Deep Album Cuts Vol. 405: Cake

Thursday, May 21, 2026

 





Guitarist Greg Brown, a co-founding member of Cake, passed away in February, and that sad news made me want to make this playlist. 
 
Cake deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Open Book
2. Ain't No Good
3. Bound Away
4. Comfort Eagle
5. Guitar
6. Dime
7. She'll Come Back To Me
8. I Bombed Korea
9. Walk On By
10. Daria
11. Is This Love? 
12. Shadow Stabbing 
13. Cool Blue Reason
14. Got To Move
15. Conroy
16. Opera Singer
17. Nugget
18. Take It All Away
19. Mexico
20. Easy To Crash
21. Mr. Mastodon Farm
22. Commissioning a Symphony in C
23. End of the Movie

Tracks 2, 8, 11, and 21 from Motorcade of Generosity (1994)
Tracks 1, 7, 10, and 17 from Fashion Nugget (1996)
Tracks 5, 9, 13, and 19 from Prolonging the Magic (1998)
Tracks 4, 12, 16, and 22 from Comfort Eagle (2001)
Tracks 6, 18, and 23 from Pressure Chief (2004)
Track 15 from B-Sides and Rarities (2007)
Tracks 3, 14, and 20 from Showroom of Compassion (2011)

I was very amused by the minor hit from Cake's debut, "Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle." And then I loved the big hit from their second album, "The Distance" and had a friend or two who bought Fashion Nugget, but I never got deep into the band at the time. Frontman John McCrea has always been Cake's primary songwriter and Greg Brown was only in the band for those first two albums, but Brown had the largest number of co-writing credits on those albums, including "Open Book" and "Is This Love?" and "Mr. Mastodon Farm" and "Nugget." The only Cake song solely written by Brown was actually "The Distance." I don't know the circumstances of his death, or the circumstances of leaving the band shortly after writing their signature song, but I gotta give him respect for that masterpiece. Brown also returned to guest on one later Cake song, 2011's "Bound Away." 

In the era of countless interchangeable guitar bands on alternative radio, I really appreciated the '90s bands that actually had a unique and instantly identifiable configuration of instruments and voices like Morphine or Soul Coughing or They Might Be Giants or Cake. Those bands could sometimes be dismissed as "quirky" and had cult followings, but Cake managed to be pretty reliable hitmakers. Half of their six albums went platinum (one multi-platinum), and their most recent album, the self-released Showroom of Compassion, actually debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 in 2011, which is pretty impressive. There's only been one new Cake song in the last 15 years, the pretty good 2018 single "Sinking Ship," but the band has played hundreds of shows in that time. They've been in that "active band saying an album is coming this year or next year" mode for almost as long as The Cure was between 4:13 Dream and Songs of a Lost World at this point. 

Almost every Cake song has most or all of the same familiar elements. John McCrea's droll talk-singing and acoustic strumming, the strutting electric guitar riffs by Greg Brown and members of later lineups, Vince DiFiore's clarion call trumpet lines, the nimble rhythm section, the Moog melodies, the frequent vibraslap and other auxiliary percussion, the gang shout vocals and McCrea's ad libs. McCrea is almost as consistent as Jeezy in saying the same phrases over so many songs whenever there's a a few open bars of the band grooving out: "Hyaa," "allllllright," "so good!" or "so sad!" and so on. I wouldn't call it a formula per set, but again, I like that Cake had such a specific sound. 

Cake had some straight up country songs (and a pretty cool repertoire of '60s country covers) but weren't alt-country. They had one horn player but never ventured into ska. They had staccato vocals but no hip-hop influence outside of an occasional breakbeat loop. There was a sort of general thrift shop retro sensibility to the band's sound, clothing, and album covers, but they weren't really revivalists of any particular era. You put all that together and it's all uniquely Cake's own thing. Comfort Eagle's title track was apparently all set to be the album's second single but that plan was changed after 9/11, although I feel like the song's lyrics could only be abstractly interpreted as in poor taste. 

12:35 PM

TV Diary

Wednesday, May 20, 2026

 








a) "Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed"
Tatiana Maslany plays a divorced mom who gets caught up in a weird sex worker murder extortion scam thing in this new Apple TV series. I like its weird, jumpy tone, it almost feels almost like a cross between "Search Party" and If I Had Legs I'd Kick You. Creator David J. Rosen has written for mostly shows I thought were terrible or fatally flawed ("Hunters," "Sugar," "Roadies"), but I think "Maxmum Pleasure Guaranteed" has a lot of potential, and Dolly de Leon from Triangle of Sadness steals every scene she's in. 

