Wednesday, May 27, 2026
I talked to William, Gerrit, and Mike of Future Islands for a Baltimore Banner piece about the band's 20th anniversary, their new rarities collection, and their big Pier Six Pavilion show coming up on Thursday.
Monthly Report: May 2026 Singles
Tuesday, May 26, 2026
1. BossMan Dlow - "Motion Party"
Super short songs are a modern rap trend that people tend to look down upon, and it is a little ridiculous that one of the biggest songs of BossMan Dlow's career, which genuinely sounds like a deliberate single and samples an old hit (Khia's "My Neck, My Back"), is only 95 seconds long. Like, he could have easily at least padded it out to a standard 2 minutes, but he didn't, and it's still a hit, which I guess is a flex. And I usually hold those kinds of big obvious samples against a song, but it just sounds so different from most of BossMan Dlow's other beats and he finds a good pocket. Here's the 2026 singles Spotify playlist I update every month.
2. Harry Styles - "American Girls"
This probably would have been a smarter first single than "Aperture," I think he lost a lot of momentum, but I like both songs a lot.
3. Lady Gaga and Doechii - "Runway"
Bruno Mars went full-on elevator music with his latest album, but I'm glad he's still lending his ability to make fun pop jams to other artists, between this and "Die With A Smile" I kind of want him to exec produce a whole Gaga album.
4. French Montana and Max B - "Ever Since U Left Me (I Went Deaf)"
Back when they were mixtape-level stars in the late 2000s, Max B was the guy people were actually passionate about and French Montana was the sidekick. Then Max went to prison for 16 years, and French managed to punch above his weight level as a pretty successful mainstream rapper, but he always felt like kind of a stand-in rap star to me, even if he wasn't necessarily standing in for the career Max might have had. But I will give French a lot of credit, when Max became a free man a few months ago, French was waiting and ready to introduce him to the good life and make more music together, and they made a serious hit. Max is still kind of rough around the edges for radio rap, which is part of his charm, so it feels oddly right that Max just has this quick entertaining 23-second verse but French carries the bulk of the song.
5. Olivia Rodrigo - "Drop Dead"
I found this a little initially underwhelming compared to the singles from Olivia Rodrigo's first two albums, but it and "The Cure" have been growing on me. It feels like she's matching the emotional pivot from heartbreak and anger to infatuation and yearning with a different melodic and vocal approach, so I'm interested to hear how that plays out over an entire album.
6. Freya Skye - "Silent Treatment"
British Disney starlet Freya Skye is a very post-Taylor Swift pop singer, she even echoes the "too young to be messed with" line from "Dear John" in her breakthrough single "Silent Treatment." But as a vocalist she sounds more like fellow Taylor disciples Olivia Rodrigo and Gracie Abrams to me.
7. Charli XCX - "Rock Music"
I rolled my eyes a few weeks ago when Charli XCX was quoted by British Vogue as saying "I think the dancefloor is dead, so now we're making rock music" because that kind of genre-switching gamesmanship feels so played out and corny right now. But it turned out that those words are verbatim lyrics on a very tongue-in-cheek single called "Rock Music," and I'm kind of amused that people have taken it as an earnest statement of intent, it's a pretty funny, ridiculous song.
8. Baby Keem f/ Kendrick Lamar and Momo Boyd - "Good Flirts"
People keep trying more and more to treat Baby Keem as a genuine star, but there hasn't been a rapper in a long time who's so thoroughly the Memphis Bleek of his generation, anything he does with his superstar mentor is always guaranteed to get ten times as much attention as anything else. "Good Flirts" sticks out as a calculated radio record on Keem's album, but it's enjoyable, one of Kendrick's funniest verses in recent memory ("shit, I gossip with my bitch like I'm Young Thug too") and Momo Boyd sounds great when she's not doing that weird faux-Lana Del Rey voice that she does on her solo material.
9. Juvenile f/ Megan Thee Stallion - "B.B.B. (Remix)"
We haven't had this kind of Meg on the radio in a minute, it's great to hear, she kills this beat and the Juvenile album is pretty good, I'm glad he got his biggest hit in a while with it.
10. Lainey Wilson - "Can't Sit Still"
I wish country radio embraced Lainey Wilson's uptempo singles as much as her slower hits. Excellent vocal and Jay Joyce stuff the second verse with lots of cool little sonic details, a rare moment when one of my favorite producers really shows off.
The Worst Single of the Month: Tyla - "Chanel"
I generally like Tyla and am looking forward to her album, but I really do not like this song, I'm irritated that it did better than most of her other post-"Water" singles.
Deep Album Cuts Vol. 405: Cake
Thursday, May 21, 2026 .png)
Guitarist Greg Brown, a co-founding member of Cake, passed away in February, and that sad news made me want to make this playlist.
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.
