of 21st Century Fiction. It’s an album that’s both professionally made and conceptually cogent. If that sounds like faint praise, it sure is. That’s more or less what 21st Century Fiction deserves. It’s not the worst thing ever. It takes aim at a specific sound, which took some degree of ambition, but it’s tough to hype up an LP that sounds like Imagine Dragons covering the perfectly cromulent blues-rock supergroup the Dead Weather.
25. Gumshoes- Bugs Forever
What I wrote: As Bugs Forever‘s title suggests, there’s an entomic slant to things, and each of its dozen songs assumes the perspective of a different bug. It’s an odd, and per Gumshoes “unbearably whimsical” idea on paper, but it makes some sense. Swarms are shorthand for pestilence and doom; in life, and especially in death, a variety of bugs feed on us; and famously cockroaches are destined to outlive humanity. So why not mix a little Jonathan Richman with Hieronymus Bosch? The end result is basically an album where every song is “Doctor Worm” by They Might Be Giants and also about the end of the world.
24. Ringo Starr- Look Up
What I wrote: Ringo Starr’s Look Up is a much better idea than an album.
That’s mostly because it’s such a stellar concept on paper: Take the Beatle most enamored of Country and Western music, team him up with some of the most virtuosic artists making roots music (plus a legendary producer) and give the then-84 year old a chance to record his late-life musings. It’s wonderful table setting that could have served up a revelatory and profound career capstone like the end-of-the-road albums from Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash and David Bowie. Alas, the near bottomless reservoirs of money and cachet available to the legend didn’t produce his own Black Starr. Instead, they were used to create something like a sequel to Beaucoup of Blues. But that’s still a pretty fun album.
.
23. FACS- Wish Defense
What I wrote: The latest LP from Chicago art-rockers, FACS,1 was the last album that the late, great and complicated Steve Albini engineered before his abrupt death in May 2024 at the age of 61. Albini spent two days in early May working on the album with the veteran three-piece band, and Sanford Parker, a Chicago-based musician and producer, consulted Albini’s notes while finishing recording the album with the trio. Curious listeners who check out Wish Defense because of its unasked-for and unexpected distinction will find a lot to like in the album. FACS — Noah Leger (drums), Jonathan van Herik (bass) and Brian Case (guitar / vocals) — pack a lot of winsome moody weirdness into the album’s seven songs that make for worthwhile and interesting listen.
22. Circa Waves- Death & Love, Pt. 1.
What I wrote: While a British Invasion aftershock seems incredibly unlikely in 2025, Death & Love, Pt. 1, released Jan. 31 via Lower Third Records/PIA, makes a strong case that guitar-driven pop should still cause a transatlantic buzz. On the strength of big hooks and some sounds nicked from multiple waves of cool bands from both sides of the pond, Circa Waves crafted a tight, bright LP that often successfully channels the emotional grandeur hinted at in its title.
21. Mamalarky- Hex Key
What I wrote: Hex Key was produced and engineered by singer-guitarist Livvy Bennett and keyboardist Michael B. Hunter, and Hunter also mixed the album. Keeping that much of the production in-house seems to have allowed the band to indulge some of its weirder impulses. “Take Me,” for example, is 90% the sort of striding piano-driven song that populated mid-aughts VH1, and 10% oddball whipsaw warbles and microwave auditory weirdness. The album’s title track is two minutes of swirling neo-psychedelia that skirts the edges of a bad trip. “Blush” is built around pleasantly jazzy keys that are pushed, prodded and processed until they sound like a mix between an Emerson, Lake & Palmer deep cut and a storm warning system.
20. Casey Smith Project- Just Like You Wanted It
What I wrote: Listeners drawn toward hookier, brasher songs may get a little lost in the album’s deliberate pace, but the variety of sounds Just Like You Wanted It tosses out means that it’s never boring. While the old adage about judging a book by its cover is generally true, Just Like You Wanted It‘s Maisie Kane-made album art depicting a retro gas pump and psychedelically proportioned mushrooms will put your head in the right space.
19. Sunflower Bean- Mortal Primetime
What I wrote: The trio’s fourth album, is nothing more or less than 10 well-crafted conventional indie rock songs featuring exceptional instrumentation and striking vocals.1 It’s likeable front-to-back and worth working into even a recently crowded listening rotation. That’s an impressive bit of alchemy because the types of adult-oriented rock that provide the most obvious points of reference for Mortal Primetime don’t necessarily scream, “must listen.” Depending on the song, listeners can expect to encounter ultra-slick hair metal guitar, somber string accents that used to class up songs like “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls, the Paisley Underground’s psychedelia-lite, or what sounds like a mid-’80s Stevie Nicks song. There’s also a full-fledged shoegaze track that brings the album to a somnolent close, but its glorious anxiety-obliviating buzz is a one-off.
