Friday, August 22, 2025
This week on Spin, I wrote a Deep Cut Friday column about Oasis's "Cast No Shadow" and ranked Garbage's albums.
Tuesday, August 19, 2025
Today is the big day, Tough Breaks: The Story of Baltimore Club Music is out. You can buy it directly from Repeater Books or anywhere books are sold, but I'm going to boost independent book stores that stock it whenever possible. I will be at Ducky Dynamo's Baltimore Club Music Town Hall this Saturday at Motor House with copies of the book, and there will be more events in the weeks ahead!
I've been writing things and making things and putting them out into the world for 20 years without much concern about who clicks, subscribes, or purchases anything, but just this once, I'll tell you: please buy the book! It's $15 and represents the biggest single project I've ever undertaken, with over 50 interviews to bring Baltimore music and culture to life in the pages of the book, I'm enormously proud of it and grateful to everyone who had a hand in it (there's a great big shout out post on Facebook).
Monthly Report: July 2025 Albums
Monday, August 18, 2025
1. Madeline Kenney - Kiss From The Balcony
I started listening to Oakland-based singer-songwriter Madeline Kenney when she released her second album and first for Carpark Records, 2018's Perfect Shapes, and she hasn't let me down since, she's four for four. 2023's A New Reality Mind might still be her masterpiece, but Kiss From The Balcony is close, it feels like she's continually expanding her songwriting and aesthetic in interesting, unpredictable ways. Kiss From The Balcony is a trio record with the rhythm section she toured for her last album with, Ben Sloan and Stephen Patota, but it doesn't necessarily sound like it, "I Never" and "Slap" are such lush, textured studio creations. Here's the 2025 albums Spotify playlist I'm constantly updating with new releases.
2. Clipse - Let God Sort Em Out
It's always controversial when I say that I was never that impressed with Hell Hath No Fury, I really don't think Pharrell's production was on point for that album, it just sounded flimsy and at odds with the bars. So I've just never been into post-Lord Willin' Clipse as much as most rap fans, and I ranked Clipse as the 9th best rap duo of all time for Complex a while back (Pusha and Malice gave the ranking their stamp of approval, which was pretty cool). This album hits hard, though. Pharrell made sure he had a darker palette of sounds, Malice is back with a vengeance, and I was never super into G.O.O.D.-era solo Pusha but I feel like he's a little more grounded and focused with his brother there, "So Be It" and "All Things Considered" are great.
3. Tyler, The Creator - Don't Tap The Glass
The music industry's obsession with extending the lifespan of albums with deluxe editions has turned into artists like SZA releasing entire new albums as bonus discs for their last album. But Tyler, The Creator put forward a more exciting alternative: releasing a new album in the middle of the tour for last fall's Chromakopia that has its own title and its own distinct aesthetic, notching another #1 album with 28 minutes of some of his most physical beats and some of his most brazen verses with relatively little conceptual window dressing.
4. Cam - All Things Light
Almost exactly a decade ago, Camaron Ochs released "Burning House," an incredible song that reached #2 on country radio, was nominated for a Grammy and a mess of CMA and ACM awards, and was my 21st favorite country single of the 2010s, as well as a gold-selling album. Nothing Cam has released since "Burning House" has made remotely as much of an impact, and she's kind of a one hit wonder, but last year I was very happy to see that she had writing credits on five songs (as well as some production and vocal credits) on Beyonce's Cowboy Carter, including "Tyrant" with Dolly Parton. On her new album, Cam is still working with her "Burning House" collaborators Tyler Johnson (Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus) and Jeff Bhasker (Fun., Bruno Mars), and "Alchemy" and "Everblue" have really interesting artsy production, some of it's country and some of it's almost jazzy and Joni Mitchell-ish.
5. Rip Van Winkle - Blasphemy
The dozen albums Guided By Voices has released in the 2020s have their moments, but I have to say Robert Pollard's newer band with members of Joseph Airport that released an EP last year and now a full-length is really a breath of fresh air. Pollard never really abandoned lo-fi recording, but there's a really fuzzed-out basement jam quality, songs that take this sudden left turns or loud bombastic drum solos, really enjoyable stuff. Favorite song: "Shit-heel Man." Favorite song title: "This Is My Thriller."
