(Last updated: 08/02/26)
On my bedside table pile right now:
I will note, there is nothing that I love more than recommending people books and I have a comprehensive categorisation system to help me with this, so please if you are ever unsure of what to read, let me know and I will try my best to find something good for you!
My all-time favourite TV show is Riverdale, and yes I am serious about that. So serious, in fact, that I presented a talk on it, entitled "Can Riverdale Ever Jump the Shark?". The talk notes and slides are available. I'm also eagerly awaiting the news season of Interview with the Vampire, and I loved watching Wayward recently. I love a weird gothic show :)
Regarding movies I've been trying to watch more as of late, and you may view my opinions on letterboxd dot com. And! I have lots more I'm excited to watch too. I'm struggling to convince people to watch some of them with me... but I'll manage eventually.
I am kept sane by year-round sports. NHL through the winter, F1 through the summer, and MLB to plug the gaps. I am a super-mega fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins & Oscar Piastri and my allegiances are currently shaky in baseball... My dad will disown me if I stray from the Yankees but I spent so much time watching the Blue Jays through last year's playoffs that they've started really charming me ;)
Inspired (blatantly stolen) from my wonderful friend Anna, I am going to try my best to update my song of the week :) This list aims to collect songs that feel like they're going to kick their way out of my chest when I listen to them. If I also end up looking really stupid dancing to them at the bus stop because I literally cannot stop myself that is often a corollary.
For past songs of the week & my thoughts on them, check out the archive here: Song Archive
Yeah yeah long time no see, let's get into it. I've been big in to listening to albums as of late. Somewhat inspired by a conversation I had with Anna, somewhat inspired by nostalgia for when my primary method of music-listening was either my collection of emo CDs or the Top 40 on the radio (which I would study and attempt to like, because I was an autistic child. This never worked.) A little inspired, too, by getting to be the CD-changer on a drive back to Swindon and the joy of flipping through those fuzzy-soft CD sleeves and choosing what's up next.
It's really given me a new wave of appreciation for the concept of the album. It's a funny thing, isn't it, how you can get so attached to the limitations of a form. The graininess of old photographs, the fuzz of music off of tape, the 74-minute limit of CDs. That's how we got singles, and 8-tracks, and B-sides. It should feel freeing that now a song can be anything, any length, delivered to you over the internet no matter what, no need to be packaged up with 10-20 of its friends to be distributed. But songs can feel so anaemic on their own, a drop in to an empty container, awash without context. Playlists can try and plug that gap, but it won't ever give you that same feeling of harmony, even when you've managed to match the vibes, and there's something that just so wonderful about an artist having the pick the set of songs they've written that have a coherent sound and story, flow well, and create an experience when all played together.
So, alright, let's get in to a couple of the albums I've been obsessed with as of late, and my current-favourite songs off of them. It's quite a long list, so I've forced myself to just focus on a few, and I can always do some more next week, right ;)
Let's start with the big-ticket news: Bad Bunny's recent album of the year Grammy win. I've already brought him up before in a previous song of the week, but I was so so happy to see this, and I MAY have let out a tear or two seeing him trying to hold himself together enough to walk up on to the stage. It was extremely deserved -- DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS is an absolutely fantastic album, and it's so much fun to listen to, all the way through. Vibrant, bright, moving.
It was also super exciting to see an album that's entirely in Spanish win such an honor, proving that people shouldn't need to compromise on who they are to assimilate to a dominant culture. He made people fall in love with his own music, culture and style. My current favourite song I've had on repeat is WELTiTA. The way he hits -ita every time is SO satisfying. I can sum the album up with a lyric from VeLDÁ -- "¿Quiéne' son/ Los que comandan una nueva generación?/ La liga multiplatino/ Bad Bunny, Dei V, Omar Courtz/ Tú sabe', los ídolo' tuyos." The icons of the new generation for sure.
Now on to some rather older news, seeing as everything else I've been listening to is at least 10 years old. Next up, then, I reckon we'll go to an absolutely iconic album which is in fact almost exactly ten years old -- Carly Rae Jepsen's E•MO•TION. Hit hockey podcasters What Chaos! have a long-running theory that CRJ is for the boys, because no woman in their life has any clue she's released songs past Call Me Maybe. Accidental gender affirmation, because I have loved our favourite Canadian pop idol for a long time, and especially this album. Best listened to while in a sensory jeprivation chamber, I encourage you to block out the world, turn out the lights, and let the songs wash over you. Explosive and saccharine synth-pop done perfectly, I am put in a good mood immediately from the first notes of Run Away with Me and it carries through every song. I've been particularly enjoying LA Hallucinations lately -- I'm a massive sucker for thumping drums, swirling choruses, and imminently danceable melodies. It has unfortunately meant I've looked really stupid dancing my way around the local library, but worth it for the feeling of artificial sunlight in my life. Not a lot of the real stuff!