Steve Coogan's the lead in this crime drama about British drug smuggling in the '90s, kind of interesting to see him in something serious, he has some gravitas. Some good atmosphere and direction but not terribly gripping. 

This Amazon Prime series is based on a YA novel, kind of a goofy old-fashioned love triangle where a girl pretends to date the hockey player she's tutoring to make the musician guy she likes jealous. Except the hockey player and the musician look almost identical, even if you can eventually tell them apart because they have different accents and personalities it's just kind of funny and weird casting. I like the show, though, it's charmingly silly and Ella Bright and Belmont Cameli have genuine chemistry. 

Jack Thorne, who co-created and co-wrote my #1 show of 2025, "Adolescence," made this miniseries adaptation of the classic William Golding novel. Pretty good so far but I haven't finished it yet, Thorne definitely has a gift for working with child actors and portraying them as complex, three-dimensional characters. 

This new Netflix series from "Power" creator Courtney A. Kemp is pretty boilerplate crime drama stuff. I love Gabrielle Dennis, I'd prefer if she was still on something lighter like "The Big Door Prize" or "Rosewood," but she's good in this too.  
 
"Baby Reindeer" is probably the last huge breakout hit that won a ton of Emmys that I just didn't like at all. Creator and star Richard Gadd's new show feels pretty similar, except instead of playing the victim of a violent obsessive character, this time Gadd plays the violent obsessive one. 

I don't think I've seen British actress Molly Windsor before, but she's really good in this Netflix about a woman living in a conservative Christian sect. 

"Ozark" creator Bill Dubuque's new Peacock show is about a Miami woman out for revenge after drug runners kill her whole family, very melodramatic. 

In the seven years since "Euphoria" premiered, the show went from having one movie star in the cast to three, two other cast members died, and after a pandemic and guild strikes and a bunch of other factors specific to "Euphoria," they're only just now airing the third season. The main characters are out of high school now, so it's no longer an edgy show about teenagers, but it feels like Sam Levinson feels some need to keep upping the ante to keep it edgy as a show about twentysomethings. That being said, I feel like this season is pretty consistent with the other ones, particularly in the case of the whole over-the-top OnlyFans storyline with Sydney Sweeney's character Cassie, which people seem to hate and think is just beyond the pale. Sweeney and Alexa Demie actually get to do their best work as comedic actresses on "Euphoria," but who I really think is wasted on the show is their more famous and talented co-star Zendaya, who narrates the show but doesn't have a lot of dialogue, mostly just making goofy faces reacting to everything that happens around her character. 

"Citadel," like "Euphoria," had a huge budget (the first season cost $300 million!) and has gone 3 years between seasons. The main difference is that people don't watch "Citadel" or even know it exists, it's just something Amazon thought people wanted. It's not a bad show, but the first season felt a little like a spy soap opera with all the memory loss and secret children storylines. So far I feel like the second season is a little lighter, some pretty entertaining scenes with Stanley Tucci and Jack Reynor. 

I only watched a few episodes of "Your Friends & Neighbors" last year, but finished the first season and starting the second season recently, man, excellent show, some sharp dialogue and plotting. There's occasionally some clumsy stuff (speedrunning an introduction of the main character's parents just before trying to to get some emotional weight out of one of them dying), but I really enjoy it. And it's another one of those Apple TV shows where the theme song and opening sequence are by far the worst part of every episode, though, just feels like some bullshit out of a Showtime series from 15 years ago. 

I think "For All Mankind" is the first Apple TV series to get to a 5th season, and I like that they've been able to take the parallel-universe premise this far, all the way from 1969 to 2012 so far. Unfortunately, I feel like their imagination feels more and more limited as they go forward, there's a Mars colony but I don't particularly care about the story, and Joel Kinnaman is pretty much the only person who's been a consistent character through the whole thing. I am glad that Ruby Cruz has been added to the cast now, her hair in "For All Mankind" may be the cutest she's ever looked. 

m) "Hacks" 
The fourth season of "Hacks" really felt like it could've been the series finale until the last few minutes, and would've ended well there, but I like that they came back for one more Deborah Vance misadventure, I laugh out loud a few times in every episode. I've grown to love the whole ensemble, I'm happy that Marcus has come back into the fold and almost every line Rose Abdoo has lately is hilarious. 

