TV Diary

Tuesday, July 21, 2026





























a) "Lucky"
"Lucky" stars Anya Taylor-Joy as a woman named Luciana who goes by Lucky, who catches some very bad breaks and some good ones after pulling off a heist in Vegas. It's based on novel. Does nobody have any shame about cutesy name stuff like that? Anyway, it's pretty good. It's not as consistently enjoyable as Jonathan Tropper's other current Apple TV series that has you rooting for a thief, "Your Friends & Neighbors," and I don't like the Fiona Apple theme song as much as the one she did for "The Affair," but the first two episodes are reasonably gripping. 

b) "The Hawk"
"The Hawk" stars Will Ferrell as a typical Will Ferrell character, a delusionally confident athlete (in this case a pro golfer). Playing that kind of character for 10 episodes instead of a movie or a sketch, though, I don't know, it feels harder to stretch a deliberately one-dimensional character like that over so much more screentime without getting repetitive (this is also why I never loved Danny McBride's wannabe Ferrell schtick in "Eastbound and Down"). "The Hawk" has some occasional good moments that kept me watching, though, and a nice supporting cast including Jimmy Tatro, Chris Parnell, and Patty Guggenheim, who was so funny on "She-Hulk." Luke Wilson is in this too, but that mostly just reminds me that Owen Wilson's recent golf show "Stick" is better than this. 

c) "Ride Or Die" 
Amazon Prime seems to gravitate towards certain genres way more than other streamers, and their focus on YA has worked out well for them, but I don't know if they've gotten any kind of return on their investment in shows and movies about sexy spies. But Hannah Waddingham is the spy who fucks in "Ride Or Die" and what can I say, they have my attention. It's light and silly, but her friendship with Octavia Spencer drives the show and it's charming. 

d) "The Westies"
If J.K. Simmons is the lead of your show, I'm definitely going to watch it, but I'm disappointed with "The Westies" so far, it made me annoyed all over again that the much better "Counterpart" was canceled after only two seasons. "The Westies" is based on real '80s Irish-American mobsters, but it feels like they tried as hard as possible to copy The Departed, including a Dropkick Murphys theme song and a cop-playing-both-sides character. I'm still trying to give it a chance for Simmons and the dreamy Sarah Bolger and her Irish accent, but the first episode ended with a scene that felt pretty contrived, and then the final line of the scene was so corny I gave my TV a middle finger. And the two episodes since then have only slightly redeemed it. 

"The Five-Star Weekend" stars Jennifer Garner as a famous food blogger taking her friends on a Nantucket getaway while mourning her husband. Jennifer Garner being friends with Chloe Sevigny is just weird casting, I don't buy it for a second, but this is a decent little soapy show with a great cast including Regina Hall, D'Arcy Carden, and Timothy Olyphant. The main plotline they're really focusing on with Garner and Gemma Chan is not interesting to me at all, but there's lots of good little character moments with the whole ensemble, it's well written. 

Since we signed up for BritBox for "The Other Bennet Sister," I've been checking out other shows and really enjoy this one that came out a few months ago. Not quite as good as the other show about a British all-female band, "We Are Lady Parts," but charming with a very good cast. 

g) "Vanished"  
"The Flight Attendant" was a great project to transition Kaley Cuoco out of sitcoms while still utilizing her comedy chops in a thriller context. "Vanished" has a similar premise, with Cuoco as an American woman abroad suddenly getting pulled into a tense, deadly conspiracy, but it's closer to a straight up drama and, while occasionally exciting, not really very interesting. 

h) "Elle"
The full title used in some of the advertising is "Elle: From the World of Legally Blonde," which is just awful, even worse than "The Continental: From the World of John Wick." In the Jaafar Jackson era of casting, I guess it's nice that Reese Witherspoon's daughter who looks like her didn't get this role, the actress they did get, Lexi Minetree, is pretty good. But it's pretty corny, it's all about Elle Woods going to high school in Seattle in the '90s, so she's a fish-out-of-water in a public school full of grunge kids instead of a fish-out-of-water at Harvard Law School, all the humor is so lazy and on-the-nose. 

i) "Little House on the Prairie"
Another reboot I don't think anybody needed, but it's okay, I guess. I just have so many memories of the old series being on TV constantly in the '80s and '90s and it feeling like the very essence of channel surfing boredom. 

j) "Silo"
The end of the second season of "Silo" sort of pulled me back into the show. The entire series up to that point had taken place underground in an undetermined point at least 150 years in the future, and suddenly they flashed back to present day Washington, D.C. to start to fill in the backstory of what happened. I think that was the exact right time to do it at the midway point of a show that's going to end after the fourth season, and it added Jessica Henwick and Jessica Brown Findlay to the cast, which is also a plus. I had started to tune out a bit but now I'm reinvested in the show. 

k) "Trying"
With "Trying" in its fifth season it feels like they've kind of gone through the entire story arc they probably had in mind when creating the show and are now just in a comfortable groove and idly introducing different subplots to keep it going, which I don't mind because it's a sweet little show with a likeable cast. I also like that each season of "Trying" has a different soundtrack artist that writes a new song for every episode, more shows should do something like that, and it was a pleasant surprise to hear Orla Gartland's voice and realize she did the soundtrack for season 5. 

l) "Survival of the Thickest"
Still a pretty good show in its third and final season, I don't know if it found an audience of people who loved, say, "Insecure," but I feel like it should. 

m) "Sparks of Tomorrow" 
This anime on Netflix has an interesting sort of alternate history steampunk vibe, it takes place in an early 20th century Japan where electricity hasn't been discovered/'invented'(?) yet. 

