Sunday, April 30, 2023
Lawrence Burney and I reminisced about 't
Deep Album Cuts Vol. 310: The Spinners
Friday, April 28, 2023
The Spinners have been nominated for the 2023 class of the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame, alongside Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, Iron Maiden, Joy Division/New Order, Cyndi Lauper, George Michael, Willie Nelson, Rage Against The Machine, Soundgarden, A Tribe Called Quest, The White Stripes, and Warren Zevon. The Spinners have been eligible for decades, the second-longest of any of those artists after Willie Nelson, and I feel like they don't have great odds of being inducted this year, but I'd love to be proven wrong, they certainly deserve it. It'd be great to see Henry Farmbrough, the only living member of the classic Spinners lineup, receive that honor while he's still among us.
The Spinners deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):
1. Tomorrow May Never Come
2. Like A Good Man Should
3. I've Got To Find Myself A Brand New Baby
4. Pay Them No Mind
5. We Belong Together
6. Just Can't Get You Out Of My Mind
7. Since I Been Gone
8. Ain't No Price On Happiness
9. He'll Never Love You Like I Do
10. Smile, We Can Have Each Other
11. There's No One Like You
12. I Don't Want To Lose You
13. Just As Long As We Have Love with Dionne Warwick
14. Four Hands In The Fire
15. Now That We're Together
16. I Found Love (When I Found You)
17. I'm Tired Of Giving
18. Once You Fall In Love
19. One, One, Two, Two, Boogie Woogie Avenue (Home Of The Boogie, House Of The Funk)
20. I'm Takin' You Back
Tracks 1 and 2 from The Original Spinners (1967)
Tracks 3 and 4 from 2nd Time Around (1970)
Track 18 from From Here To Eternally (1979)Tracks 5 and 6 from Spinners (1973)
Tracks 7, 8 and 9 from Mighty Love (1974)
Tracks 10 and 11 from New And Improved (1974)
Tracks 12 and 13 from Pick Of The Litter (1975)
Tracks 14 and 15 from Happiness Is Being With The Spinners (1976)
Track 16 from Yesterday, Today, & Tomorrow (1977)
Track 17 from 8 (1977)
Track 19 from Dancin' And Lovin' (1979)
Track 20 from Love Trippin' (1980)
The Spinners, sometimes known as The Detroit Spinners or The Motown Spinners, formed in 1954, but they took a while to hit their stride. The group debuted in 1961 and spent their first decade on Motown and its associated sublabels. They released many singles but only two albums in that time, including "Like A Good Man Should," written by Smokey Robinson on their debut. The Spinners' biggest hit of their Motown era was the Stevie Wonder-penned "It's A Shame." Then Aretha Franklin lured the group to Atlantic, and they abandoned an unfinished third Motown album that Stevie Wonder was producing, which is one of those what-if projects that I wish had been completed.
Despite being from Michigan, The Spinners, ultimately became associated with Philly Soul after recording a series of albums with producer Thom Bell at Sigma Sound Studios, spawning a string of gold albums and crossover pop hits. Bell passed away in December 2022, and he produced every album from Spinners to From Here To Eternally. The Spinners' only #1 on the Hot 100 was 1974's "Then Came You" with Dionne Warwick, and a year later they worked together again on "Just As Long As We Have Love," which features uncredited Warwick vocals. The Spinners have released half a dozen albums since the '70s, but some of them aren't on streaming services. And their last major hit was on 1980's Love Trippin' so that seemed like a good place to end the playlist.
The Spinners, like many classic soul groups of the '70s, have become popular with hip hop producers over the years. "I'm Tired Of Giving" was sampled on the classic Mobb Deep deep cut "Up North Trip." "I Don't Want To Lose You" was sampled on Monica's hit "Until It's Gone." "We Belong Together" was sampled by Rakim, Freeway, and The Game. "I Found Love (When I Found You)" was sampled by Musiq Soulchild, Blxst, and Quasimoto. "Since I Been Gone" and "Smile, We Have Each Other" were sampled by Madlib. "Ain't No Price On Happiness" was sampled by MF Doom and Todd Edwards. And "He'll Never Love You Like I Do" was sampled by Teyana Taylor and Kanye West.
The First 1/3rd Of The 2020s
Thursday, April 27, 2023
When we get 3 years and 4 months into a decade, I like to make lists of my favorite records of the decade so far, kind of a progress point that I can refer back to, particularly at the end of the decade (I also did it 10 and 20 years ago).
My Top 33 Albums Of The 2020s So Far:
1. Halsey - If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power
2. Ashley McBryde - Never Will
3. Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia
4. Jazmine Sullivan - Heaux Tales, Mo' Tales
5. Young Dolph - Rich Slave
6. Vince Staples - Ramona Park Broke My Heart
7. Beyonce - Renaissance
8. Sam Fender - Seventeen Going Under
9. Hayley Williams - Petals For Armor
10. Megan Thee Stallion - Something For Thee Hotties
11. Aoife O'Donovan - Age of Apathy
12. Carly Pearce - 29: Written In Stone
13. Lil Baby - My Turn
14. The 1975 - Being Funny In A Foreign Language
15. Chloe x Halle - Ungodly Hour
16. Nas - Magic
17. Lucky Daye - Candydrip
18. Brandi Carlile - In These Silent Days
19. Fishboy - Waitsgiving
20. Julia Jacklin - Pre Pleasure
21. Fiona Apple - Fetch The Bolt Cutters
22. Zach Bryan - American Heartbreak
23. Denzel Curry - Melt My Eyez See Your Future
24. Turnstile - Glow On
25. Olivia Rodrigo - Sour
26. Illiterate Light - Sunburned
27. Tinashe - 333
28. Isaiah Rashad - The House Is Burning
29. Harry Styles - Harry's House
30. The Nels Cline Singers - Share The Wealth
31. Fall Out Boy - So Much (For) Stardust
32. Low - Hey What
33. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Changes
My Top 33 Singles Of The 2020s So Far:
1. Chloe x Halle - "Do It"
2. Dua Lipa - "Don't Start Now"
3. Roddy Ricch - "The Box"
4. Giveon - "Heartbreak Anniversary"
5. Beyonce - "Break My Soul"
6. Olivia Rodrigo - "Deja Vu"
7. Megan Thee Stallion - "Plan B"
8. Lil Baby - "Emotionally Scarred"
9. Harry Styles - "Adore You"
10. Wizkid f/ Tems - "Essence"
11. Jazmine Sullivan - "Pick Up Your Feelings"
12. Adele - "Easy On Me"
13. Pop Smoke - "Dior"
14. Sabrina Carpenter - "Nonsense"
15. Chris Stapleton - "You Should Probably Leave"
16. The 1975 - "If You're Too Shy (Let Me Know)"
17. Moneybagg Yo - "Time Today"
18. Cardi B f/ Megan Thee Stallion - "WAP"
19. Lola Brooke f/ Billy B - "Don't Play With It"
20. Harry Styles - "As It Was"
21. The Weeknd - "Blinding Lights"
22. Paramore - "This Is Why"
23. Olivia Rodrigo - "Good 4 U"
24. Ari Lennox - "Pressure"
25. Baby Keem f/ Kendrick Lamar - "Family Ties"
26. Drake f/ Lil Durk - "Laugh Now Cry Later"
27. 24kGoldn f/ Iann Dior - "Mood"
28. Cody Johnson - "Til You Can't"
29. GloRilla f/ Cardi B - "Tomorrow 2"
30. Migos f/ YoungBoy Never Broke Again - "Need It"
31. JNR Choi f/ Sam Tompkins - "To The Moon"
32. Foo Fighters - "Making A Fire"
33. DaBaby f/ Roddy Ricch - "Rockstar"
My Top 33 Films Of The 2020s So Far:
1. Shiva Baby
2. Annette
3. The Banshees Of Inisherin
4. The Invisible Man
5. Barb & Star Go To Vista Del Mar
6. Windfall
7. The Menu
8. Sound Of Metal