I've never been a major Neil Gaiman fan, but Good Omens is my favorite thing that he's written, and I was happy with the Amazon series adaptation, even if I didn't think it was as good as the book. Then some horrible revelations came out about Gaiman and the third season was downsized into a finale movie. The second season felt a little unnecessary to me but I was like well, I got this far, I may as well watch it. A few entertaining scenes, it was fine. 

In May, two one-off 'special episodes' starring and co-written by Jon Bernthal came out -- one an episode of "The Bear" that I haven't watched yet, and this. I don't know if it's supposed to be a belated finale for the Netflix "Punisher" series or a backdoor pilot for a Disney+ sequel series like "Daredevil: Born Again," but I thought it was really stupid and pointless. Like if they'd doubled the runtime and got a little more ambitious, it'd be a decent TV movie, but 50 minutes feels kind of paltry for a one-off. 

2017's The Snowman was a critically panned box office flop in America, and people loved to snicker about how the main character's name was Harry Hole. But the source material was just one of many Jo Nesbo novels about Detective Hole that are a popular franchise in Norway, so now Netflix is showing Hole. The series is alright, if you're into the whole 'Nordic noir' thing. 

This Netflix series is about 3 sisters from Spain who are on vacation in the Dominican Republic when one of them hits a guy with a car and things spiral out of control from there. A pretty entertaining show, lots of plot twits, gorgeous cast. 

Another one of those tragic romance Korean dramas on Netflix, didn't really get into it. 

A more interesting K-drama that has a insurance fraud murder scheme plot entangled with the romance. 

More murder in a K-drama, this time a woman wrongly accused of killing her husband, didn't get far enough to find out if the mystery was interesting at all. 

This French series got way more publicity than any other foreign language Apple TV project when the release was delayed for 3 months amidst accusations that it plagiarized a novel from the '70s. But now it's here and nobody cares, kind of a bland mystery thriller. 

Apparently this is the most popular mainland Chinese series on American Netflix to date, a pretty well made period piece romance story. 

This Taiwanese show has an entertainingly weird pulpy premise about an influencer predicting the murders of other influencers. 

It's funny watching documentary's about American men's soccer knowing how irrelevant we are on the world stage in that sport, but obviously that's part of the conversation here and it's pretty interesting stuff. 

And the longest-running American reality show about soccer is back for a fifth season, and has been renewed for three more. I like that we've kind of had big triumphant arcs for the team a couple times and then you have another rough patch or a new goal to reach, so you really get the exhausting year-to-year drama of a team that a sports movie or miniseries can't capture. 

I really miss "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson," that was great late night TV. So I'll even watch the game show version of "Scrabble" sometimes now that Ferguson has replaced Raven-Symone as the host. 

12:19 PM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 404: Aerosmith

Tuesday, May 19, 2026

 




I started to put this playlist together last year when I ranked Aerosmith's albums for Spin, so I just circled back to finish it recently, so let's honk on Bobo. 
 
Aerosmith deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Somebody
2. Lord of the Thighs
3. Spaced
4. Round and Round
5. Uncle Salty
6. Nobody's Fault
7. Combination
8. Sight for Sore Eyes
9. I Wanna Know Why
10. Cheese Cake
11. Bone to Bone (Coney Island White Fish Boy)
12. Jig is Up
13. She's On Fire
14. Simoriah
15. Young Lust
16. Monkey on My Back
17. Line Up
18. Attitude Adjustment
19. Light Inside
20. Shame, Shame, Shame
21. Tell Me

Track 1 from Aerosmith (1973)
Tracks 2 and 3 from Get Your Wings (1974)
Tracks 4 and 5 from Toys in the Attic (1975)
Tracks 6 and 7 from Rocks (1976)
Tracks 8 and 9 from Draw the Line (1977)
Tracks 10 and 11 from Night in the Ruts (1979)
Track 12 from Rock in a Hard Place (1982)
Track 13 from Done with Mirrors (1985)
Track 14 from Permanent Vacation (1987)
Track 15 and 16 from Pump (1989)
Track 17 from Get a Grip (1993)
Track 18 from Nine Lives (1997)
Track 19 from Just Push Play (2001)
Track 20 from Honkin' on Bobo (2004)
Track 21 from Music from Another Dimension! (2012)

A lot of classic rock dinosaurs were still pretty ubiquitous in the late '80s and early '90s when I started paying attention to popular music, but none more than Aerosmith. MTV didn't just play their new hits, they played their '70s chestnuts -- the Run DMC version of "Walk This Way," the video they made for "Sweet Emotion" for the 1991 Pandora's Box compilation, and a live performance of "Dream On" for MTV's 10th anniversary special. 