This takes place in France in 1936 but feels like one of those modern murder mysteries involving upper class people at a hotel or resort that are so trendy now. Pretty good, one of the better Netflix imports I've seen lately. 

A Korean psychological drama about a literature professor that's based on a play, kind of enjoy seeing something this stagey with mostly one setting. 

One of those Chinese historical dramas with really beautiful costuming, there are so many episodes in a season so I don't think I'll stick with it but it was fun to watch a little of. 

This South African show seems to be really globally popular, it's about somebody who's internet famous who gets dragged into a family scandal, people love that kind of thing I guess but it doesn't interest me much. 

Erika Toda has starred in probably the 2 best Japanese shows I've seen this year, "Straight To Hell" and "Reboot." The latter is about a guy trying to find his wife's murderer, wish it didn't have such a generic title. 

s) "Proud" 
This Polish show on HBO Max is about a male model who has to care for his nice after his sister dies, and just suddenly has to make this huge change from a party animal lifestyle to parenthood, great performance from Ignacy Liss. 

t) "Nation's Dumbest" 
I'm not generally much into game shows and reality competition shows that B-list and C-list celebrities do just to stay on television, but I kind of love this show. A dozen contestants answer fairly basic general knowledge questions or do little goofy problem-solving challenges, and whoever does best each week gets to go home, until the last remaining person is crowned the dumbest of them all. There's a nice range of people who have an airhead reputation they might want to refute (Steve-O, Carmen Electra, Hilaria Baldwin), some well educated people who it's fun to point and laugh at when they don't do well (Dr. Drew, Andrew Yang), and some random likeable people to root for (Anthony Michael Hall, Ice-T, Jon Heder). It's pretty entertaining, I don't think I've been this invested in seeing who's still standing at the end of a season of a reality show since the heyday of "American Idol." 

As someone who will watch almost any TV show but will almost never listen to any podcast, I'm slightly vexed by Netflix's new move toward just putting established podcasts in their library next to all their TV shows. But "Switched On Pop" is just the kind of podcast I'd listen to if I did regularly listen to podcasts, and it was fun to watch I guess their first episode in a visual format, I like the way they embrace really looking at modern pop songs from a compositional standpoint and digging into production methods and song structure. 

The main "Hot Ones" series I guess still lives on YouTube, but the first episode on Netflix with the "Extra Heat" subtitle seems to be more or less the same show, but with Will Ferrell and a couple of his co-stars from "The Hawk" promoting their golf show in a baseball park (?). Maybe this is just going to be one-off Netflix episodes of "Hot Ones" that are ads for other Netflix shows, but it's fine, "Hot Ones" is all good with me. 

It's always interesting to find out where a movie based on a true story took creative liberties. But this 3-part docuseries seems to be just a bunch of people who knew Jordan Belfort griping and nitpicking about Belfort's book and Scorsese's movie or saying 'I wasn't as fat as the guy that played me' or whatever. 

A Tennessee high school teacher has students in his sociology class investigating cold cases and uncovering new info about an '80s serial killer, wild fascinating stuff. 

I've gotten this far in life knowing as little as possible about Burning Man and not having much curiosity about it, but this HBO Max docuseries is moderately interesting I guess. 

I watched this when it first came out on Netflix, before Norway's World Cup run really became this huge deal, and it helped me get invested in that whole story. Highly recommended if you've become a fan of Erling Haaland in the last few weeks. 

12:50 PM

Monthly Report: July 2026 Singles

Monday, July 20, 2026






















1. Jon Pardi - "Boots Off"
About a decade ago, Jon Pardi released "Head Over Boots" and "Dirt On My Boots" as back-to-back singles and they became his first two #1s on country radio, and remain arguably his two biggest hits (both 7x platinum while none of his other songs are more than 4x platinum). Now, country music is full of songs about boots, so that's not incredibly unlikely, but that always amused me, and PardiNextDoor finally released a third song with that word in the title. So far "Boots Off" doesn't seem to be in any danger of being as big as those two songs, but I like it. Here's the 2026 singles Spotify playlist that I update every month. 

2. Tems - "What You Need"
This is quickly becoming Tems's biggest song since "Free Mind." Maybe she just resonates more with her inconsolably sad songs, which is I guess an interesting thing about the international success of Afrobeats, like dancehall never really had songs like this become huge crossover hits. 

3. Cannons - "Starlight" 
I feel like Cannons singles would get played on pop radio instead of alternative radio if they were credited to Michelle Joy as a solo artist instead of a band, but I'm glad they do well on alt radio, I like their glossy '80s synth jams. 