Threading our way back through time, we hit Death Cab for Cutie next. I have already covered them rather extensively, which is no surprise because they're a MASSIVELY important band in my life, but I think I've found a deeper appreciation lately. The thing is, I've always loved Transatlanticism and Plans, but I genuinely barely was aware they had albums released past about 2005. Well, no longer, because I've been slowly working my way through their discography, spending time listening through one album obsessively as if it's the new CD I just picked up at HMV or something equally anachronistic.
I really do think this is an important process, and I feel like something that people are missing out on with the death of the album. You truly have to force yourself to listen through songs you don't immediately click with and keep letting the work as a whole grow on you, and you'll suddenly find that some previously-nothing song jumps out at you and shows you a new side you never expected. You gain a deeper appreciation for the intricacies of how the album's made and why all those songs were picked and, hey, there's probably some songs you'll never get on with (This Is the Best Day Ever unfortunately prevents Bullets from being a no-skip album), but it's worth putting in the effort anyway. What I mean is, the first time I listened through Narrow Stairs I just didn't really click with any songs, other than I Will Possess You Heart, which I was already familiar with. But, ah! That's the operative word, isn't it? Familiarity is so easy! And if you look at the album listen stats, that's by far the most popular song. You get stuck in this cycle, where you're relying on spotify or other services or the radio or wherever you get your recommendations to serve you songs and then you listen to the most popular ones and then because they're familiar, they're easy to listen to, they're good, they keep getting more popular.
But upon repeated listen, I've fallen totally in love with Pity and Fear (* my song of the week!). Actually, looking at the listen stats it turns out this is the least popular song on the album, which fits my story quite perfectly. It's incredible! Pity and Fear is such a song that feels like it's filling me up with music, top to toe, and then it's trying to explode out of me. I love the build up of all the instruments from weird bubbling drums and guitar at the start to basically pure noise at the end, and then the abrupt way it cuts out, pulling the plug. It's such an incredible experience, and I definitely wouldn't have found and gained such love for it without putting in a little of my own effort.
Ok, so, our next stop on this reverse-chronological tour is You Forgot It In People from Broken Social Scene. A lot of Canadian musicians this week, which is genuinely coincidental. I watched I Saw the TV Glow last month, and it's featured big in my thoughts. I knew that this would happen before I watched it, went in wanting it to change me. It still shocked me when it did. A lot of things are like that. Anyway, the soundtrack is wonderful, and the cover of Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl reminded me of this fantastic album. I must confess I like the original better, and as I continued my album listening I started loving a lot of these songs that I didn't know very well if at all. I'm now super super obsessed with KC Accidental. I am rather repetitive in my assessments but what can I say, I'm consistent. I love noise-music, and this is a great example of it. From a tentative start, we get in to roiling textured music with lyrics only appearing for about 50 seconds in the middle, it's really perfect, and I love the build up of all the layers. For a more classic lovely indie track, I will also put a vote in for I'm Still Your Fag. Beautifully tragic, soft-strumming guitars, perfect use of a kick drum, it all comes together to be much more than the sum of its simple parts.
Finally we end up all the way back and hit 1985's Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven. Historically I've listened to more Bauhaus than Love and Rockets, but being willing to give up my goth elitism and get in to the more pop-ish sounds of Love and Rockets was so worth it, this album is super super awesome ;) It's really banger if you enjoy longer tracks, with an average song length of almost 6 minutes. The Dog-end of a Day Gone By starts as it means to go on, with powerful drums thumping through the heart of the song, overlaid by classic 80s guitars. I, of course, LOVE a track where drums take a central role, and it just works so perfectly. The lovely long outro gives lots of time for interesting guitar solos, too. It's contrasted really well by Saudade, an instrumental song that I love not JUST because I love the title. It makes me feel like I'm floating away, like I'm in San Junipero, like everything's going to be ok, but with a heart of nostalgia. There's barely any drums, just a wash of synths and guitar, and I love it. PS For some reason I always get Bauhaus/Love and Rockets mixed up with Joy Division/New Order, which is horribly embarrassing.
If you do listen through these albums more in depth, I thought it would be fun to note which are my current stand-out songs on each album, beyond just the one or two I decided to highlight -- DTMF:
Emotion:
Narrow Stairs:
You Forgot It In People:
Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven:
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