One of the first episodes of "Saturday Night Live" I can remember watching was the one where Aerosmith appeared in a Wayne's World sketch. They performed "Monkey on My Back," a deep cut from Pump, a cassette that got a lot of mileage in my mom's car. I eagerly bought Get a Grip when it came out, but by that point I was a lot more into Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, and lost in the album quicker than most of the other CDs I spent my money on once I realized that there was nothing else as good as "Livin' on the Edge" on it, certainly not all those songs with Alicia Silverstone in the videos. 

My somewhat odd Aerosmith opinion is that I think Joe Perry is a much more interesting guitarist than he gets credit for. I think the working assumption is that he's just a blues rock guitarist in the '60s mold, not as important as Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton and not as flashy as the post-Van Halen heavy metal shredders, which is obviously true. But growing up I also found myself looking forward to his solos in almost any Aerosmith hit, even when the song wasn't great he'd find some cool tone or unusual sequence of notes to keep my attention. Brad Whitford, I realize now, also did some lead guitar, but Perry was the one you'd usually see playing solos in the videos, so I kind of assumed it was all him at the time. Some of my favorite solos on this playlist include "Cheese Cake," "Uncle Salty," and "Nobody's Fault."

"Sight For Sore Eyes" was co-written with David Johansen of the New York Dolls and Jack Douglas, who'd engineered the Dolls' debut before producing most of Aerosmith's best albums. The reference to 'Coney Island white fish' in the title of one of the best songs on Night in the Ruts is a colorful slang term for a used condom. Lenny Kravitz co-wrote "Line Up," and Marti Frederiksen, who sang Jason Lee's Stillwater parts in Almost Famous, co-wrote "Attitude Adjustment" and "Light Inside." 

As the band leaned more on power ballads and song doctors in their later years, I made an effort to pick through those records and find the best uptempo stuff. The playlist really ended up being pretty much 75 minutes of back-to-back rockers with one nice mellow song at the end, "Tell Me," a rare solo writing credit from bassist Tom Hamilton. So I'm proud of it, I think you could play the whole thing without bailing out after track 11 or track 16 like you might be bracing yourself to. 

12:18 PM

Monthly Report: April 2026 Albums

Monday, May 18, 2026
















1. Jai'len Josey - Serial Romantic
Between this album and the recent Leven Kali record, Def Jam is putting out some quality R&B from people who aren't household names or even getting any radio play yet. Atlanta's Jai'Len Josey co-wrote Ari Lennox's hit "Pressure" and has some of her own stuff in the same wheelhouse, but I feel like she's got her own distinctive way of emoting and stacking harmonies, great voice. And I don't think there's a single track on here that I don't like, but the album really hits its highest peaks on the second half with the breakbeat house of "Serial Romantic" and the piano ballad "I Believe (Selfish)." Here's the 2026 albums Spotify playlist that I constantly fill with new releases. 

2. Friko - Something Worth Waiting For
I heard the Something Worth Waiting For single "Seven Degrees" on WTMD a few weeks back and immediately had to look up this Chicago band and and see that their album was about to come out. Niko Kapetan's singing is mannered and dramatic (I was a little surprised to see that they're American and not British or something), but it adds a little welcome oomph to their ragged guitar-driven jams. It's always exciting to hear a band so fully figure out what they're doing with total confidence and purpose on their second album, my favorite songs so far are "Still Around" and "Alice." 

3. They Might Be Giants - The World Is to Dig
TMBG's debut will turn 40 later this year, and I'm really impressed by the sheer volume of songs they've written over the years. The majority of them are 2 minutes long and have absurd or comedic premises, but there's an incredibly high level of craft and consistency. On some of the later albums, John Flansburgh's more broadly goofy lyrics tend to dominate, but The World Is to Dig is a pretty John Linnell-heavy album. And he's in great form, there's a lot of unspecified menace and dread drifting just out of frame in "Character Flaw," "What the Cat Dragged In," and "Je n'en ai pas." 