4. Kehlani f/ Usher - "Shoulda Never" 
Over the years some rap and R&B producers have taken to making loops that sound like old records when they're incorporated into new songs -- sample-free sampling, which is pretty clever. Apparently that's the case with "Shoulda Never," but the first few times I heard it I was paranoid that the 'sample' was generated by AI. Anyway, good song, I'm glad it's not AI. 

5. The Last Dinner Party - "Count The Ways"
This didn't jump out to me as a single when the Last Dinner Party's second album came out last year, but it sounds good on the radio, I'm glad this record is finally gaining a little more traction, "This Is the Killer Speaking" was a really cool song but maybe a little too risky as a lead single. 

6. Carly Pearce f/ Riley Green - "If I Don't Leave I'm Gonna Stay"
A good smoldering duet, their voices sound great together and I like the line "we're getting close to losing clothes, I should go look at the time, it's getting late." Devin Dawson co-wrote this, he released one album that was pretty good in 2018 but I guess he's still in Nashville working as a songwriter. 

7. Latto f/ GloRilla - "GOMF" 
I didn't like Soulja Boy's "Yahhh!" at the time because I felt like it commercially overshadowed the other single he had out at the time, "Donk," that I liked a lot more. But history has been kinder to "Donk," so I feel vindicated there, and can admit that "Yahhh!" is a fun song to hear sampled on "GOMF." The Latto album is solid, this isn't necessarily one of the more impressive songs but the whole thing is good. 

8. Beyonce - "Morning Dew (Donk)"
Speaking of "Donk"! I love B'Day so I'm glad Beyonce is doing a 20th anniversary reissue. But it's a little irritating that the first song she's released from it is a song that everybody already knows was recorded for a different album roughly 7 years later, like can you please take your own catalog seriously? 

9. Victoria Monet - "Let Me"  
I don't know something this low key is really the song she can launch her next album with, but I'm glad it's at least doing pretty well on R&B radio. 

10. Social Distortion - "Born To Kill" 
Some bands I just appreciate them still being around doing what they've always done. Their latest album has a cover of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" that works better than I would've expected and could probably be massive. But I also like the old-fashioned sneer of the lead single, especially the line "look out, man, you're in my pissing range." 

The Worst Single of the Month: Chris Brown - "Obvious"
Well it's aptly titled, I'll give him that.

5:00 AM

Friday, July 17, 2026

 





This week I ranked Jay-Z's albums for Spin and wrote a Deep Cut Friday column about Steely Dan's "King of the World." 

10:02 AM

Deep Album Cuts Vol. 410: Third Eye Blind

Wednesday, July 15, 2026














Third Eye Blind were huge for a brief time in the late '90s, but they never really stopped making records, so I thought I'd dig into their catalog and see what it was like beyond the big early hits. 

Third Eye Blind deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Thanks a Lot
2. I Want You
3. Burning Man
4. Motorcycle Drive By
5. Narcolepsy
6. 1,000 Julys
7. Wounded
8. The Red Summer Sun
9. An Ode to Maybe
10. Farther
11. Misfits
12. Self Righteous
13. Can You Take Me
14. Dopamine
15. Mine
16. Weightless
17. In the Fade
18. Light It Up
19. Funeral Singers

Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 from Third Eye Blind (1997)
Tracks 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10 from Blue (1999)
Tracks 11 and 12 from Out of the Vein (2003)
Track 13 from Ursa Major (2009)
Track 14 from Dopamine (2015)
Track 15 from the "Everything Is Easy" single (2015)
Track 16 from We Are Drugs EP (2016)
Track 17 from Thanks For Everything EP (2018)
Track 18 from Screamer (2019)
Track 19 from Our Bande Apart (2021)

Stephan Jenkins produced an R&B cover of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" by a group called The Braids that was briefly a chart hit in 1996. Around the same time, Third Eye Blind parlayed a spot opening an Oasis show in San Francisco into a major label bidding war and signed a huge contract with Elektra with full creative freedom. I remember seeing big full page ads for Third Eye Blind's debut album in magazines like Alternative Press before I heard "Semi-Charmed Life," and to be honest, I hated that song the whole time it was inescapable in the summer of '97. I got over that, though, it's a great song, I think it's the "Born To Run" of the '90s. 

Third Eye Blind headlined my college's spring concert in 2005, and I didn't go, but I think I had warmed to the band's hits by that point. And my wife and her brother were big fans of that first album, so I'd hear it on road trips and songs like "Motorcycle Drive By" started to grow on me. More recently, my brother-in-law has been really into Third Eye Blind's cover of Beyonce and Drake's "Mine" that appeared on a 2015 b-side, he even had it on his wedding playlist. 

I remember a very entertaining interview with Gina Arnold where Stephan Jenkins declared "We're not a media-created band like Sleater-Kinney" and "We've driven to New York in a van and played CBGBs," my brother and I would mockingly quote that constantly. Jenkins generally seems like a ridiculous character, and kind of turned into an Axl Rose-style diva lead singer, firing guitarist Kevin Cadogan, who co-wrote more than half of the songs on the first two Third Eye Blind albums. But I think he's pretty talented and those albums are both full of great songs. 