6. Justin Bieber - Swag
I've always found Justin Bieber to be pretty hit-and-miss for a ubiquitous pop star, and it felt almost more like damage control than an album rollout when he very quickly announced and released an album in the midst of a lot of chatter about his public behavior and his marriage. But then I heard "Daisies" on the radio and it was so clearly the best thing he's done since what I consider to be his one unqualified classic, 2015's "Sorry." And then I found out that Dijon (who started out with the Baltimore duo Abhi//Dijon) did some writing and producing on that and several other great tracks on Swag, including "Devotion" and "Yukon," and the whole thing has this really appealing mix of '80s gloss and muddy indie pop textures. The "Soulful" interlude, which features popular internet comedy personality Druski telling Bieber that he "you sound Black" and "your soul is Black," is one of the most pathetic things a major recording artist has ever put on an album, it's frustrating that he still does thirsty shit like that, and ending the album with a clip of Marvin Winans singing a gospel song, instead of just having confidence in the album he made.
7. Splitsville - Mobtown
I didn't realize until a few years ago that there was a Baltimore band in the Power Pop Hall of Fame (which is just a website, but still, a pretty selective canon of about 30 bands). And Splitsville's old records have some great stuff on them, but they hadn't released an album since 2004 until their recent return. Mobtown is basically a love letter to Baltimore, full of references to local geography, history, and culture, my favorites so far are "On Federal Hill" and "Fallsway."
8. Lafayette Gilchrist & The New Volcanoes - Move With Love
I recently interviewed Baltimore jazz pianist Lafayette Gilchrist about his new album, watch this space for that piece when it's published. The New Volcanoes was a quartet when Gilchrist started it the band in the '90s, but on this album there are 8 and sometimes 10 musicians and he really uses the whole ensemble really well. Guitarist Carl Filipiak has been a staple of the New Volcanoes in recent years, and he was kind of the first Baltimore jazz musician I was aware of, because my dad used to go see him play in a bar in Fells Point all the time and had some of his CDs. And I really like what Filipiak brings to the New Volcanoes, his solos on Move With Love's title track and "Basta" are great. Gilchrist also recently joined the Sun Ra Arkestra, basically sitting in Sun Ra's spot playing the keyboards, which is totally badass.
9. Half Japanese - Adventure
Jad and David Fair formed Half Japanese in Carroll County, Maryland about a half century ago, and the band hasn't been based there in a while. The annual Shakemore Festival has been held on a Carroll County farm for almost 20 years now, it used to be kind of a 'Half Japanese and friends' affair but it's kind of grown into its own little community full of a lot of Baltimore indie weirdos I know and love. I went to Shakemore a few weeks ago and Half Japanese was not part of the bill, I believe Jad Fair, who moved from Texas to Michigan this year, was not even there. But it still very much felt like Half Japanese's spirit looms large over the festival, and the band had actually released a pretty excellent album a week beforehand. I didn't really understand the Jad Fair thing at all the first time I heard him on the Mosquito album in the '90s, but he's grown on me, and I like the backing band he has now, some pretty cool arrangements on "That's Fate" and "Lemonade Sunset."
10. Ben Folds - Ben Folds Live With the National Symphony Orchestra
For the last decade or so, I've been working a lot of events at the Kennedy Center, and it's really been one of my favorite places to work in D.C., I've seen so many cool shows and met some amazing performers, and worked with some really wonderful people on the stage crews. So while there are much bigger, scarier things happening with the Trump administration right, what's happening at the Kennedy Center really stings for me in an acute, personal way. For most of that decade, Ben Folds was appointed an artistic advisor to the Nasional Symphony Orchestra, until his recent resignation, and he was part of many events I worked. I scroll teleprompter, mostly lyrics for special shows or tributes where people are singing songs they don't usually sing, and Folds was usually performing one or two of his own songs (a lot of "Not The Same," a lot of "The Luckiest"), so I never really had any reason to interact with him directly, although when he'd walk by me backstage I'd sometimes consider gushing about how some of the best concerts I've ever seen were Ben Folds Five from 1996 to 1999. I wasn't there the night Folds recorded this album, but I almost feel like I was because I saw him do some of these songs with the NSO on multiple occasions, and it feels like a nice little keepsake of better times at the Kennedy Center.