4. Julia Cumming - Julia
The promotional literature for the debut solo album by Sunflower Bean frontwoman Julia Cumming boasts of "echoes of Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick," so I expected some swinging '60s retro aesthetics. But both the language and the production are fairly contemporary -- two of the best songs are named "Fucking Closure" and "Emotional Labor." Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's really the architecture of the songs, the way Cumming sings long, articulate sentences with poise over rhythmically intricate jazz pop, that justifies that lofty Brill Building comparison. 

5. Ella Langley - Dandelions
Ella Langley was my favorite breakout country star of 2024, but I was still a little thrown by how quickly "Choosin' Texas," currently in its 9th week at #1 on the Hot 100, took off in ways that no solo song by a female country singer has in arguably decades (Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" and Jeannie C. Riley's "Harper Valley PTA," are the closest points comparisons, both from long before Langley was born). Miranda Lambert, who knows a thing or two about creating good, cohesive mainstream country albums, co-wrote "Choosin' Texas," which led to her executive producing Dandelions and appearing as the album's only featured guest on "Butterfly Season" (a Morgan Wallen duet was tacked onto the album 2 weeks after the initial release, but I'm going to ignore that and keep listening to the original release). And Dandelions feels like a step forward from Langley's debut creatively as well as commercially, and "Low Lights" and "Loving Life Again" in particular are great displays of the subtly expressive power of her voice. And I like that the album's one cover feels like a nod to the historical lineage she's now a part of: "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" by Kitty Wells, which was the first country #1 for a solo woman on Billboard way back in 1952. 

6. Jackson Dean - Magnolia Sage
On Saturday, Jackson Dean will headline a music festival at the Maryland high school he graduated from in 2019, which is just 20 minutes from where he lives. I interviewed Jackson a few years ago and am friendly with one of the guys in his band, and I'm happy to see his continued success with his third Big Machine album. He's one of those singers who had this cool raspy tone even as a teenager and he's just getting more and more in command of his instrument with time, I think "5th of July" and "Make a Liar" are some of his best vocal performances to date. 

7. Bruce McCulloch - Dark Purple Slice
Shame-Based Man, the album that Bruce McCulloch released in 1995 at the end of the original TV run of "The Kids in the Hall," is one of my favorite comedy albums of all time, I really think it's a masterpiece. So I was delighted to see a few days ago that Brucio just released a new album -- I thought it was his second but it's actually his third, I need to go find 2002's Drunk Baby Project, which isn't on streaming services. Dark Purple Slice isn't as consistently hilarious and strange as Shame-Based Man, but I'm still so hyped that it exists, this guy has such a huge influence on my sense of humor, my favorite tracks so far are "Sad Mall," "Songs That Didn't Make The Record," and "Sobriety." 

8. Noah Kahan - The Great Divide
The Great Divide outpaced J. Cole's album for the biggest first week of 2026, at least for the time being until that record gets officially broken by Drake in a few days. And that's not a surprise per se given that Kahan's last album, 2022's Stick Season, is four times platinum, but it's still kind of fun and unlikely that a folky singer-songwriter from Vermont is in the big leagues with the superstar rappers. The album is 77 minutes long, and a week later he released a deluxe version that's 96 minutes long, so it's really a lot for someone like me who never had very strong feelings about Kahan before The Great Divide's excellent title track. But he's really growing on me, there's a darkness and lacerating wit in songs like "Haircut" and "Dashboard" that I didn't expect. 

9. Kehlani - Kehlani
"Folded" became the biggest song of Kehlani's career pretty quickly, so I was skeptical about her releasing an album more than 10 months later, like maybe she wasn't capitalizing on the song's momentum. But I was wrong, because "Folded" is still top 3 on both R&B radio and pop radio right now, and she's made an album that strikes the same delicate balance of evoking '90s and early 2000s R&B without leaning on samples and interpolations to do that most of the time like hacks like Tory Lanez. There are a lot of guests, many of them from that era, but they're mostly used to great effect, I particularly like the songs with Missy and Usher. 