As ubiquitous as the band's debut was, I genuinely barely remember Blue coming out. I never heard the lead single "Anything" on the radio, it didn't have a video, I vaguely remember someone telling me they put out this 2-minute song that was good, and I love that one now. Even the album's big hit, "Never Let You Go," I feel like I only saw the video once or twice at the time. Somehow the album still went platinum, but the band never really recovered their momentum, even if some of their later albums charted higher. Blue is cool, though, I think it's worthy of a Pinkerton-like following, "The Red Summer Sun" has an insane vocal, Jenkins really does kinda turn into Axl Rose in the middle of that one. His dark sense of humor doesn't really come across on "Slow Motion," though, the lyrics on that one are such a bad idea that later editions of the album just have it as an instrumental, which I don't really have a problem with, I never want to hear those lyrics again. 

They never really reached the heights of the first two albums again, but there's some interesting stuff on the later records, including some surprising collaborations. "Self Righteous" is a 6-minute song featuring Kimya Dawson of the Moldy Peaches. "Misfits," which was first developed as a song Jenkins and Fred Durst were working on for Limp Bizkit's Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water. Jenkins also became friends with Billy Corgan, who co-wrote "Light It Up." "Weightless" is a good song mostly in 5/4 for my ongoing 5/4 files. And Third Eye Blind's most recent album contains a pretty good cover of Califone's most popular song, "Funeral Singers," which was a surprising choice. 