18. Yaya Bey- Do It Afraid
What I wrote: On the latest LP from the Queens singer-songwriter-rapper, her voice is warm, musical and immediate whether she’s singing or weaving her way through impressive double time. It’s rapping at the volume of a murmur but enunciated clearly enough for bilabial pops and alveolar clicks to sound off in your headphones. It’s both technically impressive and a great delivery method for Yaya Bey’s lyrics, which are emotive, thoughtful and clever whether they’re expressing rage, disappointment or desire; whether they’re focused inward or lost in big-picture thought.
17. Tune-Yards- Better Dreaming
What I wrote: Tune-Yards have become increasingly in touch with humanity and their fit within its teeming, unruly collective over the better part of two decades. Socially conscious concepts further permeated Tune-Yards’ body of work, which includes a dance album that spends much of its runtime grappling with identity and reconciling Garbus’ personal politics with the success she’s found as a white woman making music deeply indebted to artists of color. It’s not just perspective that’s expanded for Tune-Yards. By album No. 2, a project that started as an aggressively lo-fi Garbus solo effort grew to formally include bassist Nate Brenner. Garbus and Brenner have forged a partnership in music and life. Their young child can be heard on several songs on Better Dreaming, Tune-Yards’ fine sixth album. It’s just one of the ways the Oakland duo’s extensive history and progressive growth are on display.
16. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart- Perfect Right Now: A Slumberland Collection 2008-2010
What I wrote: Perfect Right Now combines b-sides from 7-inch singles that accompanied the Pains of Being Pure At Heart’s self-titled debut, tracks from the Higher Than The Stars EP and 2010 single, “Say No To Love,” into a supremely enjoyable 10-song package. A decade and a half of distance has done nothing to dull the charms of these early the Pains of Being Pure At Heart songs. They remain incredibly tight tunes to sway your upper torso to in the vein of classic twee bands like the Field Mice, Belle and Sebastian, Talulah Gosh, the Vaselines, and all the others who helped inspire Nirvana’s softer side.
15. Say Sue Me- Time is Not Yours
What I wrote: On Say Sue Me’s new five-song EP, the Busan-based dream poppers hone in on an element of tuneful, shoegaze noise that’s long been at least a minor presence on their past efforts and make it the EP’s defining quality. It’s a helluva way for the band to clear its throat after not releasing anything more substantial than a single since 2022’s deeply enjoyable, The Last Thing Left.
14. Delights- If Heaven Looks a Little Like This
What I wrote: Every song on If Heaven Looks a Little Like This dares listeners to swim Scrooge McDuck-style through an embarrassment of ebullient ear candy or else drown beneath its stockpile of slick sounds.Generally, these are borrowed baubles that owe something to a bygone era of indie rock. Huge harmonies, just-so jangle, a willingness to build around a catchy synth line, dance-y polyrhythms and Adam Maxwell’s emotive lead vocals all echo past Manchester music glories as well as dance rock’s mid-aughts glory days.1 While these influences are readily apparent, Delights avoid falling into the the tacky, hacky pitfall that snagged the likes of The Dare or Greta Van Fleet. That’s because the band is canny, confident and competent enough to mix-and-match elements from its predecessors and make something distinct with them.
13. Prism Shores- Out from Underneath
What I Wrote: Prism Shores’ second album is 32 punchy minutes of tunes that sound like they were unearthed from some left-of-the-dial campus station’s vault after laying dormant for the past 35 years. Every charm associated with a strain of late ’80s college rock is present on Out From Underneath. Tasteful, gentle reverb is omnipresent, guitars alternate from IRS-era REM jangle to Kevin Shieldsian serrated swoon and a couple songs boast guy-girl duet vocals to great effect.
12. Cloakroom- Last Leg of the Human Table
What I wrote: Last Leg of the Human Table‘s combination of melodious guitar squall and sing-song, sometimes lightly autotuned, vocals are too interesting to be mere background noise. Still, the warm drone of its Weezer-meets-Galaxie 500 sound has a comfortable, nearly narcotic feeling that can make it the equivalent of an auditory weighted blanket.2 It’s cozy, and the world is better for its existence, but it takes a smidge of mindfulness to remain fully aware and appreciative of its heaviness. And there is plenty of heavy guitar sound to go around.
11. U.S. Girls- Scratch It
What I wrote: Scratch It is a considerable departure form the out-there pop of past U.S. Girls releases. Instead, the album sounds like a minor, slightly cloudy gem cut in a bygone era when complicated emotions and steel twang were a sign of serious songwriting chops and could even net a radio hit. It’s an earthy, organic and Americana-tinged album that feels lived in and fully fleshed out thanks to a cohesive soundscape seemingly on loan from Laurel Canyon and impressive songwriting.
10. The Loft- Everything Changes Everything Stays the Same
What I wrote: Everything Changes Everything Stays the Same consists of 10 timeless guitar-driven pop songs that would make for a helluva debut LP in any year. They would have sounded great in 1985, and they sound improbably fresh approximately four decades later. That’s partially due to melodies that feel instantly comfortable without being contrived. There’s plenty of songs about getting wasted and wasting time, but none of them combine bleakly observational lyrics, bright lead guitar, and a catchy chorus quite like de facto title track “Ten Years.” Its lyrics about squandered decades also carry extra weight with knowledge that Peter Astor could be singing from credible experience.