10. Nine Inch Nails & Boys Noize - Nine Inch Noize
My brother had a couple tickets to Nine Inch Nails in Wisconsin a few months ago and offered one to me, but it fell on one of the busiest weeks of the year for the company I work for, so I had to pass. Ultimately I wound up not even working the day of the concert, so maybe I could've made a flight out, I dunno, that was a bummer. But one of the things that people loved about the Peel It Back Tour was the B-stage where Trent Reznor and the tour's opening act, German producer Alex "Boys Noize" Ridha, would do live remixes of NIN songs, and now there's an album of those remixes (that I guess was recorded on the tour, because you can occasionally hear crowd noise). I particularly like the version of "Heresy" on here and that they resurrected one of the songs from Reznor's underrated How To Destroy Angels project. 

The Worst Album of the Month: Zayn - Konnakol
I never really cared whether One Direction would reunite, but I at least kinda hoped that the other guys would be united on some level by the tragedy of Liam Payne's death, and was encouraged by the news that Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson were making a road trip docuseries for Netflix. And then production shut down amidst reports that Zayn punched Louis, and there were earlier allegations of violence in his relationship with Gigi Hadid, so I think this guy might just be a piece of shit, I'm kind of glad that his U.S. tour was canceled. Konnokol features the most Zayn collaborations with Frank Ocean producer James "Malay" Ho since his debut, but I never really liked the 'alt R&B' vibe of Mind of Mine, I think Nobody is Listening might quietly be Zayn's best solo album. 

9:47 AM

Friday, May 15, 2026

 




This week I ranked every Cocteau Twins album for Spin and wrote about Pearl Jam's "Footsteps" for the Deep Cut Friday column. 

11:59 AM

Thursday, May 14, 2026


 









I spoke to Maryland Jockey Club director of communications Dan Illman for a Baltimore Banner piece about this year's Preakness being held in Laurel, Maryland, where I live. I also wrote an article about things to do in Laurel if you're here this weekend. 

11:34 AM

My Top 50 Movies of 2016

Wednesday, May 13, 2026

 







1. Moonlight (Barry Jenkins)
2. Arrival (Denis Villeneuve)
3. Jackie (Pablo Larrain)
4. A Woman, A Part (Elisabeth Subrin)
5. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone)
6. The Edge of Seventeen (Kelly Fremon Craig)
7. Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt)
8. The Nice Guys (Shane Black)
9. Silence (Martin Scorsese)
10. Don’t Breathe (Fede Alvarez)
11. Kubo and the Two Strings (Travis Knight)
12. Everybody Wants Some!! (Richard Linklater)
13. Hail, Caesar! (Ethan Coen and Joel Coen)
14. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Gareth Edwards)
15. 10 Cloverfield Lane (Dan Trachtenberg)
16. Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)
17. Captain Fantastic (Matt Ross)
18. Moana (John Musker and Ron Clements)
19. The Founder (John Lee Hancock)
20. Hidden Figures (Theodore Melfi)
21. La La Land (Damien Chazelle)
22. Hell Or High Water (David Mackenzie)
23. Deadpool (Tim Miller)
24. Zootopia (Jared Bush, Byron Howard, and Rich Moore)
25. A Bigger Splash (Luca Guadagnino)
26. Keeping Up With The Joneses (Greg Mottola)
27. The Whole Truth (Courtney Hunt)
28. The Shallows (Jaume Collet-Serra)
29. Miss Sloane (John Madden)
30. I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House (Osgood Perkins)
31. Captain America: Civil War (Anthony Russo and Joe Russo)
32. Keanu (Peter Atencio)
33. Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates (Jake Szymanski)
34. Denial (Mick Jackson)
35. Lion (Garth Davis)
36. The Accountant (Gavin O’Connor)
37. Doctor Strange (Scott Derrickson)
38. The Girl On The Train (Tate Taylor)
39. Allied (Robert Zemeckis)
40. Zoolander 2 (Ben Stiller)
41. Finding Dory (Angus MacLane and Andrew Stanton)
42. Lights Out (David F. Sandberg)
43. The Darkness (Greg McLean)
44. Fundamentals of Caring (Rob Burnett)
45. Don’t Think Twice (Mike Birbiglia)
46. The Book of Love (Bill Purple)
47. Terrifier (Damien Leone)
48. The Boy (William Brent Bell)
49. Ghostbusters (Paul Feig)
50. Florence Foster Jenkins (Stephen Frears)

Maybe I should have put La La Land at number one by mistake and then fixed it like the Oscars. I took my oldest to see Kubo and the Two Strings, but his younger brother who was only a year old at the time has really taken to that movie in recent years, some beautiful animation in it. The 2010s was really the time when theatrical studio comedies started to die out, but there were some good ones in this year. 