The Worst Album of the Month: Gelo - League of My Own
Gelo's "Tweaker" was a fun little unexpected viral hit when it came out back in January, and I don't begrudge the guy for capitalizing on it by signing to Def Jam. But hearing about the millions the label spent to sign Gelo is just kind of funny considering that nothing he's released since then has made remotely the same impact, and his album didn't even break into the Billboard 200. The most annoying thing about the album is how he leans into the 'Y2K Louisiana rap tribute act' vibe with diminishing returns, "Watcha Gon Do" is basically a fake Mystikal song and he does not have the talent to pull that off.
Friday, August 15, 2025
I had a lovely conversation with Elbow frontman Guy Garvey for a Spin profile of the band this week. I also wrote about a John Mellencamp/Rickie Lee Jones collaboration for the Deep Cut Friday column.
TV Diary
Thursday, August 14, 2025 
a) "Demascus"
AMC developed and produced "Demascus" with one of the producers from "Breaking Bad" and then decided to cancel it two and a half years ago before it even aired to make it a tax writeoff. Tubi recently picked up the six episodes that were made, and it's a pretty creative and offbeat sci-fi comedy created by playwright Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm. I'm glad it finally got out there, even if it doesn't feel like it would've reached a huge audience even if it had come out as originally intended. The title character, played by Okieriete Onaodowan, is in a form of immersion therapy where he gets to briefly live in alternate timelines, it's kind of all over the place in terms of tone but in an interesting, deliberate way. Martin Lawrence, the only really big name involved, has a pretty funny recurring role in some episodes but I don't really mind that the episodes without him tend to be a little more emotional or cerebral. Also nice to see Tyrel Jackson Williams from "Brockmire" in this. The episode titles are all playfully meta and the last episode is called "Second Season Prequel," but who knows if they'll get to do more.
b) "Butterfly"
This Amazon Prime thriller series gets off to a great start with the first episode, where a young spy (Reina Hardesty) is chasing down a mysterious figure who turns out to be her father, a spy who faked his own death 9 years earlier when she was a teenager. I'd seen Hardesty in a couple things before (including "Brockmire"!) but this is the first time I'm seeing her in a lead role and suddenly going wow, she's got a real star quality , equally great in the action scenes and the more dramatic moments, and extremely beautiful.
I've been kind of a vocal Noah Hawley skeptic over the years, but if he's going to play around in an existing fictional universe, I feel like Alien is a good choice. My wife recently proposed that we go through all the Alien movies in the order of the story chronology, but so far we've only gotten through Prometheus and Alien: Covenant because those are a couple of deeply flawed and frustrating movies that can really sap your interest in the entire franchise. So Hawley almost can't make a prequel worse than Ridley Scott himself already did, so fuck it, man, go nuts. The first two episodes are moderately promising, although I thought it was kind of rude to me personally that they killed off Richa Moorjani after a few scenes. I liked that the episodes ended with Dio-era Ozzy and Tool, respectively. Metal in action/sci-fi can be kind of corny when there's a lot of it, but it can hit pretty hard when used judiciously.
Jason Momoa's passion project about 18th century Hawaii is alright. I saw some sad idiot ranting and raving that they made the show less accessible by having most of the dialogue in Hawaiian, but I really like hearing their language, it makes the whole thing feel more immersed in its own world, and it feels kinda necessary for the contrast when British people do show up and speak in English.