9. Dunes- Land of the Blind
What I wrote: Dunes traffics in the sort of unapologetically hard-nosed alternative rock that ruled shit-kicking corners of the airwaves during the 20th century’s death rattle. Think back to when a song like “Would?” by Alice in Chains, “Dead and Bloated” by Stone Temple Pilots or “Slaves & Bulldozers” by Soundgarden could get occasional radio play, or even become outright hits. Then, sprinkle in a bit of Kyuss-style stoner-rock stomp. Imagine what that combination sounds like. The desert sand-blasted kaiju rumble you just conjured in your mind’s ears is pretty much sound that Dunes are going for, and their latest album, Land of the Blind, is an excellent example of the form.
8. Home Is Where- Hunting Season
What I wrote: Each of the 13 songs on Home Is Where’s third album ostensibly captures the dying thoughts of an Elvis impersonator who suffered fatal injuries in a grisly car wreck. To make it more bizarre and macabre, none of these songs are from the point of view of the same ill-fated impersonator, but they all stem from the same King-sized car wreck. Yes, Hunting Season‘s central conceit is an ultra-improbable hunk a hunk of burning humanity that claims the lives of a baker’s dozen of ersatz Elvi. It’s grotesque, absurd, shows poor taste in at least two ways, and it earns the emo erstwhile Floridians who committed to the bit a standing ovation from me.
7. Courting- Lust for Life, Or: How To Thread The Needle And Come Out The Other Side To Tell The Story
What I wrote: Courting seem to have assembled an album from the best bits of every song you remember from the early-to-mid-’00s, irrespective of genre. Elements of dance-punk, Auto-Tuned crooning, smooth, early-Maroon-5-style adult contemporary, moody instrumentals, and even electronica are present on the album.
These disparate sounds aren’t blended so much as stitched together Frankenstein-style. Despite the sometimes audible seams connecting the upcycled pieces, they still work well together.
6. Lifeguard- Ripped and Torn
What I wrote: The Chicago trio’s first LP is a 12-song blitz of lo-fi guitar music that doles out warm-toned buzz and hooks in a ratio that slightly favors the feedback. Their sonic palette draws from the same crumpled box of slightly melted crayons that Cloud Nothings, Smith Westerns and No Age all used to messily color in their noise-filled early works. It is extremely charming to hear Lifeguard crack open that carton, grab some squishy wax with a peeled label and set to work on their own scruffy art.
5. Yeule- Evangelic Girl is a Gun
What I wrote: Evangelic Girl is a Gun blends hypnagogic singing; poetic, sometimes profane, lyrics; and music that heavily incorporates elements of ’90s alternative music and both hip- and trip-hop. It’s a sound that echoes the past without being beholden to it and that stays true to the distortion-heavy consistently off-kilter sound that’s all yeule’s. It’s music that is sometimes exuberantly bright and other times placidly staid, but the first impression is never the full story. Weird electronic squelches, abrasive feedback, hissing static, corrosive guitar and chopped-up percussion sounds have a habit of popping up in unexpected places. If the Cardigans ever made a song that featured a brief bridge sung by Poo-Chi, the toy robot dog from the early ’00s, it would sound a lot like “Eko.” Album-opener “Tequila Coma” sounds like it could have been on Fiona Apple’s Tidal, if it wasn’t for a stuttering back beat and the presence of serrated guitar squeal in the place where an unfortunate snake charming outro would have appeared 30 years ago.
4. The Bug Club- Very Human Feature
What I wrote: The Bug Club occupy a wordy, twee, somewhat abrasive and overtly British sonic niche that could make their fourth LP, Very Human Features, a torturous listen for certain people. However, for the folks who relish a blend of verbose wordplay and nihilistic detachment in lyrics and are always down for melody rendered through adorkable cacophony, Very Human Features is one of the year’s most singularly fun listens
3. Cheekface- Middle Spoon
What I wrote: If the music isn’t solid, the jokes don’t land, and things fall on the wrong side of the novelty song divide. Whether the people who should be listening have heard, Cheekface have proven they can bring the laughs and the tunes to keep company with cult heroes.
2. Valerie June- Owls, Omens, and Oracles
What I wrote: You can’t make a no-skips, head-spinning, genre-hopping contender for album of the year if you don’t have a solid first song. Valerie June has delivered just such an album with Owls, Omens, and Oracles, and it comes complete with an incandescent beam that radiates pure bliss in omnidirectional honey-colored waves for its side one, track one…As alluded to some 470 words ago, “Joy Joy” is not the only song on Owls, Omens, and Oracles. There’s 14 other tracks on the album, and all of them are at least worth hearing with most being either good or great. Like the album’s lead single, they employ sounds from the past, blend styles and genres, and get a major shot in the arm from June’s voice.