9. Censor
10. The Northman
11. Women Talking
12. Barbarian
13. Emily The Criminal
14. The French Dispatch
15. Palm Springs
16. Spontaneous
17. The Power Of The Dog
18. Triangle Of Sadness
19. Da 5 Bloods
20. Pieces Of A Woman
21. Summer Of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
22. The Sparks Brothers
23. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
24. The Green Knight
25. No Sudden Move
26. Tenet
27. The Tragedy Of Macbeth
29. Do Revenge
30. Nomadland
31. Malignant
32. X
33. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
My Top 33 TV Series Of The 2020s So Far:
1. What We Do In The Shadows (FX)
2. Succession (HBO)
3. Abbott Elementary (ABC)
4. South Side (HBO Max)
5. I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson (Netflix)
6. Ted Lasso (Apple TV+)
7. Only Murders In The Building (Hulu)
8. Teenage Bounty Hunters (Netflix)
9. Servant (Apple TV+)
10. Ramy (FX)
11. Hacks (HBO Max)
12. Yellowjackets (Showtime)
13. Severance (Apple TV+)
14. Infinity Train (Cartoon Network/HBO Max)
15. Evil (CBS)
16. The Boys (Amazon Prime)
17. Station Eleven (HBO Max)
18. Mare of Easttown (HBO)
19. Corporate (Comedy Central)
20. Love Life (HBO Max)
21. Reservation Dogs (FX)
22. Harley Quinn (HBO Max)
23. Miracle Workers (TBS)
24. The Magicians (SyFy)
25. Amsterdam (HBO Max)
26. The Queen's Gambit (Netflix)
27. Bob's Burgers (FOX)
28. Devs (FX on Hulu)
29. Heels (Starz)
30. Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (HBO)
31. The Sex Lives of College Girls (HBO Max)
32. Party Down (Starz)
33. Dead To Me (Netflix)
Despite all the dozens of lists of music and TV lists I've posted over the years, this is actually the first time I've ever posted any kind of ranked list of movies on here ever (part of it is I don't consider myself a film buff with a ton of confidence in my taste, part of it is that I don't go to the theater much so it'd be hard to do a year-end list in December). I've been slowly working on movie lists for different decades, though, those will happen eventually.
Deep Album Cuts Vol. 309: New Order
Wednesday, April 26, 2023
New Order and Joy Division have been nominated, together, for the 2023 class of the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame, alongside Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, Iron Maiden, Cyndi Lauper, George Michael, Willie Nelson, Rage Against The Machine, Soundgarden, The Spinners, A Tribe Called Quest, The White Stripes, and Warren Zevon.
The joint nomination of two bands with shared members is pretty unusual for the Hall, it's only really happened a couple times before. Parliament-Funkadelic was inducted act in 1997, that was kind of a no-brainer, they'd been touring as one act for decades by that point and it was always kind of a farce that they were ever formally two different bands. The Small Faces and Faces were inducted together in 2012, and I guess that one worked out well enough, they probably didn't quite have the juice to get in separately. The same goes, I suppose, for Joy Division and New Order. I understand changing the name (although it's pretty unfortunate that both names have Nazi/concentration camp connotations). But you can imagine if they kept the name after Ian Curtis's death, and been formally the same band all the while, like Pink Floyd with and without Syd Barrett. For my part, though, I feel like Joy Division had a really small discography of just 2 albums that sort of stand on their own and don't need the deep cuts treatment, so I'll just focus on New Order for this playlist.
2. Dreams Never End
3. Age Of Consent
4. Your Silent Face
5. Sunrise
6. Love Vigilantes
7. Elegia
8. Weirdo
9. All Day Long
10. Vanishing Point
11. Dream Attack
12. Everyone Everywhere
13. Avalanche
14. Turn My Way
15. Working Overtime
16. I'll Stay With You
17. Unlearn This Hatred
Tracks 1 and 2 from Movement (1981)
Tracks 3 and 4 from Power, Corruption & Lies (1983)
Track 17 from Music Complete (2015)Tracks 5, 6 and 7 from Low-Life (1985)
Tracks 8 and 9 from Brotherhood (1986)
Tracks 10 and 11 from Technique (1989)
Tracks 12 and 13 from Republic (1993)
Track 14 from Get Ready (2001)
Track 15 from Waiting For The Sirens' Call (2005)
Track 16 from Lost Sirens (2013)
Joy Division frontman committed suicide in May 1980, and Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, and Bernard Sumner decided pretty quickly to carry on making music together, playing their first show less than 3 months later. All three members took turns trying out singing, with Sumner ultimately getting the lead singer position, although "Denial" is one of two songs on the band's debut with Hook on vocals. For me the vocals are always the weakest aspect of New Order's music, but Sumner has had some moments, and the band's instrumentation is often pretty gorgeous and original (but then I feel that way about Joy Division too, to be honest). The new trio added Morris's girlfriend (later wife) Gillian Gilbert on keyboards, which became a really fruitful decision as the band moved in a synth-heavy direction.
After I wrote about Depeche Mode recently, my uncle Greg was asking me about my favorite Depeche Mode and New Order songs, I guess he's big on that whole era. Greg's favorite New Order song is "Love Vigilantes," but I had a hard time thinking of one on the spot and said "Bizarre Love Triangle" or "Perfect Kiss." Now that I've finished this playlist, I might say "Age of Consent" or "Weirdo." In a way I supposed those are the two bands that really bridged the divide between alternative rock and dance music the most in the '80s, with Depeche Mode starting in a synth pop mode and incorporating darker rock sounds and New Order starting as a rock band and gradually getting more club-friendly.
It was pretty common, especially in the UK, for rock bands to release a lot of non-LP singles between albums in the '60s, '70s, and '80s. And a lot of New Order's best known songs are non-album singles like "Blue Monday" and "Ceremony" that were collected on the 1987 compilation Substance, which is the band's highest selling album in the US and the UK, platinum in both territories. In fact, no singles were released from New Order's first two albums, although "Age of Consent," the opening track from Power, Corruption & Lies, has become one of the band's most popular tracks. It gets a lot of streams and has appeared in more TV shows and movies than any other song by the band, I was kind of surprised to see it never charted and doesn't appear on most of their compilations.
"Your Silent Face" and "Love Vigilantes" feature Bernard Sumner tooting on a melodica in a style that Damon Albarn later turned into an interminable schtick. Technique is one of those odd albums where all the deep cuts are far better than all the singles. "Avalanche" is one of a few songs that features some vocals by Gillian Gilbert. Billy Corgan sings some guest vocals on "Turn My Way." The band has broken up a couple times since Republic, with Peter Hook leaving New Order in 2007. It's sad to think that those guys survived so much together to be on the outs now, hopefully they'll play together again this year if they're inducted into the Hall.