It's funny to watch a TV show based on a video game that's a transparent Mad Max knockoff, it's a smart move that they lean into the comedy so it doesn't feel like just an imitation. I think the show's better when Anthony Mackie has Stephanie Beatriz as a scene partner so hopefully there's more of them together on the way after they've been separated for a bit.
f) "Platonic"
Seth Rogen currently stars in two Apple TV+ series. The first season of "The Studio" recently received 23 Emmy nominations, while "Platonic," which just returned for a second seasons, has received zero nominations for any awards whatsoever. But I think these shows are in the same ballpark of enjoyability, even if "Platonic" is a bit less ambitious or distinctive. It feels almost regressive to premise an entire show on it being weird or inherently troublesome for a straight man and woman in relationships to have a close platonic friendship, and Rogen/Stoller productions have a history of plots where
I really like Rachel Rosenbloom in this show, it's a shame they have her in this very one-note role and made it very obvious that she's not going to last very long as Rogen's character's fiancee.
g) "Wednesday"
I like "The Addams Family" and Jenna Ortega and Tim Burton (or at least Burton back in the day), and putting those things all together in a series looks great on paper and I understand why it's a big hit, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Giving Wednesday psychic powers and putting her in a school with other ghouls and monsters is so corny. At least a little fun seeing Steve Buscemi in these episodes though.
The animated MCU shows all feel like ephemeral little optional side quests, but this one was decent.
i) "Wylde Pak"
A recent Nickelodeon cartoon that my youngest has gotten into, similar to some other contemporary cartoon sitcoms (with the divisive "bean mouth" visual style) but pretty cute and charming.
This may be a somewhat controversial statement, but I've never really loved "King of the Hill." Like I'm generally pro-Mike Judge, and Office Space and "Beavis and Butt-Head" make me laugh (the latter more when I was 12 than now, but still), but "King of the Hill" is the show that I always kind of quietly sat and tolerated while other people watched it or I was waiting for "The Simpsons" or something to start. There are a few characters that I often found pretty funny, but many of them or absent or changed in the new Hulu revival of the show. Brittany Murphy is gone, so Luanne isn't around. Johnny Hardwick is gone, so Dale is now voiced by Toby Huss, who does a decent job but there's kind of an 'uncanny valley' quality to the slightly detectable difference in voices. Huss also no longer plays Khan, who's now voiced by an actual Asian actor, Ronny Chieng, which is a bit more understandable. And Bobby is now 21 years old, but basically looks the same with stubble and Pamela Adlon's same weird little child voice, which just feels bizarre. There's even a Chuck Mangione gag in the episode that feels a little bittersweet since he also just died. And on top of that, a lot of the humor in these episodes is derived from putting terms like 'nepo baby' or 'canceled' or 'female-presenting' in Hank or Peggy's mouth, it all just has a dreadful vibe to me.
This Netflix anime series is a very intriguingly creepy story about someone realizing that their best friend has been replaced with some kind of bizarre inhuman imposter.
This Japanese series on Netflix is about a young woman who's kicked out of her band in the middle of a music festival, so she sets up her drums backstage and starts jamming, and a mysterious pianist starts playing along with her, and then she gets invited to join his band. It feels like a weird fable with a tenuous relationship to how the music industry works anywhere, including Japan, but some of the music is pretty cool and I like the whole sweeping emotion of the thing, the direction is very stylish and the actors are compelling.
This Netflix show is about a disgraced Korean rugby player making a comeback, and I didn't even know they had rugby over there, charming little show.
Those letters students are asked to write to themselves or people in the future? This Turkish show on Netflix is about a teacher's daughter finding those letters 20 years later and uncovering a dark secret in them, which feels like just too contrived and goofy a premise for me to really get into the story.
Another sort of 'a dark secret unravels everything' sort of story, this one a very slow moving Japanese show about a lawyer and an art teacher's marriage, couldn't get into it.
I enjoy a good love story centered around cooking, and this Korean romcom about a chef and a food executive is charming.
This show has such a cool concept, guests make kind of an open-ended order at this restaurant and the chef sort of interprets it to create a custom dish on the spot while they have a conversation.
I'm forever complaining about the trend of actors hosting reality shows, and this is another one, although I don't care as much if Simu Liu is taking time away from doing movies. And this is another derivative show where a bunch of annoying people from other reality shows try to outsmart each other in a generic mansion.
The whole 'theme' of this show is that 10 Japanese singles are secluded together without any access to phones or internet devices, which seems kind of a dumb 'hook' because I think there are already a good number of dating shows like "Love Island" where the participants are offline while they're taping.