What I wrote: The album as a whole radiates the the sort of assaultive, welt-inducing energy that could conceivably come from a hornet disaster.4 The second full-length album by Swedish artist Sputnik using the Weatherday alias is a 16-song swarm of buzzing, stinging, often-angry emo-adjacent noise pop. It’s not a smooth listen, but for listeners who can connect with paint-peeling noise and sad boy whinging that occasionally bubbles over into omnidirectional wounded outbursts, there’s no finer substitute in 2025. That noise, likely to be fabulous to some and a deal-breaker to others, is Hornet Disaster‘s calling card. It’s a patina of vibrating discordance that envelopes just about every second of the album, like a huddled mass of peeved insects. Even the chipper opening moments of “Hornet Disaster,” which recall a similar upbeat greeting on Jane’s Addiction’s “Stop,” sound like they’re being delivered through the haunted — or just defective — intercom from Disco Elysium. Whether a song, like “Meanie” is built on hard-charging guitar pyrotechnics; indulges in some folktronica, like “Green Tea Seaweed Sea,” or leans into lovelorn signifiers with acoustic guitar, like “Heartbeats,” there’s a good chance that at least one instrument sounds like it’s being played through several of Sleigh Bells‘ discarded, blown-out amps…
While Hornet Disaster is always interesting and more often than not enjoyable, it does have a couple of weak points. The LP was winnowed down from a pool of 70 songs, and the cutting could’ve continued. There’s no outright clunkers on the album, but some of its 19 tracks are more equal than others. It’s easy to envision a tighter, more digestible version if the LP with no skippable tracks after some extremely light pruning.
The album’s other considerable drawback is Sputnik’s singing. Their voice isn’t bad, but it has a lamenting-but-flat quality reminiscent of Rivers Cuomo. That’s a voice that’s sold an improbably number of albums, but put to its best use on shorter LPs. Sometimes that relative blankness serves the material, sometimes it doesn’t. However, to the album’s immense benefit Sputnik, unlike Cuomo, seems comfortable letting their mask of stoic sanity slip in the form of a wounded wail or unhinged scream.1 The bigger the swing, the better it plays with the more-is-more production choices. The way the raw-throated Tasmanian devil shrieks at the end of “Hug” melt into frothing guitar din is wonderful. It’s rare that an album’s strengths and weaknesses can find common ground and complement each other, but Hornet Disaster is that kind of LP, and it turns any quibbles into minor blips drowned out by a wall of vespine vibes.
Best of the rest
When choosing a subject for this column, I usually try to pick something that I expect to get less attention than it deserves and that I can hope to write about somewhat intelligently. This winds up ruling a lot of albums out either because I expect them to be covered thoroughly and thoughtfully elsewhere, or because I didn’t feel up to coming up with a worthy approach to the subject. There’s also a handful of good-to-great releases I wrote about for other websites, and I never double-dip. But a rapid-fire rundown of LPs from the first half of this year that are worth your time feels appropriate. In no particular order, I heartily recommend:
Why things are only going to get better
The next three months are packed with promise, including my most anticipated LP of the year.
Sprints’ second album, All That Is Over, is slated to be released Sept. 26, and I could not possibly be more excited for a follow-up to my favorite album of 2024, Letter to Self. I expect to be a fan as long as they’re putting out music based on the strength of that album. The Dublin post-punkers are vital and fiery in a way that few bands equal, and Karla Chubb’s roar can give me goosebumps. But their LP isn’t the only thing on the horizon worth hyping.
Just this month, we’ll get a long-awaited reunion album from Clipse and a much-anticipated sophomore release from Wet Leg. Albums from Alex G, $ilkMoney and Tyler Childers also pique my curiosity.
August is set to feature a stacked and eclectic mix of Anamanaguchi, Big Freedia, JID, Osees, Molly Tuttle, Hunx and His Punx, Nourished By Time, the Beths, the Hives and Wolf Alice, among others. As someone who keeps a torch lit for the blog bands of yesteryear, likes Southern rap, enjoys Americana and is happiest blasting catchy guitar riffs directly into my skull, that’s a lot to like.
September has a couple of the most hyped indie acts around, a solid slate of legacy acts and a few delightful oddballs on tap. Albums from Big Thief, David Byrne, Cut Copy, Shame, Baxter Dury, Liquid Mike, Maruja, Black Lips, Wednesday, White Reaper and more are expected.
There’s a good dozen or so artists with albums coming out that could’ve made those capsule previews — Cate Le Bon, Nation of Language, Cardi B, CMAT, and Superchunk among others — which just underscores what an embarrassment of riches awaits.
There’s an excellent chance that by the end of December, my “good not great” assessment of this year will be woefully outdated.
About the writer
Ben Hohenstatt
Ben Hohenstatt is an Alaska-based dog owner who moonlights as a music writer and photographer.