TV Diary
Tuesday, April 25, 2023
a) "Mrs. Davis"
"Mrs. Davis" was co-created by Tara Hernandez, whose filmography consists primarily of writing a combined 170 episodes of "The Big Bang Theory" and "Young Sheldon," and the more established Damon Lindelof. On "Lost," "The Leftovers," and "Watchmen," Lindelof has often gotten away with big complex plots with a lot of characters, overlapping stories in different timelines, and surreal mysteries. And compared to those shows, "Mrs. Davis" is much more focused on one character, a nun named Sister Simone played by Betty Gilpin. But it still manages to be kind of hard to follow, mainly because Simone is preparing to take down a powerful artificial intelligence program called Mrs. Davis that has changed how everybody lives, but you don't see Mrs. Davis in the first four episodes or much evidence of how it's changed the world. You mostly see a nun getting into strange adventures with an underground resistance led by her ex-boyfriend (Jake McDorman, getting to be weird after a lot of generic handsome guy roles). I like the show, but I hope the 'shock and awe' approach settles into a narrative I actually understand at some point.
b) "Slip"
I have enjoyed the features that Zoe Lister-Jones co-directed and co-wrote with her husband Daryl Wein, and the Roku series "Slip" is her first project since they divorced. And it definitely feels like a high concept "Russian Doll" sort of metaphysical comedy about marriage and divorce, with Lister-Jones as an unhappy married woman who has a one night stand, then wakes up in an alternative universe where she's married to the guy she slept with. Eventually, she realizes that she jumps into a different reality every time she has an orgasm, and kind of sleeps her way through the multiverse (declaring, eventually, "I think my pussy is a wormhole"). It's not as wacky as it may sound, though, it feels like a pretty emotionally grounded story that just happens to have an absurd premise.
c) "Jury Duty"
For a few years IMDb had a streaming service called IMDb TV, but last year Amazon rebranded it as Freevee, and it's a basically a free streaming service with ads within the Amazon Prime interface that's full of old shows and movies. So the little original programming on Freevee so far has been pretty B-list (a new show from Judge Judy, "Bosch" spinoffs), but "Jury Duty" is honestly one of my favorite shows of 2023 so far. It's in many respects a standard mockumentary sitcom, but with one little twist: one juror is just a regular guy, Ronald, who thinks he's in a documentary about jury duty and doesn't realize everyone else is an actor (except James Marsden, playing himself, but constantly behaving like an hilariously entitled Hollywood diva who thinks he shouldn't have to serve on jury duty). Considering that most of the cast needed to be unknowns for the concept to work, and they basically had to do everything in one take the actors are really fantastic, particularly Edy Modica and Todd Brown. And while I spent the first few episodes kinda wondering if the show needed Ronald or worrying that the whole thing was a little cruel to him, it wound up being really wonderful when the case ended and they revealed the truth to him, like genuinely heartwarming.
"The Big Door Prize" is a gently whimsical Apple TV+ dramedy about a small town where everybody shops at the same general store, and one day a mysterious arcade machine shows up in the store that gives users a card predicting their "life potential" in a single phrase. Chris O'Dowd's character is a teacher who's good at whistling, and his card says "teacher/whistler," but then his wife gets a card that says "royalty" -- so basically the results are all over the map and send everyone in the town into their own existential crises. It's a little silly but well written and I like the cast, particularly O'Dowd's wife, Gabrielle Dennis, who I also enjoyed on the otherwise forgettable "Rosewood" a few years ago.
"Animal Control" feels like a very standard FOX sitcom, like a lower stakes "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" about animal control workers instead of cops. But it's pretty charming, Joel McHale plays a cranky Jeff Winger type, and I'm glad Vella Lovell has rebounded to another solid show after the cancellation of "Mr. Mayor." Unfortunately, the scenes where they actually have to capture or help animals are usually really dumb and broad with bad puppetry or cheap CGI and often culminate in something corny like a character getting kicked in the nuts by a kangaroo.
Another show starring a "Community" alum, and sometimes Gillian Jacobs can't help but remind me of Britta, but "Transatlantic" is a pretty different kind of show, a WWII period piece about a committee that helped rescue artists and intellectuals from Nazi-occupied parts of Europe. Considering the subject matter, it's actually not that dark a show though, doesn't feel like it's going for really thorough historical accuracy but it's engaging and well written.
A guy who's a career criminal hooking up with a woman who's a federal agent, without either of them knowing what the other does for a living, is a decent storyline for the first episode of a series. But "Tulsa King" did it much better a few months before "The Company You Keep." And while Milo Ventimiglia is probably the biggest network TV sex symbol you could ask for right now to star in a show like this, "The Company You Keep" just kind of falls flat and feels too contrived a lot of the time. And much of the show ostensibly takes place in Baltimore but it feels really obvious they shot it somewhere else.
I mentioned recently when writing about Rob Lowe's new show with his son that "Schitt's Creek" actually being good has probably had a harmful effect on TV in general because now every aging star thinks they can make one of their kids a co-star on their show. And this sitcom about George Lopez and his daughter, played by his real life daughter, is just awful.
"The Crossover" is a decent Disney+ drama set in the world of youth basketball, but I can't help but compare it unfavorably to Apple TV+'s similarly themed "Swagger," which had a better cast and a more compelling story.
I thought the first season of "Schmigadoon!" was pretty good but I kind of forgot about it once it ended and didn't really think about whether it could ever come back for a second season. So I'm pleasantly surprised that the show returned and really revealed its full potential -- in season 1, Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key played a couple who stumbled into Schmigadoon, a real life Rogers & Hammerstein-style small town musical. And in season 2, they try to find Schmigadoon again and instead stumble into Schmicago, a city that lampoons Chicago and Cabaret and Sweeney Todd. So they've built a format where they can just parody a whole bunch of different kinds of musicals, with some hilarious original songs and an insanely great cast including Kristen Chenoweth, Tituss Burgess, and Ariana DeBose.
k) "Dave"
Lil Dicky's sitcom continues to be way better than it has a right to be, especially considering that it's all about Lil Dicky's actual life and music. The really remarkable thing, though, is that his real life hypeman Gata plays himself and is by far the most likable and compelling character in the whole show. The recent episodes with Jane Levy and Chloe Bennet were excellent, but the episode about touring in Texas felt really dumb and condescending. And the Rick Ross episode really felt like it played into every negative criticism of "Dave" as a broader, more obvious version of "Atlanta."
"American Auto" has really hit its stride in its second season and has allowed itself to be a little meaner, I think, it's more like "Veep" in a car company's corporate headquarters than Justin Spitzer's previous series "Superstore."
m) "Ghosts"
This show was silly from the beginning and I feel like it just gets sillier as it goes on, but Rose McIver really is fantastic and I think makes the show work better than it otherwise would, as the only character sort of living in both the spirit world and the material world.
n) "Sex/Life"
The first season "Sex/Life" depicted Sarah Shahi as a married woman who had an affair with an ex played by Adam Demos, and in real life Shahi filed for divorce shortly before the show started filming and began dating Demos. Considering that the entire appeal of the show was steamy scenes between the two hot stars, it feels like they oddly backed away from that in the shorter 6-episode second season, breaking up those characters and introducing subplots about other couples, and it didn't work at all, because the show got quickly canceled after that.
I keep trying to get my kids into "Bob's Burgers" because I feel like it's not that different from some of the animated sitcoms they watch like "Big City Greens," and I think it'll be a good gateway to them someday enjoying stuff like "The Simpsons." I haven't hooked them yet, but I feel it slowly happening. And of course, the show still makes me laugh, at this point it feels like very animated 'adult sitcom' stays on the air way too long but they are shockingly consistent in season 13.