Previous playlists in the Deep Album Cuts series:
Vol. 1: Brandy
Vol. 2: Whitney Houston
Vol. 3: Madonna
Vol. 4: My Chemical Romance
Vol. 5: Brad Paisley
Vol. 6: George Jones
Vol. 7: The Doors
Vol. 8: Jay-Z
Vol. 9: Robin Thicke
Vol. 10: R. Kelly
Vol. 11: Fall Out Boy
Vol. 12: TLC
Vol. 13: Pink
Vol. 14: Queen
Vol. 15: Steely Dan
Vol. 16: Trick Daddy
Vol. 17: Paramore
Vol. 18: Elton John
Vol. 19: Missy Elliott
Vol. 20: Mariah Carey
Vol. 21: The Pretenders
Vol. 22: "Weird Al" Yankovic
Vol. 23: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Vol. 24: Foo Fighters
Vol. 25: Counting Crows
Vol. 26: T.I.
Vol. 27: Jackson Browne
Vol. 28: Usher
Vol. 29: Mary J. Blige
Vol. 30: The Black Crowes
Vol. 31: Ne-Yo
Vol. 32: Blink-182
Vol. 33: One Direction
Vol. 34: Kelly Clarkson
Vol. 35: The B-52's
Vol. 36: Ludacris
Vol. 37: They Might Be Giants
Vol. 38: T-Pain
Vol. 39: Snoop Dogg
Vol. 40: Ciara
Vol. 41: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Vol. 42: Dwight Yoakam
Vol. 43: Demi Lovato
Vol. 44: Prince
Vol. 45: Duran Duran
Vol. 46: Rihanna
Vol. 47: Janet Jackson
Vol. 48: Sara Bareilles
Vol. 49: Motley Crue
Vol. 50: The Who
Vol. 51: Coldplay
Vol. 52: Alicia Keys
Vol. 53: Stone Temple Pilots
Vol. 54: David Bowie
Vol. 55: The Eagles
Vol. 56: The Beatles
Vol. 57: Beyonce
Vol. 58: Beanie Sigel
Vol. 59: A Tribe Called Quest
Vol. 60: Cheap Trick
Vol. 61: Guns N' Roses
Vol. 62: The Posies
Vol. 63: The Time
Vol. 64: Gucci Mane
Vol. 65: Violent Femmes
Vol. 66: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Vol. 67: Maxwell
Vol. 68: Parliament-Funkadelic
Vol. 69: Chevelle
Vol. 70: Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio
Vol. 71: Fantasia
Vol. 72: Heart
Vol. 73: Pitbull
Vol. 74: Nas
Vol. 75: Monica
Vol. 76: The Cars
Vol. 77: 112
Vol. 78: 2Pac
Vol. 79: Nelly
Vol. 80: Meat Loaf
Vol. 81: AC/DC
Vol. 82: Bruce Springsteen
Vol. 83: Pearl Jam
Vol. 84: Green Day
Vol. 85: George Michael and Wham!
Vol. 86: New Edition
Vol. 87: Chuck Berry
Vol. 88: Electric Light Orchestra
Vol. 89: Chic
Vol. 90: Journey
Vol. 91: Yes
Vol. 92: Soundgarden
Vol. 93: The Allman Brothers Band
Vol. 94: Mobb Deep
Vol. 95: Linkin Park
Vol. 96: Shania Twain
Vol. 97: Squeeze
Vol. 98: Taylor Swift
Vol. 99: INXS
Vol. 100: Stevie Wonder
Vol. 101: The Cranberries
Vol. 102: Def Leppard
Vol. 103: Bon Jovi
Vol. 104: Dire Straits
Vol. 105: The Police
Vol. 106: Sloan
Vol. 107: Peter Gabriel
Vol. 108: Led Zeppelin
Vol. 109: Dave Matthews Band
Vol. 110: Nine Inch Nails
Vol. 111: Talking Heads
Vol. 112: Smashing Pumpkins
Vol. 113: System Of A Down
Vol. 114: Aretha Franklin
Vol. 115: Michael Jackson
Vol. 116: Alice In Chains
Vol. 117: Paul Simon
Vol. 118: Lil Wayne
Vol. 119: Nirvana
Vol. 120: Kix
Vol. 121: Phil Collins
Vol. 122: Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Vol. 123: Sonic Youth
Vol. 124: Bob Seger
Vol. 125: Radiohead
Vol. 126: Eric Church
Vol. 127: Neil Young
Vol. 128: Future
Vol. 129: Say Anything
Vol. 130: Maroon 5
Vol. 131: Kiss
Vol. 132: Dinosaur Jr.
Vol. 133: Stevie Nicks
Vol. 134: Talk Talk
Vol. 135: Ariana Grande
Vol. 136: Roxy Music
Vol. 137: The Cure
Vol. 138: 2 Chainz
Vol. 139: Kelis
Vol. 140: Ben Folds Five
Vol. 141: DJ Khaled
Vol. 142: Little Feat
Vol. 143: Brendan Benson
Vol. 144: Chance The Rapper
Vol. 145: Miguel
Vol. 146: The Geto Boys
Vol. 147: Meek Mill
Vol. 148: Tool
Vol. 149: Jeezy
Vol. 150: Lady Gaga
Vol. 151: Eddie Money
Vol. 152: LL Cool J
Vol. 153: Cream
Vol. 154: Pavement
Vol. 155: Miranda Lambert
Vol. 156: Gang Starr
Vol. 157: Little Big Town
Vol. 158: Thin Lizzy
Vol. 159: Pat Benatar
Vol. 160: Depeche Mode
Vol. 161: Rush
Vol. 162: Three 6 Mafia
Vol. 163: Jennifer Lopez
Vol. 164: Rage Against The Machine
Vol. 165: Huey Lewis and the News
Vol. 166: Dru Hill
Vol. 167: The Strokes
Vol. 168: The Notorious B.I.G.
Vol. 169: Sparklehorse
Vol. 170: Kendrick Lamar
Vol. 171: Mazzy Star
Vol. 172: Erykah Badu
Vol. 173: The Smiths
Vol. 174: Kenny Rogers & The First Edition
Vol. 175: Fountains Of Wayne
Vol. 176: Joe Diffie
Vol. 177: Morphine
Vol. 178: Dr. Dre
Vol. 179: The Rolling Stones
Vol. 180: Superchunk
Vol. 181: The Replacements
Vol. 371: The Beastie Boys
Vol. 372: Marianne Faithfull
Vol. 373: Sly and the Family Stone
Vol. 374: Billy Idol
Vol. 375: The Jam
Vol. 376: Roberta Flack
Vol. 377: Chubby Checker
Vol. 378: Bad Company
Vol. 379: Mana
Vol. 380: Joe Cocker
Vol. 381: The Kinks
Vol. 382: Phish
Vol. 383: Faith No More
Vol. 384: The Alarm
Vol. 385: Jill Sobule
Vol. 386: Luther Vandross
Vol. 387: Angie Stone
Vol. 388: MC Lyte
Vol. 389: The Beach Boys
Vol. 390: The S.O.S. Band
Vol. 391: Bad Bunny
Vol. 392: Donna Summer
Vol. 393: The Wu-Tang Clan
Vol. 394: Raekwon
Vol. 395: Ghostface Killah
Vol. 396: RZA
Vol. 397: GZA
Vol. 398: Method Man
Vol. 399: Redman
Vol. 400: Al Green
Vol. 401: Billy Joel
Vol. 402: Melissa Etheridge
Vol. 403: Shakira
Vol. 404: Aerosmith
Vol. 405: Cake
Vol. 406: Daft Punk
Vol. 407: N.E.R.D.
Vol. 408: Built To Spill
Vol. 409: Queen Latifah

5:00 AM

Friday, July 10, 2026

 







This week I wrote about one of my favorite Sonic Youth songs, "Rain on Tin," for my Spin column Deep Cut Friday, and also ranked Sly and the Family Stone's albums. 

9:50 AM

Monthly Report: June 2026 Albums

Thursday, July 09, 2026


 




















1. Tierra Whack - Whack's Museum
I'm not someone who begrudges rappers experimenting with singing and melodic flows. But there was plenty of that the last couple times Tierra Whack released a batch of new songs (2021's trio of EPs called Rap? and Pop? and R&B?, and the 2024 album Whack World). So her new mixtape Whack's Museum feels like an overdue confirmation that she's absolutely one of the best MCs going right now. The tape opens with her chuckling "They say I should rap more," and then she proceeds to rhyme her ass off for 12 tracks, a third of them produced by Conductor Williams. 