For more information, consult your local library or with parental permission visit his website.
Tags for this article
More articles by Ben Hohenstatt
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Department of
Conversation
That’s a very good line-up for the upcoming months.
I’ve listened to at least a few of the ranked albums based on your column (though not as many as I intend to get to eventually), and I think my top three would be Bugs Forever (I’m probably the biggest defender of this album, but I can live with that; it hits me just right), Everything Changes Everything Stays the Same (especially “Ten Years” and “Feel Good Now”), and Owls, Omens, and Oracles (purely gorgeous). I suspect The Bug Club album will end up very high up on my list too, since I certainly like what I’ve heard of them so far.
I felt bad ranking Bugs Forever that low. It’s a pretty guileless little LP that tries something. I had to remind myself that aside from the Amazons’ album it’s a list of albums I like and something needs to be near the bottom.
What did we watch?
I’m turning into a guy who doesn’t watch things! Monday is usually cinema night but even the cool cinema I usually go to was devoting most of its screen time to Jurassic World Rebirth and I could not be bothered.
If music so far this year has been “good, not great,” the summer movie releases have certainly been “I could not be bothered.”
Same here, seen Sinners, Materialists, and that’s about it.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “Premonition” – I have a premonition that i will talk about this later in the week. Pretty good episode, though.
The Practice, “Reasonable Doubt” – The second season begins with actual episode titles – though man this one is trite for a legal show – and the addition to the cast of Lara Flynn Boyle as ADA Helen Gamble. While her addition opens paths for additional interpersonal relationships, I think it was mainly to have a steady face for the prosecutorial side of things and also so that there would be stories that focused on convicting bad guys instead of seeing them get let go. But this time out, it’s Bobby is working to clear a woman of murdering her neighbor. A neighbor she says tried to rape her. But as things go along, more doubts come up. And also…Bobby is involved with her, which is against lawyer ethics (as I confirmed last week after watching Jagged Edge). The focus of things is on Bobby, who is so pummeled by events that he can’t make himself do the closing argument. Dylan McDermott is very good, but the logic here is not. And at one point Bobby asks the client to take a polygraph test for his own peace of mind, insisting that while it’s not admissible, it’s still accurate. David E. Kelley should know better. Guest judge of the week is Ron Glass between Barney Miller and Firefly.
I believe your premonition will be accurate! (You’ll probably get to defend this one a little: as you’ll see, I think it has promise but doesn’t work as well as it could.)
Polygraph tests being treated as accurate and conclusive is one of those things guaranteed to get me frothing at the mouth; agreed that Kelley should’ve known better, especially when characters were already acknowledging they’re not admissible. There’s a reason for that!
The Kids In The Hall, Season Three, Episode Twelve
– “Come on Phil, stop embarassing yourself. Everyone knows it’s you fishing for compliments.”
– “I know in my heart of hearts I am who I claim to be.”
– “It’s times like this I just don’t wanna be a f–. Sorry, excuse me for sounding bitter.”
– “I think he was cheating on me. His nickname for me was ‘Next’.”
– “All of a sudden, that strange new army of penises, which moments before had seemed so innocent, now appeared to me as poison-tipped sabers aimed at my heart.”
– “She let me pet her cat. If you think I’m going to make a pussy joke, you’re sadly mistaken.”
– “Can I help you?” / “Yes.” / “Well, that’s a start.”
– Kevin McDonald asking for a tea and driving Mark McKinney’s clerk nuts is hilarious to me, especially given I’ve been on Kevin’s side in that conversation (“Say, ‘give me a tea, you bastard’.”)
– “I’m not offended, that would be common.”
– “I like your hat.” / “It’s a tiara, but thanks.”
The X-Files, “E.B.E.” and “Miracle Man”
“E.B.E.” is a fantastic episode, one of the best alien-centric stories of the season so far. It makes superb use of Deep Throat: Jerry Hardin has such a gently world-weary, cynical, and amused presence, and cracking that open here to reveal to Mulder both a possible truth (he’s atoning for his own brutal part in the conspiracy) and a tangle of lies and manipulations is the show doing its ambiguity right. The idea of Mulder and Scully witnessing a rescue mission at the truck is so cool that I felt really upended and surprisingly betrayed, just like them, to realize that it had been faked. Lots of great details in this one. And the introduction of the Lone Gunmen!
Also, I love Mulder and Scully getting even further into a Starsky and Hutch-like “So who do we trust, huh?” “Like always, me and thee” relationship.
“Miracle Man” isn’t as good as “E.B.E.,” but it’s still solid: I solved the mystery part fairly early on, too, so I got to feel pleased with myself. (Cheaply so, probably, since it’s not like this show is known for actual murder mysteries, but still.) Good guest work from Scott Bairstow–he’s costumed and styled like he could be annoying (that chain! that soul patch!) but actually delivers an affecting, sincere performance. I was expecting the end to include an unverified story that he’d stopped by post-resurrection–maybe in a dream–and healed the sheriff’s wife’s arthritis after all, and I like that the show went in the much bleaker direction of her now feeling like her husband stopped her from getting a badly needed miracle and finding out he killed the miracle worker.