I watched "Beavis & Butt-Head" faithfully back when I was a little teenage headbanger myself, and I still crack up remembering some of their video commentary from the '90s episodes. But I found the 2011 revival kind of depressing, especially when they'd watch reality shows and YouTube videos instead of music videos, and the latest revival is also at its worst when they watch YouTube. The music video segments are still pretty good, though, it's fun to see them comment on contemporary hits like "Industry Baby."
This Apple TV+ series is based on a Manga, and is about a woman who has to wine a wine tasting test to inherit her father's fortune and the world's most valuable wine collection -- but she's estranged from her father, sober, and has some kind of violent allergic reaction to wine. It's played as a very serious cable drama but the story feels very broad and simple and soap opera-ish, maybe would've worked better if it was animated.
Another show based on a Manga, but it feels like a live action adaptation was a better idea here, it's a more grounded story about friendship and food.
An Italian series on Hulu about three women in a crime family who decide to bring down the mafia from the inside, I've only watched one episode but it seems pretty promising.
Lidia Poet was a real person, the first female lawyer in Italy in the late 1800s. This Netflix series feels like it's trying to make the story as sexy as possible, like the lead actress looks like Dua Lipa, she's insanely hot. Decent show though.
Netflix's "The Exchange" is based on a true story of two Kuwaiti women who became successful on the stock market in the '80s, another one I've only watched a little so far but it's a fascinating story.
Outside of the early boom years of "American Idol," it feels like country is the one genre where reality TV has launched a good number of viable music careers. And this Apple TV+ series created by Kacey Musgraves and Reese Witherspoon is pretty cool because they set out to celebrate the diversity of country music. The three judged include two of the most prominent Black country stars (Jimmie Allen and Mickey Guyton) and one of the most prominent queer country stars (Orville Peck), bringing country musicians from all over the place, including India and South Africa, to Nashville to play showcases and work on their craft. I kind of dislike how much of the show is just asking the musicians to do country covers of non-country songs, but there are a lot of talented and likable people on here, it's a cool show.
Another genre-focused music reality competition, Netflix's "The Signing" is about urbano/Latin trap music, which isn't really a world I know well, but it's cool to think that they're looking to discover the next Bad Bunny or something. And I'm glad I watched this with subtitles so I could hear the music as it's being performed but also understand the lyrics, the language barrier definitely holds me back from listening to more music with Spanish lyrics but it's pretty interesting to see what the lyrics are about, it feels topically distinct from American rap lyrics. I did roll my eyes pretty hard, though, when one woman said "I do something that I call 'sad reggaeton,' I make music to twerk to while crying."
A reality show where Eugene Levy is sent to different countries and is forced out of his shell to meet people and experience new things, it's a cute little show, sometimes he complains more than he should but you can see him opening his mind and trying to have a good attitude, which I relate to, I don't love traveling that much eiter.
y) "Cheat"
A British game show on Netflix with a confusing concept where contestants are given the opportunity to cheat, and win by manipulating other contestants, or knowing when other contestants cheated. Kind of fun to watch, but there's one stoic host and one really annoying co-host who mostly just says "was it a cheat? it wasn't a cheat!" every 30 seconds.
Season 48 has been pretty good, although I guess it may be over already if the WGA strike starts before the next episode. Mikey Day and Ego Nwodim kind of feel like the workhorse cast members in almost every sketch now and it's been cool to see them get their shine as cast members have left, but James Austin Johnson and Sarah Sherman and Bowen Yang and the Please Don't Destroy guys are definitely the people that have brought a new sensibility into "SNL" and I hope they all stick around for a while. I hate when athletes host but Travis Kelce was decent.
Deep Album Cuts Vol. 308: The White Stripes
Monday, April 24, 2023
The White Stripes have been nominated for the 2023 class of the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame, alongside Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, Iron Maiden, Joy Division/New Order, Cyndi Lauper, George Michael, Willie Nelson, Rage Against The Machine, Soundgarden, The Spinners, A Tribe Called Quest, and Warren Zevon. It's a great set of nominees, but The White Stripes feel like the only artist that I know is gonna sail in this year.
The White Stripes deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):
1. When I Hear My Name
2. Jimmy The Exploder
3. One More Cup Of Coffee
4. Suzy Lee
5. You're Pretty Good Looking (For A Girl)
6. Apple Blossom
7. Let's Build A Home
8. Why Can't You Be Nicer To Me?
9. I Think I Smell A Rat
10. The Union Forever
11. I'm Finding It Harder To Be A Gentleman
12. Aluminum
13. Ball And Biscuit
14. In The Cold, Cold Night
15. Black Math
16. Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine
17. Hypnotize
18. Instinct Blues
19. I'm Lonely (But I Ain't That Lonely Yet)
20. The Nurse
21. 300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues
22. I'm Slowly Turning Into You
23. Bone Broke
24. A Martyr For My Love For You
Tracks 1, 2, 3 and 4 from The White Stripes (1999)
Tracks 5, 6, 7 and 8 from De Stijl (2000)
Tracks 9, 10, 11 and 12 from White Blood Cells (2001)
Tracks 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 from Elephant (2003)
Tracks 18, 19 and 20 from Get Behind Me Satan (2005)
Tracks 21, 22, 23 and 24 from Icky Thump (2007)
It's interesting to think that The White Stripes are probably the most widely admired rock band to emerge in the last 30 years since Radiohead, if not Nirvana, in terms of being both popular and respected by people who hate most popular bands. I don't think it's anything that anyone would've expected from their early records.
I can't remember where I first started to hear about The White Stripes, but I was a college freshman who'd just started using Napster, and I downloaded a few songs from De Stijl that were my first experiencing hearing the band ("Apple Blossom," "Why Can't You Be Nicer To Me?" and "Hello Operator"). And it felt like they were part of that kind of proudly lo-fi retro side of '90s indie rock that seemed to have nothing to do with the mainstream alt-rock horse race, like they would maybe get as big as The Make Up or Jon Spencer Blues Explosion at best. So it kinda blindsided me when they became a giant platinum band not long after. White Blood Cells came out the same year that the movie Ghost World launched a thousand snotty hipster jokes about 'Blueshammer' every time a band played anything resembling a blues riff, which makes The White Stripes' enduring coolness all the more remarkable.
Six albums in under a decade was a pretty good run, they got to refine the original idea of the band, slowly introduce different elements without abandoning the minimalist aesthetic or adding other musicians, and make some hits while still remaining steadfastly weird. "Suzy Lee" from the band's debut is the first reference to Suzy Lee, also mentioned in "We're Going To Be Friends" and in the liner notes for Get Behind Me Satan. The original "One More Cup Of Coffee" also appeared on my Bob Dylan deep cuts playlist. Get Behind Me Satan is, I think, easily their weakest album, but I respect the attempt to pivot to more piano-heavy songs, and it definitely paved the way for Icky Thump, which I think was a great record to end with, one of their best in my opinion.
In March, a journalist I'd never heard of tweeted a stupid (but not exactly unusual) opinion about Meg White's drumming, and even though the guy very quickly deleted the tweet and locked his account, it became a whole overblown thing as often happens on Twitter, with various famous people including Jack White and his other ex-wife Karen Elson reacting. Clearly, Meg White's drumming is an essential part of the band's character. And while I enjoy some of Jack White's solo stuff with bigger bands and more polished percussion, that rough and loose duo dynamic sets The White Stripes way apart from just about every major label band of their generation (and I know plenty of drummers that wouldn't be able to play that 11/8 groove on "Aluminum"). It's a shame to see that stupid and sexist debate about her skill return, considering that the band seemed to end because of Meg's discomfort with public life and touring. I hope she's had a great life since leaving the spotlight 15 years ago. Like anyone I'd love to see her play a few songs with Jack at the Hall induction this year, but I'd understand if she didn't.