Previously: 
My Top 50 Movies of 2017
My Top 50 Movies of 2018
My Top 50 Movies of 2019
My Top 50 Movies of 2020
My Top 50 Movies of 2021
My Top 50 Movies of 2022
My Top 50 Movies of 2023
My Top 50 Movies of 2024

11:33 AM

My Top 50 Movies of 2017

Tuesday, May 12, 2026

 






1. Logan Lucky (Steven Soderbergh)
2. First Reformed (Paul Schrader)
3. Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan)
4. Colossal (Nacho Vigalondo)
5. Princess Cyd (Stephen Cone)
6. Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagigno)
7. Landline (Gillian Robespierre)
8. The Florida Project (Sean Baker)
9. Get Out (Jordan Peele)
10. I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore (Macon Blair)
11. Happy Death Day (Christopher Landon)
12. The Lego Batman Movie (Chris McKay)
13. Okja (Bong Joon Ho)
14. Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villenueve)
15. Thor: Ragnarok (Taika Waititi)
16. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson)
17. The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci)
18. Anna And The Apocalypse (Jon McPhail)
19. Coco (Lee Unkrich)
20. Logan (James Mangold)
21. Girls Trip (Malcolm D. Lee)
22. The Big Sick (Michael Showalter)
23. Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig)
24. Mudbound (Dee Rees)
25. Atomic Blonde (David Leitch)
26. The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro)
27. Ingrid Goes West (Matt Spicer)
28. Kodachrome (Mark Raso)
29. Baby Driver (Edgar Wright)
30. Rough Night (Lucia Aniello)
31. It (Andy Muschietti)
32. Downsizing (Alexander Payne)
33. All The Money In The World (Ridley Scott)
34. Wonder Woman (Patty Jenkins)
35. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (James Gunn)
36. I, Tonya (Craig Gillespie)
37. Claire In Motion (Annie J. Howell and Lisa Robinson)
38. The Butterfly Tree (Priscilla Cameron)
39. John Wick: Chapter 2 (Chad Stahelski)
40. Band Aid (Zoe Lister-Jones)
41. The Zookeeper’s Wife (Niki Caro)
42. Wilson (Craig Johnson)
43. Flower (Max Winkler)
44. Take Me (Pat Healy)
45. Mother! (Darren Aronofsky)
46. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos)
47. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh)
48. Spider-Man: Homecoming (Jon Watts)
49. Pitch Perfect 3 (Trish Sie)
50. Song To Song (Terrence Malick)

The last thing I did with my dad, a month before he died, was go to a matinee of Logan before taking him to the airport later that day, so I have a weirdly powerful memory of that movie. A lot of stuff on here that kind of slipped through the cracks when you'd really start to get so many movies with good casts and good directors that were just treated like filler for streaming services, so the stuff on here that you haven't even heard of, I highly recommend just taking a chance on.  

Previously: 
My Top 50 Movies of 2018
My Top 50 Movies of 2019
My Top 50 Movies of 2020
My Top 50 Movies of 2021
My Top 50 Movies of 2022
My Top 50 Movies of 2023
My Top 50 Movies of 2024

11:32 AM

Reading Diary

Monday, May 11, 2026

 






This is kind of a collection of essays, sometimes taking a literary approach to Steely Dan's lyrics and sometimes digging into the actual story of the band and how they made their records. And it's all pretty sharply written and insightful, sometimes there are long tangents explaining, say, the Cathy Berberian reference in "Your Gold Teeth" or the time Super Furry Animals sampled "Show Biz Kids," or the various ways Steely Dan's name became disreputable in some cultural circles and was then rehabilitated, but a lot of it is a bit more weighty and thought-provoking. Really a good read about one of the greatest bands of all time. 