Mulder, you’re imagining your sister in one of the most haunted child outfits possible. It’s eerie.
Hell yeah the Lone Gunmen!
That’s such a crucial part of the show, that Mulder and Scully come to only trust each other and truly mean it.
The Rehearsal, S2E1 – Continues the balance of comedy and social terror while also directly commenting on how to walk this tightrope, Fielder is diving into a not especially funny subject – plane crashes – but finding new insight into their cause that resembles anarchist critique (the second pilot is concerned about contradicting the first pilot, which results in grievous error) as well as a mirror in relationship drama. This meta-commentary almost gets obnoxious but the latter part is still really insightful and bleakly funny, and I’m willing to take this journey with Nathan.
Nathan Fielder should’ve known he was autistic the minute he says to Goglia, “I’ve been studying the transcripts as a hobby.”
The Perks of Being a Wallflower – It’s easy to get distracted by where this fails, especially since those moments are the first fifteen minutes (where the characters we will grow to love are introduced being just annoying) and the final fifteen minutes (where Chbosky the filmmaker loses to Chbosky the novelist and the road laid out in the book leads to a place too overwrought for what the movie became). But I prefer to remember it for for the good, long section in the middle where everything cooks nicely. For a time the movie is the better version of lesser tropes – Watson’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl is someone whose charms come from being a real character and not just an appendage to our protagonist, that protagonist feels recognizably awkward in his stages of growth instead of put-upon by Our Tragic World (contributing to the hat-on-a-hat feeling of the ending), and minus an unfunny introduction the Gay Best Friend seems like a great hang rather than a stereotype. And it presses the nostalgia buttons lightly, but I couldn’t help smiling at a time when you could hear a Bowie song on the radio and take months to figure out what it was.
Has there ever been another instance of a novelist writing the adaptation of their own novel and directing it? The Ploughwoman came up with Stephen King, but I don’t think Maximum Overdrive was a book first? I’m pretty sure Elia Kazan adapted one of his lousy books, but he was a filmmaker before a novelist.
Okay, looks like Maximum Overdrive was based on a short story, so maybe the closest precedent.
Hellraiser!
Really a shame Barker didn’t do more directing. There’s a lot of vision behind Hellraiser.
Agreed! I really love Nightbreed too, he did a great job bringing the weird ideas to the screen (admittedly, with the help of some of the best practical FX people ever to do it).
Yeah, I think Lord of Illusions and Nightbreed really killed his film career – he talked about Illusions bombing, assuming he could do another one, and being informed that no, that was it.
Aha! That would work. Chbosky is merely the first non-horror writer to do it. That I’m aware of.
The Great Train Robbery, Michael Crichton?
(I kind of assumed he adapted more of his own novels but it looks like for the most part he did not)
Didn’t realize he directed that one!
Also, Norman Mailer (Oh, God!, Oh, Man!)
Was not familiar with this.
I enjoyed this movie. I think it came the closest to capturing the heart of a John Hughes movie.
That’s a good comparison – an update on those kinds of movies without trying to steal its style.
What did we listen to?
1001 Albums, etc.:
David Bowie – Low: My favourite Bowie and an easy 10/10 on my nerdy spreadsheet tracking this project. Love the pop stuff (“Sound and Vision” is a contender for my favourite Bowie song too) and the Eno-collaboration ambient stuff is gorgeous.
Steely Dan – Aja: Enjoyed this quite a bit, I liked the first Steely Dan on the list and then the next two left me a little cold but this one has some great songs and lush production. “Peg” is deservedly one of their best-known songs.
Wire – Pink Flag: Hugely influential and kind of a fun listen but I definitely prefer my punk with a few more hooks – the bands influenced by (early) Wire these days are the ones where I enjoy the live show but don’t buy the album.
John Martyn – One World: Initially found this odd and offputting but it grew on me, Martyn’s unusual voice and the swirling arrangements ended up winning me over.
Talking Heads – 77: There are a bunch of Talking Heads songs that I love and I’m a huge fan of Stop Making Sense but I haven’t really explored the albums. This one was enjoyable but I feel like I’m gonna get more out of their other appearances on the list. “Psycho Killer” rules though obviously.
Screen Drafts, “Action Comedy” – a huge topic but they decided to just do a standard top 7 rather than an expanded draft, and with two new-to-the-show drafters. The results were interesting, some huge omissions (no Shane Black, no Jackie Chan) but the picks that did make it were passionately defended.
“Sound And Vision” isn’t my favourite Bowie song, but it’s definitely up there. It’s somehow bubbly and feels like it’s got so much more going on than it’s letting on.
Yeah there’s something magical and hard to define about it. And also a real sense of joy.