Deep Album Cuts Vol. 307: Television and Tom Verlaine
Friday, April 21, 2023
There are artists I love dearly who I generally don't consider for the deep album cuts for reasons like having a small catalog, or for being album acts who didn't really have hit singles. And Television only made three studio albums and never had much in the way of hits (although three of their '70s singles charted well in the UK, and 1992's "Call Mr. Lee" was a minor alt-rock radio hit). But after singer/guitarist Tom Verlaine died in January, I thought that maybe I should fold his first few solo albums into one discography with Television to take a look back at his incredible lifetime of work.
Television and Tom Verlaine deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):
1. Friction
2. See No Evil
3. Guiding Light
4. Elevation
5. Days
6. Careful
7. The Dream's Dream
8. Adventure
9. The Blow-Up
10. Breakin' My Heart
11. Kingdom Come
12. Red Leaves
13. There's A Reason
14. True Story
15. Swim
16. Song
17. The Rocket
18. 1800 Or So
Tracks 1, 2, 3 and 4 from Television's Marquee Moon (1977)
Tracks 5, 6 and 7 from Television's Adventure (1978)
Marquee Moon is, obviously, one of the greatest albums ever made. My friends and I would tape albums for each other in high school, and I was about 15 when my friend Scott made me a tape that had Marquee Moon on one side and A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory on the other, definitely the most influential cassette of my young life. For a long time, that was all I needed, because while the other major CBGB's acts like The Ramones, Talking Heads, Patti Smith and Blondie all had fairly long careers with large catalogs, Television split shortly after releasing their second album, and only released one more album after reuniting and intermittently touring over the last three decades.
Tracks 10, 11 and 12 from Tom Verlaine's Tom Verlaine (1979)
Track 13 from Tom Verlaine's Dreamtime (1981)
Track 14 from Tom Verlaine's Words From The Front (1982)
Track 9 from Television's The Blow-Up (1982)
Track 15 from Tom Verlaine's Cover (1984)
Track 16 from Tom Verlaine's Flash Light (1987)
Tracks 17 and 19 from Television's Television (1992)
Track 8 from Television's Adventure (Reissue) (2003)
Marquee Moon is, obviously, one of the greatest albums ever made. My friends and I would tape albums for each other in high school, and I was about 15 when my friend Scott made me a tape that had Marquee Moon on one side and A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory on the other, definitely the most influential cassette of my young life. For a long time, that was all I needed, because while the other major CBGB's acts like The Ramones, Talking Heads, Patti Smith and Blondie all had fairly long careers with large catalogs, Television split shortly after releasing their second album, and only released one more album after reuniting and intermittently touring over the last three decades.
Eventually, though, I did check out Television's other records and found things to love on them even if they never quite recaptured the magic of Marquee Moon. The reissue of Adventure features an outtake named "Adventure" that would've been one of the best songs on the album if they'd included the would-be title track, that one always confused me (Verlaine later used some lyrics from "Adventure" on his solo track "Red Leaves"). A few years after the band broke up, a 1978 live recording was issued as The Blow-Up, although the opening title track is actually a mislabeled cover of "Fire Engine" by The 13th Floor Elevators.
Most of Verlaine's solo albums featured Television's Fred Smith on bass, and Verlaine's self-titled solo debut featured a few songs that had kicked around in some form as Television songs, "Breakin' My Heart," which featured guitar by Ricky Wilson from The B-52's. "Kingdom Come" was covered by David Bowie on Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), although Bowie didn't use the guitar Verlaine himself recorded for the track. After Television reunited for its self-titled 1992 album, the band stayed together and continued gigging for decades, occasionally playing new songs. But a fourth album was supposedly recorded and never released, and Richard Lloyd (who also has some good solo albums) left the band in 2007, replaced by Jimmy Rip, who frequently collaborated with Verlaine. In fact, the only time I saw Verlaine live was when he played as a duo with Jimmy Rip, opening for Sonic Youth in 1998. This was about a year after that tape of Marquee Moon blew my mind, so I was excited just to be in the same room as the guy.
Wednesday, April 19, 2023
A nice write up of the Lithobrake EP on Prism Reviews. We're playing at Petworth Porchfest in D.C. on April 29th!
Monthly Report: April 2023 Singles
Tuesday, April 18, 2023 
1. Lainey Wilson - "Heart Like A Truck"
Lainey Wilson currently has two songs with "truck" in the title in the top 10 on country radio, which seems like it should automatically qualify her for some kind of special award at the CMAs. The other one, HARDY's "Wait In The Truck," is merely okay (a real accomplishment given some of the horrors in HARDY's catalog). But "Heart Like A Truck" is a great Jay Joyce production that manages to make its awkward simile feel rousing, although that "runs on dreams and gasoline" line sure is a strained mix metaphor (I always wondered if Pavement's "Heaven Is A Truck" was a parody of country music -- if it was, "Heart Like A Truck" would've functioned just as well as the title). The sheer force of the hook and Wilson's voice really elevate the song's premise, though, and of course I love that mellotron on the bridge. Here's the 2023 singles Spotify playlist I add songs to every month.
2. Coco Jones - "ICU"
When I named What I Didn't Tell You by Coco Jones my #1 EP of 2022 a couple months ago, I accurately predicted that "ICU" would probably hit the carts in 2023. I didn't realize that Coco Jones is playing Hilary Banks on "Bel-Air," though, it's cool to see her singing and acting careers both flourishing at the same time. DJ Camper has been making hits for over a decade now, definitely one of R&B's most underrated producers.
3. Ari Lennox - "Waste My Time"
"Pressure" became a hit a year and a half ago, so it feels like it's taken forever for Ari Lennox to get another Age/Sex/Location single on the radio (I think it was a mistake to push a song featuring Summer Walker when there was already a Summer f/ Ari song on the charts). So I'm glad that "Waste My Time" has taken off, definitely one of my favorites on the album.
4. Kelsea Ballerini - "If You Go Down (I'm Goin' Down Too)"
In February, Kelsea Ballerini released a headline-grabbing EP about her recent divorce, and I wondered if she was going to shift focus to that project and stop promoting her excellent 2022 album Subject To Change. So I'm pleased that the album's subversively funny second single has continued to rise up the country airplay chart and recently got a great video and a bold performance featuring drag queens at the CMT Awards.
5. Phony Ppl - "Nowhere But Up"
When Phony Ppl first broke through on R&B radio with "Fkn Around" a couple years ago, it was just exciting to see an R&B band besides The Internet getting traction, I wish there were a lot more in the mainstream like back in the '80s. "Nowhere But Up" definitely has a bit of an '80s vibe that works for them, too.
6. Bailen - "Call It Like It Is"
Bailen's debut Thrilled To Be Here was one of my favorite albums of 2019 and I'm really happy a follow-up is finally coming next month. The three songs released so far all great, especially "Call It Like It Is," which is kind of a sleek thing with a prominent bassline and a fat synth riff on the chorus, feels like a strong little step towards something that could get them more mainstream visibility, which I would love for them.
7. Demi Lovato - "Still Alive"
I'm glad that Demi Lovato is staying a hard rock lane after last year's Holy Fvck, and it was pretty inspired to pair her up with Mike Shinoda to write a song for the latest Scream movie. Shinoda has done solo stuff since Linkin Park ended but I could see him doing really well as a Travis Barker type who writes and produces for other bands or acts who want to go in a rock direction.