Peter Ames Carlin's Springsteen book Bruce is one of the best, most complete rock biographies I've read, and his R.E.M. book is up to a similar quality, to the point that it surprised me when he noted at the end of the book that none of the members of the band sat with him for an interview, although he was in contact with some of them and talked to a lot of people around the band. And it allowed Carlin to approach the band's catalog from a critical standpoint and not mince words about their later albums, which was nice. But what I really liked is that Carlin really identified all the specific ways R.E.M. navigated their career and wrote their songs in different ways from other bands, and really got into the nitty gritty of their rise and creative development from year to year, and how and why Michael Stipe is one of one among rock frontmen. Sometimes he gets a little lost in the details -- at one point he spends half a page detailing the band's 1988 tour rider and I thought about how some of the band's greatest songs only got a passing mention. But it's a rich read, I wound up listening back through most of the band's catalog while reading and being more moved by it than ever, and appreciating Stipe's words as more than just cryptic window dressing but really some of the most intellectually stimulating rock lyrics of his time. 

I only attended Lollapalooza once (in the dreaded Metallica year; I had a great time!). But I lived through the Lollapalooza era and absorbed so many MTV News segments and magazine articles about it and the recent Paramount+ docuseries that I didn't think there was much new to hear. But this book is really packed with great stories I'd never heard before, the granular detail about each of the 7 original tours is just fantastic. Some of my favorite parts: Guided By Voices crushing the Beastie Boys in a game of basketball, the guitarist from Siouxsie and the Banshees calling Nine Inch Nails frauds while everyone else raved that they were the best band of the first tour, J Mascis sitting in on drums with Alice In Chains because "Angry Chair" grew on him, Joan Wasser getting high with Cypress Hill, and learning just how many of the things that are standards at American music festivals started with Lollapalooza in ways I hadn't even realized. 

d) My Effin' Life, by Geddy Lee with D. Richler
I'm less and less interested in reading the memoirs and autobiographies of rock stars, so many of them are just such indulgent, one-sided takes on their careers. But I picked this up on a whim when I was in a bookstore where they'd just gotten the paperback version of Geddy Lee's autobiography, so the hardcover was super cheap. And it turned out to be pretty compelling stuff, Lee has a great memory and a bit more perspective and self-deprecating humor than the average rock star (he also says 'my effin' this' and 'my effin' that' a lot like it's his personal catchphrase, which I didn't understand, since he also actually curses). About half of the book's first 80 pages are devoted to a deeply researched account of how Lee's parents survived the Holocaust, and basically met and fell in love as teenagers in a concentration camp in Poland. I'm glad he did that, it was one of the more touching stories I've ever read from that chapter of history, and it kind of informs the lighter rock memoir stuff that follows. And he really just seems like a good guy, who tells more lovingly detailed stories about non-famous friends and employees of the band than I've seen in any other rock star's book. 

11:31 AM

Friday, May 08, 2026

 





This week on Spin I ranked every Ramones album and wrote a Deep Cut Friday column about "I Can See the Sun in Late December," a song Stevie Wonder performed many times without releasing, which was eventually recorded by Roberta Flack. 

9:51 PM

Monday, May 04, 2026
Cassowary Records · 5/4/2026

 

It is that time again! Every year on May 4th, I release a new Western Blot song written in the 5/4 time signature, along with a DJ set of music in 5/4 by other artists, on Soundcloud. The song I wrote is called "Montreal." And this year's set is my longest to date, and has more recent (2025/2026) music than ever before, and the last third of the mix is all Baltimore artists: 


Lalo Schifrin – “The Girl Who Came In With The Tide”

Peaer – “Bad News”

Autechre – “Yulquen”

Sun Ra and his Myth Science Arkestra – “Angels and Demons at Play”

Geese – “Half Real”

Rattle – “Your Move”

Rush – “Freewill”

Official Hige Dandism – “Same Blue”

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – “Supreme Ascendancy”

Michael Kentoff – “Bank Holiday Wknd"

Serge Gainsbourg – “Wake Me At Five” 

The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis – “30 Years of Knowing”

Jeff Russo – “Alien – Earth”

Makaya McCraven – “Lake Shore Drive Five”

Ghostface Killah and Adrian Younge – “Beware of the Stare"

Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals – “Don’t Let The Smooth Taste Fool You”

Powerwasher – “TM 31-210”

Horse Lords – “Brain of the Firm”

Gloop – “Blue & Red”

Darsombra – “Thunder Thighs”

2:03 PM

Saturday, May 02, 2026

 





I wrote a big Baltimore Banner rundown of over 70 upcoming festivals in Maryland this year. 

7:07 PM

Friday, May 01, 2026

 





This week I wrote about Sublime for Spin and did a Deep Cut Friday column about Outkast's "Red Velvet." 

7:06 PM