2. Olivia Rodrigo - You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love
I don't know if I like this as much as Olivia Rodrigo's first two albums, but she's still on an incredible run and has really not missed once yet. And I like that she's pivoted a bit, from grungy/punky rock influences to lots of homages to The Cure (and a Robert Smith cameo), and from angry or sad or horny breakup songs to the whirlwind of emotions of a blossoming new relationship. The whole title and vibe of You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love kind of takes me back to the early days of dating my wife, and her enormous sad eyes that made me want to just stay with her forever and try to make her smile more. I particularly like "Maggots For Brains" and "U + Me = <3," which has my favorite line on the album: "They say modern love's a cruel endeavor, and to that I say 'Fuck it, whatever.'" 

3. Key Glock - Project X
On a Thursday afternoon in June, the world heard the news that Memphis's Tay Keith, one of the biggest rap producers of the past ten years, had died at 29. That night, people pressed play on Memphis rapper Key Glock's new album and the first thing they heard was Tay Keith's signature drop, and it was bittersweet to learn that Tay Keith produced 5 tracks on Project X. Key Glock's got a formula that he never really deviates from -- he's got more ways to say he bought some expensive jeans than perhaps any rapper in history -- but he's got a great ear and as usual picks some excellent beats, from Tay Keith and Grayson Beats's "Mannish" to Oh Ross and Blazerfxme's "Big 5." 

4. Niall Horan - Dinner Party
All four surviving members of One Direction released albums in the first half of 2026, and I'm not surprised that Niall Horan continues to quietly have the best solo catalog out of the group. Julian Bunetta and John Ryan have made some huge hits with Sabrina Carpenter in the last few years but they really do some of their best work with Horan, "Tastes So Good" is a fantastic opener, and "End of an Era" is a moving tribute to Liam Payne. 

5. Imani Imani - Papercut
It's been 6 years since Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free launched pgLang, a multimedia company that seems to have mostly worked on advertising campaigns and occasionally releasing the music of Kendrick and his cousin Baby Keem. Apparently they released an album by another artist, Tanna Leone, in 2022, but I have no recollection of hearing anything about that. Singer Imani Imani's debut Papercut was surprise released on a Tuesday in June, I guess on the premise that the pgLang brand could lure enough listeners to check out a new artist. I don't know how well it worked, but I hope Imani Imani has a future, this album is really good, I particularly like the early stretch of "Come Together," "Snatch," and "On Demand." There are a couple familiar names in the liner notes, James Fauntleroy and Sam Dew, but it seems like she's not working too much with established people, and has a lovely voice that works in several different styles of music. 

6. Vince Staples - Cry Baby
I respect that Vince Staples has always moved like an album artist who makes each release musically and/or lyrically distinct from his other work. Summertime '06 didn't sound like his early tapes, Big Fish Theory was a departure from all of the above and kind of divisive at the time, but now it's one of his most popular records. So I take the mixed reviews of Cry Baby with a grain of salt, because even if it's not his best work, I really like dig him adding something like this to his catalog. It's a political rap/rock record that sounds nothing like Rage Against the Machine, full of rhymes about American racism and the Trump administration over chugging indie rock guitars. Vince gets a lot of credit for his deadpan wit, but there's a lot of sincerity in his music too, and I like how fully he engages with the subject matter and says exactly what he thinks. It really feels like 2010s mainstream rap songs like YG's "FDT" and Childish Gambino's "This Is America" totally went out of fashion in the 2020s and guys like Kendrick and J. Cole wouldn't be caught dead making a record this earnestly topical today. So Vince making Cry Baby actually feels refreshing, he's swerving confidently into an unoccupied lane. 

7. T.I. - Kill The King
T.I. has said that Kill The King is his final album, and so I'll just quickly link my old piece about how almost no rapper ever truly retires and I think he'll be back. But having a comeback hit like "Let 'Em Know" 25 years into his career is pretty cool, I'm glad he was able to catch a real wave with this album. He got some good beats from DJ Toomp, Organized Noize, Mr. Hanky, and DJ Montay, and Young Dro is on like three tracks. T.I. is still really an elite rapper, I'm pretty happy with it as a fan, whether or not it's his last album. 

8. Berndt / Schmidt - Cloud Machines
The High Zero Festival is one of my favorite things on earth -- longtime Baltimore saxophonist John Berndt co-founded the festival in the '90s, and M.C. Schmidt of Matmos, who moved to Baltimore in 2007, is the current president of the High Zero Foundation. Their first album as a duo, apparently 12 years in the making, is the kind of experimental record that makes judicious use of silence as much as any sound. You get a lot of room to listen or not listen closely to these strange and often beautiful little spurts of sound that come from Bernt and Schmidt's instruments, synths, samplers, and collaborators like guitarists Owen Gardner of Horse Lords and Joel Knispel. 