TV Diary
Wednesday, May 20, 2026 
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.
b) "Legends"
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.
c) "Off Campus"
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.
e) "Nemesis"
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.
f) "Half Man"
"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.
g) "Unchosen"
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.
h) "M.I.A."
"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.
i) "Euphoria"
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.
j) "Citadel"
"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.
n) "Good Omens"
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.
q) "That Night"
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.
u) "The Hunt"
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.
z) "Scrabble"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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:
Reading Diary
Monday, May 11, 2026 
a) Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan, by Alex Pappedemas and Joan LeMay
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.
b) The Name of This Band is R.E.M.: A Biography, by Peter Ames Carlin
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.
c) Lollapalooza: The Uncensored History of Alternative Rock's Wildest Festival, by Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour
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.
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.
Monday, May 04, 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”
Friday, May 01, 2026
This week I wrote about Sublime for Spin and did a Deep Cut Friday column about Outkast's "Red Velvet."
TV Diary
Thursday, April 30, 2026
Apple TV's "Widow's Bay" is so completely up my alley, a horror comedy about a creepy New England town (I think they tiptoe around every specifying a state), created by "Parks & Recreation" writer Katie Dippold and primarily directed by "Atlanta"'s Hiro Murai. Matthew Rhys, starring as a mayor who's skeptical about the town's legends and superstitions and trying to drum up more tourism, has really growing on me as more of a cantankerous character actor type since his turn in "The Beast in Me." And the moment it transitioned from a scene with Stephen Root as a paranoid fisherman to Toby Huss as a laid back reverend, I was like yeah, this is a show for me.
AMC really changed direction after the success of "Walking Dead," it was weird to realize while watching their new series "The Audacity" that it's just about the only drama they have right now that's not on a horror/sci-fi/fantasy/thriller tip. I don't think it would lure back people who love "Mad Men" or "Breaking Bad," feels like we've seen this kind of satire of Silicon Valley hubris before. It's not even the first time I've seen Billy Magnussen play an unethical tech CEO, although his character in this isn't otherwise too similar who he played in "Made For Love." Good cast and clever premise, though, it has potential.
I was just recently griping that Michelle Pfeiffer's recent Paramount+ vehicle "The Madison" is really boring and it's a shame she doesn't star in one of her husband David E. Kelley's shows, and then what do you know, here they are finally working together. I'm only a couple episodes in and they are very slowly integrating Nick Offerman into the story, but Elle Fanning and Pfeiffer have a great complicated mother/daughter dynamic, it's a really sweet, funny, character-driven show beyond the 'broke young mom does OnlyFans' premise. And it was nice to hear Haute & Freddy's "Shy Girl" in the second episode, that's such a good song for TV syncs
The first season of "The Handmaid's Tale" was great television but I never really felt motivated to stick with it for the long haul. But they got Chase Infiniti in a spinoff for her first post-One Battle After Another role and she's just such a promising star right now, I had to check out the first couple episodes and it's pretty good.
The 2004 adaptation of the novel Man On Fire was one of Denzel Washington's great action movie roles, I think I saw that one in the theater. Putting Yahya Abdul-Mateen in that role for a series just feels like setting him up to fail or underwhelm, even if the show seems pretty solid and well made, after "Wonder Man" I'm really interested to see more of Abdul-Mateen's range now that I know he can do comedy.
I adore Deborah Ann Woll so I'm glad that she ended up being a bigger part of the "Daredevil" revival series than it seemed like she was going to be after they (sigh) killed off another major character. It's nice to see some of the other characters from the Netflix Marvel shows, too, although I still have yet to really enjoy this one as much as the old "Daredevil" show, there are fewer and less impressive action scenes.
Really glad this is back for a second season, Mindy Kaling is probably the most consistent creator in sitcoms right now after Bill Lawrence, and it's a pleasant surprise that Justin Theroux's role is now in every episode.
h) "The Boys"
I'm a little ready for "The Boys" to end, it probably didn't need five seasons. But Antony Starr as Homelander is really one of the great TV roles of this decade, I'm excited to see a bit more of that performance. And I kind of like that they gave another character a nice little redemption arc before they died.
i) "Ghosts"
I still kinda enjoy this show, but I feel like I only like half the cast and the other characters/performances are just too broad and hacky, I might finally check out on it this season.
j) "Beef"
I thought the first season of "Beef" that won 5 Emmys was a little overrated, and was skeptical about it becoming an anthology series with a different set of characters in conflict for the second season. But they got a great cast and I think a more gripping story, with Cailee Spaeny and Charles Melton as employees at a country club and Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan as their boss and his wife. The first episode that sets all the drama in motion felt a little contrived to me but just how dark and tangled the story gets is really engrossing.