I interviewed some New Orleans musicians the other day who had been displaced by Katrina, it's still such a shameful chapter in American history and it feels like we're doomed to repeat it in some fashion with the current administration's FEMA cuts. This recent Nat Geo docuseries, directed by Traci A. Curry ane exec produced by Ryan Coogler,
It feels like very week there's a new true crime doc about some infamous murder I'd never heard of, which really just goes to show how much violence is constantly happening in this country. Apparently four teen girls were killed in a yogurt shop in Austin in 1991 and it's never been solved, pretty grisly stuff.
Another doc about a mystery I hadn't heard of, a woman who disappeared on a cruise ship in 1998 and her family still doesn't know if she fell overboard or was sex trafficked.
I do think I might have heard about this when it was in the news, a dentist murdered his wife on safari in Zambia and tried to make it look like an accident. Man, people are stupid and evil.
These things are so often American stories that it's kind of novel to hear about a pair of British serial killers, again a pretty crazy story I can't believe I'd never heard about.
This show has a good concept, each episode looks at one murder or missing person story that drew a ton of media interest, like Laci Peterson or Chandra Levy, and examines a similar story that got less attention for whatever reason, so it's delving into these stories with a side of media criticism.
This is an inconsequential little reality show where a few minor celebrities vacation together in Vietnam. I barely know who any of them are besides Tammy Rivera, Waka Flocka Flame's ex-wife from Baltimore who used to be on "Love & Hip Hop" with him, I like her.
Friday, August 08, 2025
For Spin's Deep Cut Friday column, I wrote about a Lalo Schifrin track famously sampled by Portishead. I also ranked and wrote about every Public Enemy album this week.
My Top 50 Movies of 2020
Thursday, August 07, 2025 
1. Shiva Baby (Emma Seligman)
2. The Invisible Man (Leigh Wannell)
3. Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee)
4. Pieces of a Woman (Kornel Mundruczo)
5. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza
Hittman)
6. Tenet (Christopher Nolan)
7. The Hunt (Craig Zobel)
8. Palm Springs (Max Barbakow)
9. I’m Your Woman (Julia Hart)
10. Nomadland (Chloe Zhao)
11. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (George C.
Wolfe)
12. The Empty Man (David Prior)
13. Mank (David Fincher)
14. Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg)
15. The Night House (David Bruckner)
16. Anything For Jackson (Justin G. Dyck)
17. Spontaneous (Brian Duffield)
18. Horse Girl (Jeff Baena)
19. She Dies Tomorrow (Amy Seimetz)
20. The Wolf of Snow Hollow (Jim Cummings)
21. Soul (Pete Docter and Kemp Powers)
22. His House (Remi Weekes)
23. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie
Kaufman)
24. I Care A Lot (J Blakeson)
25. A Quiet Place Part II (John Krasinski)
26. Love and Monsters (Michael Matthews)
27. Emma (Autumn de Wilde)
28. Let Them All Talk (Steven Soderbergh)
29. Freaky (Christopher Landon)
30. Hamilton (Thomas Kail)
31. Come Play (Jacob Chase)
32. The High Note (Nisha Ganatra)
33. Books of Blood (Brannon Braga)
34. The Old Guard (Gina Prince-Bythewood)
35. Bill & Ted Face the Music (Dean
Parisot)
36. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of
Fire Saga (David Dobkin)
37. Birds of Prey (Cathy Yan)
38. The King of Staten Island (Judd Apatow)
39. Onward (Dan Scanlon)
40. I Used To Go Here (Kris Rey)
41. The Way Back (Gavin O’Connor)
42. Charm City Kings (Angel Manuel Soto)
43. The Witches (Robert Zemeckis)
44. American Utopia (Spike Lee)
45. The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken
Heart (Frank Marshall)
46. Work It (Laura Terruso)
47. Pixie (Barnaby Thompson)
48. Happiest Season (Clea DuVall)
49. Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan (Julien Temple)
50. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin)
Looking at the lists I've made so far in this series and the ones I've started drafting, I think I probably saw fewer features released in 2020 than any other year in at least the last decade or so, even after catching up on a few recently that I hadn't seen. So this list was harder to make, for that reason, and also because 2020 was of course the year that COVID-19 hit and disrupted and delayed the production and/or release of a ton of movies. My family recently had a dinner conversation about our favorite Pixar movies (highly recommended conversation starter for just about any group of people!) and my 15-year-old son had Soul in his top 5, which surprised me, but I respect that, it's a good one that I forget about sometimes.