8. Jonas Brothers - "Wings"
Jonas Brothers have always had an up-and-down career of hits and misses and I never really understand why some songs hit big and others don't -- their last album's lead single "Sucker" went straight to #1 and their upcoming album's lead single "Wings" missed the charts. I really like it, though, it running under 2 minutes is surprising but it works. The video stars Haley Lu Richardson, who apparently mentioned being a huge Jonas Brothers fan while "The White Lotus" and got to meet and become friends with them, the video is super charming because she just seems to be having the greatest time.
9. Beabadoobee - "Perfect Pair"
Powfu's "Death Bed" is still, much to my chagrin, by far Beabadoobee's biggest commercial success. But 9 months after the release of Beatopia, "Perfect Pair" has crept up past "Care" to become Beabadoobee's biggest solo hit on alternative radio, and it's not a song that jumped out at me back when the album came out but it's a good one.
10. Wet Leg - "Angelica"
Wet Leg's two biggest songs, "Chaise Longue" and "Wet Dream," are catchy but both have lyrics that make my eyes roll straight out of my head. I wish "Angelica" was as popular as those songs because I think it's got their best chorus and I can live with its lyrics ("You've got sex appeal but I don't wanna follow you on the 'gram" only makes me cringe a little).
The Worst Single of the Month: Portugal. The Man - "Dummy"
Portugal. The Man's one big hit, 2017's "Feel It Still," has aged terribly for me, I actively change the station when it comes on the radio. And the lead single to their upcoming album feels like more of the same irritating chirpy falsetto pop rock, with the added irritant of an incredibly obnoxious loop of voices going "duhh duhh."
Reading Diary
Monday, April 17, 2023
Tom Breihan and I both got started as music writers at Baltimore City Paper around the same time in the mid-2000s, and when he still lived in Maryland I'd hang with him and his brother Jim. So I was really happy for Tom when he published his first book a few months ago, he's genuinely maybe the nicest person I know in this business and a great writer. And his Number Ones column for Stereogum is something I always look forward to reading three times a week, I will admit that I wasn't sure if someone who loves Rancid and Three 6 Mafia as much as Tom would take easily to the task of explaining the differences between, say, Mariah Carey's 19 #1 hits, but the column has just gotten better and better as it's gone on. I told him once I hoped every column would be collected in a book, but that would be a pretty massive tome. So understandably, this book is a bit more condensed, with chapters about 20 songs that sort of trace the story of the Hot 100 and American pop over the last 65 years, like the first Beatles #1 or "Crank That Soulja Boy." That format works pretty well, he's able to bridge the narrative of all the minor hits that led to a #1 and all the later #1s it paved the way for. I particularly like the early chapters like the Beach Boys one because there's a more pronounced difference from the earlier, shorter Stereogum columns. Tom put the acknowledgments at the end, so I was happily surprised to see that I got a shout out in the book after I had just finished reading it.
Susan Rogers was Prince's recording engineer from 1983 to 1987, and since Prince self-produced his albums and often played every instrument, that means Rogers was the only other person in the room when Prince made a lot of his greatest music -- the envy of every Prince fan, I think. And though Rogers has shared some great stories and insights about Prince in interviews, and there are a few sprinkled through this book, she's also a professor of cognitive neuroscience, and the book is a more ambitious thing about the how the human mind responds to music. I was a little disappointed to find that it wasn't 200 pages of Prince stories, but it's a really interesting book that it explores the topic from a number of different angles, I feel like it could be a good companion to Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks if one was teaching a course about the intersection of psychology and music or trying to learn a lot about that area. And the book opens with a really moving story about Rogers going to see Led Zeppelin at the L.A. Forum as a young woman, having to leave the show early because she was married to a controlling husband, and vowing she would be back someday doing live sound at the Forum, and years later she had divorced and achieved the career in music she dreamed of, and was back there engineering a live recording for Prince.
I grew up on Mel Brooks movies and really feel like he's one of the most significant figures who shaped my sense of humor and my family's sense of humor, so I picked this up one day just looking around a book store, and it's a good read. After a few introductory chapters about growing up during the depression and being drafted in WWII, most of the book is about his career, and there are great stories about pretty much every movie and major project (including producing things like The Elephant Man). Sometimes it feels like Brooks takes up too much of the book just describing scenes from his movies, but he really gets deep into how they were made, what his philosophies about comedy and filmmaking are, and fascinating stories. For instance -- John Wayne loved the Blazing Saddles script but didn't think it would fit his wholesome image to play The Waco Kid in the movie, and the actor initially cast for the role was an alcoholic who showed up unable to work on the first day of filming, so Gene Wilder flew out and started filming three days later and just immediately nailed the role. There's an awkward moment where Brooks details the entire beginning of his writing career with Sid Caesar in the '40 and '50s, and then sort of casually mentions that he'd been married for a decade and had three children, but was at that point about to get divorced (and then writes in great detail about meeting and marrying Anne Bancroft). Reminded me a little of how Elvis Costello's book barely mentions his first marriage.
I found a couple of old Amazon gift cards in my wallet recently, so I went on there and made some purchases, new drumsticks and a couple books to help with research on an article I was working on about The Dark Side Of The Moon. I've seen these big books that exhaustively detail the discography of a given classic rock act and always figured I'd like to have a Beatles book but it was kind of fun to get one for a band I know less about like Pink Floyd and dig in, it's a really huge beautiful book full of photographs and tons of information, I mostly read through the Dark Side stuff but have been jumping into other parts, it seems easier to jump around than read it front to back.
This is the other article I got while working on my piece, it's obviously focused on just the one album and is shorter and less fancy, there's some pesky typos here and there. But Southall has interviewed members of Pink Floyd and other people who were involved in the band and/or the album and he brings some great insight on the subject. I've always been fascinated by how this band kind of went from sort of a cult thing in America to just massive very quickly with this album, which is obviously great but very artsy and immersive. And it was cool to get a better understanding of how the stars aligned, how the band played Dark Side live a lot before recording it (and it was bootlegged and sold well), and tried to get out of their U.S. contract with Capitol and basically made the label pledge a lot of resources for promotion and wound up with a phenomenon, even before "Money" was released as a single.
Wednesday, April 12, 2023
Petworth PorchFest is on Saturday, April 29th in Washington, D.C., and Lithobrake will be one of the many bands performing on a porch that day. We'll be at 1226 Shepherd St. NW at 5pm. Our debut EP came out a couple months ago, but we're very excited to play a long set at PorchFest and preview new songs we've been recording for a full-length album.
Monthly Report: March 2023 Albums
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1. Fall Out Boy - So Much (For) Stardust
I think people often have a target in mind for a particular artist to hit, and they judge every new album by that. And I try not to think that way. Fall Out Boy already made what I consider to be a near perfect Fall Out Boy album, Folie A Deux, in 2008, but I haven't really minded that their 2010s albums were different things that irritated a lot of their fans (to be fair, a lot of those fans also disliked how different Folie A Deux was from their earlier records). So while I wasn't waiting around hoping for Fall Out Boy to reunite with producer Neal Avron and make an album essentially picking up where Folie A Deux left off, I must admit that I'm delighted that that's basically what they did with So Much (For) Stardust per recent interviews with the band. "What A Time To Be Alive" and "Hold Me Like A Grudge" are my favorites so far but I'm loving the whole thing. Here's the 2023 albums Spotify playlist that includes any new record I listen to this year.