About to mention Screen Drafts in my WDWLT comment too, since you got me hooked on them, but yeah, the Action Comedy one was interesting for the combination of huge category + new drafters. Like you said, several big omissions, but I was glad to see Hot Fuzz getting some love. It was also cool listening to everyone trying to define action comedy as a genre.
Yeah Hot Fuzz is a great pick! And they definitely went further into defining the genre and scope of the list than most do, which made for a fun listen. I would rather have Demolition Man on my list than True Lies though!
Blue Cathedral, Comets on Fire
Noise rock with heavy walls of sound; the lyrics are usually hard to make out, and apparently the band considered them pretty inconsequential. Ordinarily, that would mean this wouldn’t work for me, but I actually found this really interesting to listen to, even though I was just sitting quietly and not doing any furious dancing. I like how many of the tracks would have a complete shift in style and feel partway through–I kept thinking I’d changed songs, but I hadn’t, it’s jus that the songs themselves had changed on me, making each one a journey rather than a set, definable thing.
Let It Come Down, Spiritualized
Another one of my favorite entries on the list so far. Beautiful, complex sound, beautiful lyrics, and I kept writing down my favorite songs and coming up with too many: in the end, I had “Do It All Over Again,” “Don’t Just Do Something,” “The Twelve Steps,” “The Straight and Narrow,” and “I Didn’t Mean to Hurt You.”
Demon Days, Gorillaz
I knew a little bit about the background to Gorillaz themselves, but I thought I’d never heard the music. Then “Feel Good Inc.” kicked in and I instantly recognized it and was completely swept up. Probably my favorite off the album (I’m sure the familiarity helps, of course), but I also really loved the mythic sweep of “Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head.” An album with a lot of energy, creativity, and verve.
Accelerate, R.EM.
This rocks. Another favorite off the list, though at least I had an easier time narrowing down my most-beloved tracks this time: “Accelerate” and “Supernatural Superserious.” I know all my music commentary is pretty trite, due to me not knowing what the fuck I’m talking about for the most part, but at least I can say that I loved this and am already looking forward to listening to it again.
Give Up, The Postal Service
This should have been absolutely my thing, but in fact, while I enjoyed the experience of listening to it, it slid off me in ways my favorites of this set didn’t. To my surprise, even though everything here is technically to my taste, the only song that really grabbed me was the “Clark Gable,” but I did like that a hell of a lot. I should go back to this one, because I think some of the others will stick more with time.
Van Lear Rose, Loretta Lynn
Very strong country album–I especially loved the first two songs, “Van Lear Rose” and “Portland, Oregon,” but “Miss Being Mrs.” is also a favorite–and I’m annoyed that I had to listen to this on YouTube because, per a YouTube comment I admittedly haven’t investigated further, Lynn’s family and rights-holders won’t put the album back into regular circulation because they don’t like the rock elements that came from Lynn working on this with Jack White. But it sounds great! And it seems like a real disrespect for Lynn and her choices to shun a collaboration she clearly chose! Anyway, that’s infuriating, but this album is very good.
DJ-Kicks, Erlend Øye
There’s no way the highlight isn’t “2D2F,” which absolutely delighted me and had me laughing out loud, but of the slower, sweeter tracks, I especially liked “Poor Leno (Silikon Soul Remix)/There Is a Light That Never Goes Out (Acapella)” and “Lullaby/A Place in My Heart (Acapella).”
Screen Drafts, “Alfred Hitchcock Mega Draft, Part I-III” and “Action Comedy”
vomas mentioned the Hitchcock Mega Draft on last week’s Streaming Shuffle post and probably didn’t realize that in doing so, he’d commandeer a huge amount of time in the future, but here we are. The Hitch Mega Draft is where I started, and it’s a great introduction to the podcast’s various appeals: smart people talking knowledgeably about film, gameplay (it’s especially fun on this three-parter, where they sometimes veto picks to try to kick them further up the ladder, knowing that they’re risking them not being chosen at all), drafter interactions. This got me so excited about all the Hitchcock films I still haven’t seen that I promptly shelled out for two separate Blu-ray box sets chockful of gaps in my Hitchcock knowledge. Apparently I really need to see The Trouble with Harry.
Also partway through the Time Loop episode now.
The huge drafts are definitely a lot of fun – I came to the podcast via Blank Check so I think I started with the Pixar superdraft, which is six hours long! The split mega-filmmaker ones have that extra twist of the sections of the list being handled by different people though and the extra fun of not knowing who will be on the same page if you launch a favourite into the next tier. It’s a huge time sink podcast for sure, haha.
I really liked The Trouble With Harry too!
The funniest part of the Pixar one is how the group screws up their vetos and allows the single Monster’s Inc hater to put it near the bottom of the list (several spots under Monster’s University even). The shock and disappointment is palpable.
Haha I’d forgotten that.
I… erm… may actually prefer University myself, as it happens. But luckily nobody is inviting me on a podcast to defend that opinion.