9. Horse Lords - Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive! 
I already included one of the advance singles from the sixth Horse Lords album, "Brain of the Firm," in my annual DJ set of music in 5/4 back in May. There's some more 5/4 on Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive! as well as some other unusual time signatures (I love the 9/8 on "A City Yet To Come). But what really impresses me about Horse Lords is how they blur and overlap and transition between different meters and polyrhythms. In a way they're probably one of the tightest bands in the world, because they play such unnatural grooves together so well. 

10. Death Cab For Cutie - I Built You A Tower
I think of Ben Gibbard as a singer/songwriter guy at heart. Like, Death Cab For Cutie always seemed like a somewhat unlikely platinum rock band, he could very easily have had more of a Elliott Smith or Iron & Wine-type career, whether as a solo artist or under the Death Cab name. That being said, The Photo Album is my favorite Death Cab album partly because there's a little more muscle in the rhythm section, and I Built You A Tower goes even further in having a real bass-heavy post-punk crunch on "Punching the Flowers," "How Heavenly A State," and "Envy the Birds." They even pull off a nice 5/4 groove on the latter, which is not something I really ever expected to hear on a Death Cab record. 

The Worst Album of the Month: Malcolm Todd - Do That Again
If I wanted to take easy shots at Malcolm Todd, there are plenty of readymade narratives to draw from: that he's a showbiz nepo baby (his father is a successful TV producer/creator), or an industry plant (Spotify recently removed some suspicious streams from his listener statistics), or a white teenybopper knockoff of a Black artist (Steve Lacy). I really just don't like his music, particularly his dopey breathy singing style. I also don't like his lyrics -- Do That Again opens with lots of horny songs about hotel room trysts, and then goes into a stretch of sour breakup songs where he slut shames a girl or mutters "bitch." I do like the album his sister Audrey Hobert released last year, though. 

5:01 AM

Movie Diary

Wednesday, July 08, 2026

 




a) The Sheep Detectives
My wife kind of scoffed when I put on a movie called The Sheep Detectives, but she was in tears about 110 minutes later. A really charming, funny movie with a decent mystery and some surprising emotional depth. I feel like they could've gotten a British actor for Nicholas Braun's role instead of him attempting an accent, but a pretty minor quibble. 

b) Backrooms
My son talked about going to see this with his friends on opening weekend, but for whatever reason that didn't happen, and he and I ended up going to see it while we were on vacation in Rehoboth a couple weeks ago. I don't see a lot of big zeitgeisty movies while they're still in theaters, but I'm glad I got to see this one. I was skeptical for the first half or so that it was going to be a little underwhelming once you got the basic premise, but there were just so many fascinatingly creative visual flourishes. And as the story got darker and more bizarre I found it really engrossing, one of those movies that has really stuck with me. I'm not entirely sure how I'd rate it, that might take a repeat viewing, but I was pretty impressed. 

c) Office Romance
I like Brett Goldstein as an actor and screen presence but have found his projects as writer/creator to be a bit hit and miss. "Shrinking" is great, and last year's All of You was a dud, but I would put Office Romance squarely in the hit category, I really enjoyed it. I feel like Jennifer Lopez being Goldstein's co-star makes it feel even more like a familiar, conventional romcom than it is. But the writing is sharp, there are some nice clever turns in the story, the two leads have surprisingly convincing chemistry, and Betty Gilpin absolutely steals every scene she's in, one of those deranged, committed supporting turns that totally elevates a movie. 

d) Voicemails For Isabelle
Another kind of formulaic romcom, but one of those moderately high concept ones where the guy pursues the girl without letting her know what strange coincidence brought them together and she eventually finds out and it becomes a problem. Zoey Deutch is the lead and at one point it was going to be Hailee Steinfeld, and I think that's a lateral move because if either of them is in something I'm going to watch it. Nick Offerman has a few decent scenes as comic relief but it feels like they could've leaned more into it being a comedy, but a sweet little movie. 

e) Hoppers
I didn't know much about this Pixar film before watching it, and I'm glad I didn't, because it was a lot of fun to discover just how strange and convoluted the premise was. I'm not going to say it was up there with Up, but it reminded me a little of that, that and Turning Red are the Pixar comparison points I'd go with. 

f) Green Room
Last month I went on a big binge of movies from a decade ago while finalizing my lists of my favorite films of 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015, and this might have been the best of the ones that were new to me. The loss of Anton Yelchin is so fucking sad, especially because he was making movies as good as this and Thoroughbreds just before he died. Patrick Stewart playing the villain was an inspired turn, he's not asked to do that often but he's great.  

g) Enter the Requiem
After I watched Green Room, I was curious to see Jeremy Saulnier's earlier low budget feature Blue Ruin, which was available on some D-list free streaming services like Fawesome.tv. But for whatever reason, when I cued up Blue Ruin, Fawesome.tv encountered some issue or glitch and started to play a completely different movie, and I watched it for a good long while going "wow, he really improved quickly with Green Room" before realizing that it was something else. And Enter the Requiem may genuinely be the worst movie I've ever seen, just so many baffling acting and directing choices, closer to The Room than a garden variety bad film. I wouldn't even recommend it for a "MST3K" or "How Did This Get Made?"-type thing. 