2. Slaid Cleaves - Together Through The Dark
One day in February, I was driving home from band practice in heavy rain when a car rear-ended me. I only had some bumper damage, but I had to drive a rental for a week while it was getting fixed. Since I didn't have the pre-programmed radio stations I listen to in my car, I was flipping through the radio dial listening to random stations, and stumbled upon WKHS, a radio station that broadcasts out of a high school in Kent County, 90 minutes away, that got a new transmitter last year, and they were playing this guy Slaid Cleaves, a singer-songwriter from Maine and currently based in Austin, Texas. I liked what I heard and saw that the album they played a cut from was coming out in a couple weeks, and I wouldn't have heard this album if a guy hadn't hydroplaned and crashed into me on the BW Parkway. Cleaves writes these kinds of weary story songs full of sordid details and complex emotions that make me wonder whether this guy has lived a really hard life, just has a lively imagination, or if it's a bit of both.
3. Mimi Webb - Amelia
It's a shame this album missed the Billboard 200, it went top 5 in the UK and "Red Flags" and "Both Of Us" and "Remind You" are some of the catchiest pop songs I've heard this year, maybe she'll manage a sleeper hit in the U.S. eventually.
4. The New Pornographers - Continue As A Guest
Last summer I visited by brother Zac in Wisconsin and we saw The New Pornographers at Summer Fest, which really gave me a renewed appreciation for the band, who I'd never seen live and who Zac is a more diehard fan of than I am. Great show, and their new album feels like an interesting new chapter; even though New Pornographers are a 'supergroup' of talented people who all make their own records in different styles, when they assemble as one there's a certain bright power pop song they tend to make together. But Continue As A Guest has a much wider variety of tempos and textures, it was a quarantine album put together slowly in separate studios, and it feels a little slower and more experimental, in a good way, I love the title track and "Marie And The Undersea" and the other midtempo songs that feature a bit of saxophone. This is exactly the kind of shakeup a band should be able to go for on their 9th album.
5. Depeche Mode - Memento Mori
I kind of put this in the middle of my recent Spin ranking of every Depeche Mode album, which means it's damn good for a band that's been around for four decades. "Never Let Me Go" and "Don't Say You Love Me" are my early favorites, and "Ghosts Again" recently became the band's biggest alternative radio hit in the U.S. since "It's No Good" 26 years ago.
6. Beauty Pill - Abandonware
2015's Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are was one of my top 10 albums of the last decade, so I was excited to see that one of Beauty Pill's recent archival releases features outtakes from the sessions for that album (I also enjoyed January's Blue Period, which collects the band's work from the mid-2000s, but I already knew and loved most of the stuff on there). Abandonware is sort of a deliberately loose and casual collection of sounds and sketches, a little bit of Devin Ocampo's incredible drumming following by a recording of a small child saying the band's name over and over followed by a woozy remix of "When Cornered," followed by a few minutes of Chad Clark running the metallic clangs of his dog's water bowl through a variety of effects. To me, this stuff is as exciting as hearing tapes from the Sgt. Pepper's or Dark Side Of The Moon sessions, partly because I got to go to the studio one day and talk to the band about what they were doing, but there's still a sense of mystery and intrigue for me about how a lot of Describes Things was put together.
7. Aly & AJ - With Love From
Aly and AJ Michalka's second self-released album since reuniting a few years ago may be the best music of their career, they've really evolved nicely from their 2000s teen prodigy days. I love the slight country twang on "Blue Dress" and "Love You This Way," I'm starting to imagine an Aly & AJ & Maddie & Tae supergroup.
8. Burt Bacharach & Elvis Costello - The Songs Of Bacharach & Costello
When Burt Bacharach died in February, this box set had already been announced, 4 discs containing pretty much all of the music Bacharach made with the most important collaborator of the last few decades of his life. When I ranked Elvis Costello's catalog last year, I put Painted From Memory pretty high up there, and it remains a masterpiece. And the set also includes a few great previously unreleased songs they wrote together for an unrealized Broadway musical (the tracks sung by Audra Mae are fantastic), the Bacharach co-writes from Costello's 2018 album Look Now, and assorted other material of interest including the Costello covering "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself" back in 1977 on the first Attractions tour. I would've been excited about this set before Bacharach's death, but I'm especially glad to have it now.
9. Daisy Jones & The Six - Aurora
Making a TV show or movie about pop music with fictional artists is tricky because it often requires creating original songs that could plausibly be hits, at least in the time period it takes place. Great music can come from those kinds of projects -- That Thing You Do! is the gold standard, and of course Bacharach and Costello's first collaboration was "God Give Me Strength" from Grace of My Heart -- but it's rare. People have often compared the "Daisy Jones & The Six" series to Almost Famous, often unfavorably, but I will say that the Daisy Jones songs are way better than the Stillwater songs. Since Daisy Jones & The Six are loosely based on Fleetwood Mac and Aurora is their big hit album, you can of course compare it to Rumours and it absolutely has no hope of holding up to that kind of scrutiny, but it's a pretty enjoyable little record that's catchy and period appropriate enough to be plausible and support the story instead of undermining it. And it's kind of a clever way for Riley Keough to make a record without everyone focusing on how she's the granddaughter of Elvis Presley.
10. Willie Nelson - I Don't Know A Thing About Love: The Songs of Harlan Howard
I don't think enough people appreciate how wonderful it is that Willie Nelson is almost 90 and still averaging a new album a year, sometimes new songs and sometimes covers of songs that matter to him. Nelson has made albums paying tribute to other superstars (Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles) but he's also made albums saluting friends and contemporaries like Lefty Frizzell and now Harlan Howard, who like Nelson began writing hits in the late '50s and working with people like Patsy Cline and Hank Cochrane. One of Howard's most notable compositions is "Streets of Baltimore" (famously recorded by Bobby Bare and Gram Parsons), and I'm happy to add Willie Nelson to the list of great renditions of that song.
The Worst Album of the Month: Musiq Soulchild & Hit-Boy - Victims & Villains
Hit-Boy has been on a hot streak for the last few years that's included four albums with Nas, but it always feels like he's being hyped up as a producer can do no wrong when, like most producers, he's only as good as his collaborators. And his latest project, an album with a B-list neo soul singer who made his only notable songs 20 years ago, feels like a hell of a heat check. It's not as embarrassing as the music Musiq Soulchild was making in 2015 when he was dressing like Migos, but it's still a mediocre record from a minor talent and Hit-Boy really doesn't deliver any heat on it. "imreallytrynaf*ckwichu" in particular is just insipid.
TV Diary
Monday, April 10, 2023 
a) "The Power"
This Amazon series features a bunch of different storylines in London, Seattle, Moldova, etc. (although the whole thing was filmed in the UK) all revolving around a phenomenon where many teenage girls suddenly develop the power to release lethal jolts of electricity from their fingertips. Obviously the whole world freaks out and many governments talk about imprisoning these girls or legislating their bodily freedom, it's all kind of an unsubtle allegory for real world issues, but is pretty dark and not some kind of heroic X-Men thing, at least so far. Toni Collette is one of my favorite actresses in the world so I hate to be underwhelmed by something starring her, but it's pretty slow going after four episodes, there are so many different storylines and I do not care about Eddie Marson as a sleazy London gangster or whatever.
b) "Beef"
This has gotten an enormous word-of-mouth buzz in the last few days like no new Netflix show in quite a while, it feels like. I'm not too far into it yet but I like that Ali Wong and Steven Yeun are both playing three-dimensional character portrayed with a lot of empathy and nuance as they're just totally giving into petty anger and doing horrible things to each other, it'd be very easy to do a broad comedic version of this story in two hours but they're aiming for something much more difficult.