That’s the kind of thing that makes me really want us to have some mass Magpie draft game. If we can ever have an in-person convention (and a lot of booze to go with it), this should be on the menu.
If you liked Blue Cathedral, I’d recommend Heron Oblivion s/t. The last song, “Your Hollows,” especially.
That’s a great list of Spiritualized songs.
“Supernatural Superserious” is my favorite on Accelerate, too, although the first two tracks are pretty close up there for me. Really incredible that R.E.M. made such a rocking album after their previous three.
I guess I have somewhat familiar feelings to you on Give Up, or it would have ranked higher. As I mentioned somewhere in that series, my favorite “Postal Service” song is actually a Dntel song with Ben Gibbard. (That Dntel album on the whole is pretty good, if you’re more interested in Jimmy Tamborello’s side of the project than Gibbard’s.) I will say there are some side songs that might be worth checking out and that apparently show up on the anniversary edition– I’m thinking of their cover of “Against All Odds,” and you may or may not like Iron & Wine covering “Such Great Heights” or The Shins covering “We Will Become Silhouettes.”
“2D2F” is hilarious, but my favorite from that album is still “Rubicon.”
I’ve heard that “Such Great Heights” cover before and liked it! I’ll have to check out The Shins one as well, plus the Dntel.
Did a deep dive into a Mississippi Masters delta blues comp and then into two queer blues guitarists, L.V. “Elvie” Thomas and Geechie Wiley*, which then resulted in reading this incredible piece of journalism and archival history: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/13/magazine/blues.html
Six songs in all, recorded in a cold Wisconsin studio, extraordinary music that by default now sounds like the work of ghosts but is also very alive and joyous even when it’s sad.
*the two women were in fact from Texas.
Oh, and Yaya Bey is good! Thanks Media Magpies!
So excited for the new Beths album! I haven’t spent nearly as much time with new music this year as the last few for various reasons (the 10001 Albums listening, more meetings at work, plus some harder to define stuff) but I definitely need to check out a few more from this list.
So far I only really have two albums that are locked-in to define 2025 for me:
Baths – Gut: I posted about this a little when it came out but the previous Baths album “Romaplasm” is a contender for my favourite album ever and the remarkable thing about “Gut” is that it lived up to my hype, I think Will Wiesenfeld is one of the best electronic songwriters around and I’m annoyed that this only got a US vinyl release that I can’t really justify the extortionate cost of importing.
Hour – Subminiature: I’ve mentioned these too, but they’re a Philly band / collective based around one guy who composes beautiful instrumental songs and then gets a big group of friends to flesh them out. This is a live album which wouldn’t normally grab my attention as much as the “proper” releases but somehow it works perfectly for their sound, and the way they play things differently depending on how many of the expanded lineup are available is fascinating.
In other related / “huh” news, I was digging through the Quietus “albums of the year so far” list yesterday and the person I’m currently dating’s band made the top 20! So cool 🥰
https://thequietus.com/tq-charts/albums-of-the-year-so-far/the-quietus-albums-of-the-year-so-far-2025-in-association-with-norman-records/
Baths is coming to Connecticut in September! I’ll have to see if I can make it.
And aww/ooh to the top 20 position for the person you’re seeing!
Oh nice! He has a great stage presence which isn’t always a given with electronic music, definitely worth seeing if you can make it!
Baths is definitely on my to-listen list. I’ve liked his past stuff, so I’m sure I’ll be into it.
Ditto the Saba and No ID album that dropped earlier this year. I made time for Ringo Starr, but not that? Hmm…
Dating someone on the Top 20 of the Quietus is top-tier Two Truths and a Lie fodder if you’re in a crowd who knows about the Quietus!
Haha definitely! I’m living the (very specific) dream.
Just a reminder that Happy Hour starts at 5 Pacific Time tonight. Please forward an email to me ([email protected])) if you are new or have changed your address since last time. See Ya there.
Dead Pioneers, that’s local to here, innit? Good stuff if you like overt agitprop punk. Probably my favorite local music of the year so far is the Velveteers, who I guess I’d describe as a post-punk sound, but whatever you’d call it, it’s right up my alley.
The Beaches have a new album coming later this year and that might be the one I’m most excited for. They already have a video out for “Last Girls at the Party”:
https://youtu.be/2wU-wN1t1Eg?si=Mo-D3IZqta4EOs2x
There are quite a few things I could mention in your own list, but I did want to highlight “Luke & Leanna,” since it’s nice to see Craig Finn tell some stories that (much as I love Separation Sunday) aren’t about the same group of characters in the Party Pit in Minneapolis or whatever. Adult relationships! How novel.
I was gonna post a list of some of my favorite songs of the year so far, as a little treat for our daily readers, but I’m on my phone and that would take way too long. So instead I’ll just mention DARKSIDE’s “S.N.C,” still the hottest shit of the year.
I should add from your “best of the rest” that I do like the one Hotline TNT song I’ve heard, and I’m considering the Perfume Genius and Horsegirl songs for the year-end writeup as well.