Previously:
Monthly Report: July 2025 Singles
Wednesday, August 06, 2025
1. Wolf Alice - "Bloom Baby Bloom"
My ears perked up the first time I heard it on the radio, even having seen some reference to Wolf Alice's new single being a different sound for them, I didn't expect that it was them. Turns out this piano-driven track was produced by Greg Kurstin, who's an absolute genius in my book, so I'm excited to hear what the rest of the album sounds like. Here's the 2025 singles Spotify playlist that I update every month.
2. GloRilla - "Typa"
Keyshia Cole's debut album turned 20 this summer, "Love" was always the classic single from that album but it's been fun to see it experience this renewed surge of popularity in the last few years and get sampled by a few artists, including GloRilla.
3. Ty Myers - "Thought It Was Love"
Ty Myers is 17 years old singing about how his mortgage is due on his biggest single, which is kind of funny. But it's a lovely sad song with a great piano and strings-driven arrangement, he's definitely one of the most promising new country stars right now.
4. Shaboozey - "Good News"
"A Bar Song (Tipsy)" has been in the top 10 of the Hot 100 for almost 60 weeks now, and it seems unlikely that Shaboozey, or perhaps anybody else, will ever make another song that big. "Good News" hasn't gotten into the top 10, but it's now in heavy rotation on both country and pop radio, so he's at least escaping one hit wonder status, and honestly I like it more than "A Bar Song." I particularly like how "Good News" does that old-fashioned country ballad structure with verses in 7/8 and choruses in 4/4. And while I don't think Shaboozey had any political motivation for releasing this song right after the election, it does hit a little harder as the constant daily onslaught of bad news continues.
5. Cardi B - "Outside"
It's not "Not Like Us" or anything, but I like that Cardi managed to make a club banger out of how Offset sucks, it bodes well for the second album she's finally releasing in September.
6. Maggie Lindemann - "One of the Ones"
Maggie Lindemann debuted 9 years ago with a straight-up pop single, "Pretty Girl," that was a top 10 hit all over Europe, and then most of her output since then has been mostly guitar-driven Hot Topic alt-pop of varying quality. "One of the Ones" was produced by Captain Cuts, the L.A. duo best known for Walk The Moon's "Shut Up And Dance," and it's a fast short techno pop song that feels like the career relaunch she's been looking for.
7. Eric Church - "Hands of Time"
"Springsteen" is still the gold standard for Eric Church singles, but I don't mind him doing another nostalgic midtempo song full of references to classic rock songs.
8. Kane Brown - "Backseat Driver"
I have to say, as a boring middle-aged father and husband, I do appreciate country's niche as the only corner of popular music where I can hear cute little relatable songs about how much the singer loves his kids.
9. Maroon 5 - "All Night"
Everyone is collectively tired of Maroon 5 and their next album will probably be a real deal flop, none of its three singles are even in the group's Spotify top 10 right now. But I really like this saxophone-heavy trifle that was quietly released as the second single, my favorite thing they've done in quite a while.
10. Morgan Wallen f/ Tate McRae - "What I Want"
"Just In Case" is the best of the many hits from Morgan Wallen's latest album, but I also kind of like the awkward pop crossover duet with Tate McRae, mostly because the chorus sounds like it could have been roughly based on the "you don't want no part of this" scene from Walk Hard.
The Worst Single of the Month: Benson Boone - "Mystical Magical"
I actually like just about every other song on American Heart and find the whole Benson Boone backlash to be a little tiresome now, but releasing this song at all, much less as a single, was a choice. It's like the white male version of Rihanna's "Sex With Me," what the hell is bro doing.
Friday, August 01, 2025
This week I interviewed Eyedress for Spin and also wrote about the Pogues for the Deep Cut Friday column.