Scott Z. Burns wrote Contagion, Steven Soderberg's 2011 film about a deadly pandemic that was praised as pretty prescient and scientifically accurate after COVID-19 hit, and he also produced An Inconvenient Truth. So Burns is a pretty smart choice to helm an ambitious Apple TV+ series that dramatizes what Earth could look like in 2037 or 2046 or 2070 as climate change worsens. But I dunno, the attempt to use a bunch of famous actors and turn this into a bunch of compelling interlinked stories, it still feels a little distant and academic. I hate to think about this stuff because it feels so dire but I'm glad people are at least trying to make art about it and this is probably a better approach than Don't Look Up or whatever.
d) "Lucky Hank"
I am one of the few people who likes Bob Odenkirk but really just can't begin to care about Saul Goodman, so I'm glad AMC has given him a starring vehicle where he plays a different character, finally. I like "Lucky Hank" a lot so far, it kind of reminds me of how low stakes cable dramedies used to be when there were so many Showtime shows where some middle-aged intellectual has a series of personal and professional crises -- the cast and the writing are stronger than a lot of those shows were, though.
e) "Unstable"
Victor Fresco has created some of my favorite cult sitcoms of the last 25 years, including "Better Off Ted," "Santa Clarita Diet," and "Andy Richter Controls The Universe," so I''m excited anytime he has a new show. But he co-created "Unstable" with Rob Lowe and his son John Owen Lowe, so I was apprehensive about what seems like a vanity project for an aging star to give his kid a leading role -- I know, it worked out great for "Schitt's Creek," but I don't think we should encourage every show biz family to try it. It's definitely not one of Fresco's best, but it has a bit of the same satire of corporate tech culture as "Better Off Ted," and Rob Lowe is always pretty convincing as a preening egomaniac.
f) "Wellmania"
This Australian comedy on Netflix kind of sends up a lot of different health crazes and wellness trends but in a sort of realistic, rooted in personal experience kind of story. I wish it was a little funnier instead of just going for these light chuckles of recognition, but it's an enjoyable show.
g) "Up Here"
"Up Here" stars Mae Whitman and Carlos Valdes as a pair of young New Yorkers who meet and fall in love in the late '90s, but you constantly see those two characters debate with the voices in their head, a greek chorus of family members and people from their past who sing advice in the form of songs by the composers from Frozen and Coco. Any musical series with original songs in every episode feels like an ambitious undertaking to me, but I feel like even when I find the characters and the story engaging, the music just kind of comes and goes without leaving an impression or staying in my head.
I haven't seen Gabriel Basso in anything since he was in "The Big C" as a teenager a decade ago, so it's kind of a trip to see him play a dashing FBI agent. "The Night Agent" is kind of a generic action show about a government conspiracy, but it's well directed, I liked the first episode.
I feel uncultured because I've never read Great Expectations or even watched any previous adaptation, and this one hasn't gotten very good reviews so I wonder if I should stop watching it and go read Dickens. Matt Berry definitely has the acting chops to do serious dramatic roles but I feel like he's too good at comedy, I just see him in this and find him kind of irrepressibly hilarious.
j) "Saturdays"
Amidst all the De La Soul nostalgia lately, it's kind of sweet that the Disney Channel has this new show based in a roller rink that clearly drew inspiration from "A Roller Skating Jam Named 'Saturdays'" for its title. I hope they use the song at some point. It's a cute little family sitcom, I don't find it especially funny because the humor is geared toward kids, but it's charming.
k) "Liaison"
This Apple TV+ thriller takes place in the UK and France with both English and French dialogue. Pretty good so far, and Eva Green is still just breathtakingly beautiful.
l) "Red Rose"
I was happy to see Isis Hainsworth from Metal Lords land a leading role in this BBC series that's on Netflix, I think she's great. The show is one of those trendy horror things about a mysterious and sinister smartphone app, but I like what I've seen of it so far.
Priscilla Presley co-created this 'adult animated sitcom' for Netflix where Elvis Presley (voiced by Matthew McConaughey) is secretly also a spy for the U.S. government. I liked the Baz Luhrmann biopic, but this attempt at a hipper, more irreverent way to maintain Elvis's presence in pop culture just feels really misconceived, lame and unfunny.
I grew up on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and have a deep love for Jean-Luc Picard and Patrick Stewart, but I didn't have Paramount+/CBS All Access when "Picard" started, so I've been catching up the last couple months to be able to watch the third and final season. So much of the show is fan service, but as a fan I love seeing Spiner and Frakes and so many other familiar faces, much more than the storylines, and sometimes it's a little weird seeing these characters in a sleek modern cable drama with totally different lighting and ambiance from the old show. I'm kinda glad they dropped a lot of the new characters from the first two seasons for the new episodes, I had a hard time caring about the scenes that didn't center on Picard anyway.
I definitely feel like the glut of Star Wars series has diluted the brand, because I've had a hard time paying attention to the latest season of "The Mandalorian" as if it was new episodes of duds like "The Book of Boba Fett" or "Obi-Wan Kenobi." I like the total goofiness of the latest episode with Jack Black and Christopher Lloyd, though.
p) "Snowfall"
The more I think about it the more I feel like "Snowfall" jumped the shark a little with the famous "bodies bodies bodies" scene last year, so I'm glad this is the final season.
q) "Class"
This Indian series on Netflix is actually based on a Spanish series on Netflix that I haven't seen, "Elite," but the whole thing with working class students transferring to a private school just feels so familiar and boilerplate, I guess that's the idea, Netflix just takes a genre and rubber stamps it for a bunch of different markets.
r) "Shahmaran"
I like this Turkish show on Netflix about a professor who has a complicated family history, I thought it was going to be a straightforward drama and was pleasantly surprised that there's a whole fantasy mystery element to the story.
I really dunno about this Chilean show about a guy with down syndrome getting tied up in a murder investigation, I don't think they'd be able to do this show in America.
I don't really understand this Spanish show about two women celebrating their 50th birthdays, like it's very upbeat and silly but I don't know if the sense of humor translates, culturally.
A Spanish mystery show where a little girl disappears during a parade, I got really anxious and upset just watching the first couple episodes to be honest, didn't continue with it.
This Netflix series may have my least favorite animation style I've ever seen in anime, just this garish uncanny valley video game cutscene sort of aesthetic that makes my skin crawl.
A docuseries about a pretty upsetting pattern of unsolved murders of Indigenous women in Montana, I hope this is the kind of thing where the story getting more attention on TV leads to some answers.
MTV doing a reality competition in the modern art world seems iffy, and the title just made me want to make Xzibit jokes. But I am impressed with this show, which also airs on the Smithsonian Channel, and was filmed at MICA in Baltimore, it feels like they selected talented artists and tried to make a credible show, at least it feels that way to me as someone who's not too familiar with that world.
To most hip hop fans I know, the Rap Caviar playlist on Spotify is kind of a laughing stock, this enormously influential corporate thing that sort of represents the blandest distillation of the zeitgeist. I kind of feel bad that this fairly insightful and well made docuseries has the Rap Caviar name slapped on that, because the stories it tells about the rise of someone like Tyler, The Creator feels like the complete opposite of the Spotify algorithm side of the music industry.
I still really enjoy this goofy show, as much as I don't care for Jimmy Fallon, I'm glad it's back for another season. Obviously a lot of the games in the show are partly won with musical talent, but it's also entertaining when they have someone like Patti LaBelle on who has kind of a bemused "I'm too old for this shit" vibe.