My wife came home midafternoon one day when I was watching this, and I said "As you know, I don't really care to know much about movies before I put them on, so I had no idea this movie about British lepidopterists was going to be dangerously horny." Pretty good movie, though.

It's funny to watch Joachim Trier's only English-language film now, knowing that he'd go on to become a much bigger deal in American without making any other movies fully in English. Pretty good film, good performances from Jesse Eisenberg and Isabelle Huppert. The subplot with Rachel Brosnahan felt kind of pointless and tacked-on, although I can't complain because she's so gorgeous in this movie, and it's funny to see a sex scene between two actors who'd go on to play Lex Luthor and Lois Lane (though not in the same movie). 

j) Take This Waltz
I was really impressed by Sarah Polley's writing and direction in this. Great depiction of Toronto, too, really made it seem like a lovely place to live. And I say that as someone who doesn't particularly enjoy movies where the entire story is a love triangle, but this felt really lived-in and true to life (I imagine it may have been autobiographical, given that Polley divorced and remarried in the years before Take This Waltz came out). Polley really captured the intimacy of a marriage, as played by Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen, and the intimacy of flirtation and a new or potential relationship, as played by Williams and Luke Kirby, in really insightful and realistic ways. 

While going through early/mid-2010s films I caught up on some big historical Oscar flicks I missed at the time, including this, which I enjoyed more than I expected to. I'm not always over the moon about Daniel Day-Lewis but he's undeniably great here, and there's a gallery of great supporting performances comparable to Oppenheimer.  

l) Selma
Another big biopic I was overdue to watch. Really made me appreciate Ava DuVernay's talent, feels like she had a very strong sense on what episodes from Martin Luther King Jr.'s life to present to  make it feel like his story and not just a narrative from a history book. 

m) Frank
Of the Michael Fassbender movies about indie rock that partially take place at SXSW, Frank is far better than Song To Song. I think the true story of Frank Sidebottom/Chris Sievey would've made a much more interesting movie than this heavily fictionalized riff on it, though. 

n) Black Mountain Side
A pretty good unsettling low budget horror movie about a mysterious archeological discovery in northern Canada, really built to a good unsettling climax. Kind of a bummer that Nick Szostakiwskyj has only directed one more feature in the decade since, this is the kind of thing that should be a calling card to build a career on. 

o) Mojave
William Monahan won an Oscar for his screenplay for The Departed but the rest of his filmography makes him seem like kind of a one hit wonder (and The Departed was adapted from a Hong Kong film, after all). He wrote and directed Mojave, which stars Garrett Hedlund as this cartoonishly badass Hollywood filmmaker who decides to go wandering around the Mojave Desert and meets a drifter played by Oscar Isaac. Some of Monahan's directorial choices are laughably bad, and the story takes a few head-scratching turns before a pretty stupid ending. 

p) Before I Go To Sleep
A weird psychological thriller with Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth, didn't particularly care for it. 

q) Ginger & Rosa
One of Elle Fanning's first really meaty roles in her transition from stardom to Oscar-caliber serious drama, a pretty good '60s period piece by British director Sally Potter.

r) Bachelorette 
I had seen bits of this on cable in the past and enjoyed everything else Leslye Headland has done ("Russian Doll," Sleeping With Other People, etc.) so I assumed I would like it once I finally watched the whole thing, and I did. Not that different from a lot of other ensemble comedies starring women that revolve around a wedding, but the dialogue's very sharp and I found it a little more enjoyable than the other big one of that era, Bridesmaids, and I could watch early 2010s Lizzy Caplan and Isla Fisher all day. 

Even after seeing Annette, I felt a little unprepared for just how bizarre Leos Carax's previous film Holy Motors is, or that Eva Mendes and Kylie Minogue would be down for something this surreal. 

I think there are limits to the practicality of identity-based casting, people should generally stick to playing characters of their own race, but actors should be allowed some measure of freedom to portray someone who is not exactly like them. That being said, this movie about a facility where people with different behavioral disorders was really derailed by Robert Sheehan's portrayal of a man with Tourette's and Dev Patel's portrayal of a man with OCD, I cringed a lot at their broad, hacky performances. You could probably make a much better version of this film with actors who actually have those conditions or have some lived experience with them -- in fact this is one of Zoe Kravitz's best roles, and she drew on her own struggles with anorexia. 

My son found this very odd 2021 animated film on Netflix, which has a mostly American cast and crew but was only released theatrically in Russia and China, where Rachel Bloom and Adam Devine play "flummels," rabbit-like creatures who have donut holes in the middle of their torsos. 

Another one my son watched on Netflix, a bit more charming, with a sort of retro animation style. 

I don't think there were any, like, Osama Bin Laden jokes in this, but it's still slightly disturbing that this animated film about a military crew of fur seals was probably inspired by SEAL Team Six. Good on them for getting the singer Seal to make a cameo, though. 

The best of my son's recent Netflix finds, a pretty cool looking Mexican production with stop motion animation that's apparently a prequel to a series called "Frankelda's Book of Spooks." 

5:00 AM