I remember a little of the first season of "The Comeback" 20 years ago and being unimpressed, but I was kind of anti-mockumentary sitcoms at the time. But Lisa Kudrow is really one of her generation's best comedic actresses and this is one of her signature roles, so I decided to give it a try and watched the whole thing up to the current third and final season. And it's grown on me, but so far I don't like the third season as much, both Robert Michael Morris and his character Mickey passed away after the second season and it's just not the same without him.
Season 16 of "Bob's Burgers" has had a weird schedule with a long midseason break from December to April, I don't know if that's just a delayed reaction to the strikes. But man, this show is still at peak form, Sunday's episode was the funniest yet for Will Forte's recurring teacher character Mr. Forte.
m) "Kevin"
Aubrey Plaza co-created this Amazon Prime show about a cat named Kevin, voiced by Jason Schwartzman. I have pretty low expectations for animated sitcoms these days but this is growing on me, partly because John Waters plays a Persian cat and it definitely feels like they work to give him the best lines.
n) "Molang"
A weird little cartoon about a rabbit that's been on Netflix for a decade now and has over 300 episodes, my younger son just got into it and it's amusingly silly, I like the animation style.
The Chilean novel The House of the Spirits was apparently a huge hit in the '80s that sold tens of millions and was translated into over 20 languages. I enjoyed the first episode I watched but I'm curious to see how they tell a story that spans a century in 8 episodes, considering that shows like "The Crown" and "For All Mankind" have had to really leap through the chronology to tell stories that span a few decades over multiple seasons of television.
p) "Flunked"
This French sitcom on Netflix has a fairly absurd premise with a con man being forced to go undercover as a substitute math teacher at the high school he went to in order to avoid prison time. Pretty charming cast and reasonably snappy dialogue, though, it's not bad.
This is a South Korean show about eight filmmakers who became friends in college and stayed in touch, and the main character is the one guy in the group who still hasn't made his debut film. Definitely one of the best imports I've seen on Netflix lately, kind of a black comedy, I think a lot of people would enjoy it.
r) "Pro Bono"
Another South Korean show on Netflix about an ex-judge who becomes a lawyer at a nonprofit, reminds me of like a '90s David E. Kelley show.
This docuseries is about the director of the new Femicide Bureau in Mexico that investigates violence against women, some pretty sobering subject matter, partly just realizing that America is probably far behind Mexico on making something like this a law enforcement priority.
Zach Galifianakis's new show for Netflix feels like an indulgent little passion project where he just tries to turn his genuine interest in gardening into entertainment with mixed results. It's pleasant, though, reminds me of times of his very underrated first TV vehicle, "Late World with Zach."
This Netflix talent search show doesn't feel hugely different from stuff like "Last Comic Standing" that's been done before, but I like that Kevin Hart is having everybody perform in these famous little comedy clubs instead of in a big TV studio, it gives it a different vibe and maybe feels a little more true to the live comedy experience. A few pretty funny contestants that I'm rooting for and Hart and the other judges sometimes give a little insight into what impresses them or what they think makes a set work. The weirdest thing about this show is that Keegan-Michael Key and Tom Segura are both on it, and in the dim comedy club lighting I keep mistaking one for the other.
Jimmy Kimmel created this weed-themed Hulu riff on ESPN's "30 for 30," four 20-minute documentaries about things like High Times Magazine released on 4/20. I liked the one about the making of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, it was interesting to get the whole unlikely tale of how that screenplay was thought up and got produced and kind of became a sleeper hit on DVD. It was a little odd, though, that they barely mentioned director Danny Leiner and then just quickly note at the end that he passed away in 2017.
I know that Brazilian footballer Ronaldinho de Assis Moreira is one of the greatest soccer players of all time, but I didn't know anything beyond that, so it was fun to get into his story a bit with this Netflix docuseries.
Hulk Hogan was interviewed for this Netflix docuseries before he died, I'd probably avoid watching it if he was still alive, but now I feel like okay, let's see what this thing has to say about his complicated legacy. I haven't gotten to later episodes yet to see if they deal with Hogan's flaws and controversies in a responsible way, but the perspective on his early career was pretty interesting.
I've seen enough documentaries about boy bands and Lou Pearlman that I went into this expecting not to hear anything I hadn't heard before. But they ended up getting some fresh angles, it was especially fascinating to hear from Jason Galasso from the original lineup of N Sync about why he left, and his replacement Lance Bass spoke more frankly about what it was like for him to be in the closet during the group's run than I'd ever heard before. I also like that this one features members of Boyz II Men and gets into the very different expectations and attitudes towards Black boy bands and white boy bands. They even managed to make the 98 Degrees story interesting.
I've been watching "The Late Show" a little more lately as Colbert gets ready to go off the air in a few weeks, and of course the circumstances of the show ending are ridiculous and infuriating. But I've also just been left with an odd taste in my mouth, remembering how much funnier he was 'in character' on "The Colbert Report" and what he lost in that transition to CBS. He is one of the best interviewers in late night, though, I like that he's almost always genuinely engaged with the guests and their work.