Too much as they are
Is Wallace Stevens in The Tortured Poets Dept? One suspects yes.
There are resonances and resemblances. In roses picked and figures deployed and the rhetorical space between the object itself and its objectness as metaphor, between substitutive fakes or tricks of the light and the Real Thing.
3 Films, 3 Albums
I Saw the TV Glow There are strong shades here of Jane Schoenbrun's earlier We're All Going to the World's Fair and also of Kevin Phillips' Super Dark Times, but it's vastly more coherent than the former and less ultimately impactful than the latter. Its first two acts (1996, 1998) are really engrossing and well-done, the third (2006) more of a mixed bag, the twenty-years-later denouement perplexing, disappointing, or a bit of both. On the whole, though, its particular wavelength of strangeness is appealing; at times tapping into (if not quite articulating) ideas that feel in some sense new and in some sense right. Schoenbrun is making strides both as a storyteller and visual stylist. I look forward to what will come next.
Abigail A very by-the-numbers, old-fashioned trapped-in-a-haunted-house-(/vampire's-castle) movie, with paper-thin stock caricatures, an overly slick script abounding with cheesy horror-comedy one-liners (esp. puns, of course), an in-theory-poignant but in-practice-just-perfunctory emotional back-story for the Final Girl, and easily foreseeable plot twists paying diminishing returns as it runs out of gas over the last half-hour or so. But if none of these formula components is a deal-breaker per se, it's a reasonably fun diversion made with an amateur's infectious enthusiasm and a professional's basic competence and solid budget. (RIP Angus Cloud, a distinctive talent and presence, gone far too soon.)
Unfrosted If you love Seinfeld (and/or Seinfeld) and hold firmly to the convinction (as I do) that Cabin Boy is one of the funniest films ever made, then this one's for you. Everyone involved is having a ball, clearly, most of all Seinfeld himself, and that pervasive sense of fun and playfulness is infectious enough to compensate when the jokes don't quite land. But most of them do land -- at least if the above criteria apply to your sense of humour.
Billie Eilish, Hit Me Hard and Soft Unbelievably in 2024, there are just ten songs here, most of them quite good or better, namely the first three and last four. The album's middle gets a bit middling and mushy, with a few songs that sound left over from the ho-hum, surprisingly boring Happier than Ever. But (more) happily, the best songs here ("Chihiro," "Lunch," "The Diner") point in a new direction. None sound much at all like When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, a masterpiece of precocious youth and goth-pop pleasures distilled like bottled lightning. I would be very surprised if ever she were to make a more viscerally exciting album, or just a better one; but HMHAS – unlike HTE – restores faith that she is highly likely to keep making good and interesting albums, and the latter may matter more actually, because boring really doesn't suit her at all.
Ariana Grande, Eternal Sunshine Hit Me Hard and Soft would've been an apt title for any of the three of AG's great albums, i.e., 2016's Dangerous Woman (now classic, if it wasn't so instantly), 2018's Sweetener (spottier but terrific), 2019's Thank U, Next (to my tastes her best to date). This new one just hits soft, though in so doing it leaves more of an overall impression than did 2020's Positions, which landed like something of an afterthought.
Dua Lipa, Radical Optimism Sure, it's pretty radical to be optimistic about much of anything in 2024, but that's (thankfully, maybe?) where this album's ostensible radicalism begins and ends. (Which is fine!) Certainly neither the form nor content of Radical Optimism poses any kind of implicit or explicit challenge to anything at all, except for one's ability to sustain a glum mood while listening to it. (Which is great!) To propose another title swap, Eternal Sunshine would've been a perfect name for this one, while Radical Optimism would be a good way of describing that extra, persevering power injected into AG's stronger songs since the trauma of the Manchester concert bombing. Dua Lipa -- whatever her background, biography, or politics (...?) -- is a consummately professional disco diva making slickly polished disco records. If those records will change no one's life, they might at least change the tenor of someone's day. (Which isn't nothing!) What, god knows, we don't need more of in 2024 is over-committed, under-qualified radicals. But we can definitely do with more eternally sunny, professionally committed disco divas.
Live from New York
SNL is 50. And I've been watching it for as long as I can remember.
Here are the twenty-five best musical performances I can recall (albeit with a few conspicuously highly regrettable hosts...) –– some before my time and viewed as re-runs, but most caught live, hence the admitted '90s-forward bias.
01. Paul Simon with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" & "The Boy in the Bubble" [at 26:00 and 52:17] (Nov. 22, 1986; host: Robin Williams)
02. Radiohead, "The National Anthem" & "Idioteque" (Oct. 14, 2000; Kate Hudson)
03. Sinéad O'Connor, "Success Has Made a Failure of Our Home" [at 7:46] & "War" [at 13:30] (Oct. 3, 1992; Tim Robbins)
04. Hole, "Violet" & "Doll Parts" (Dec. 17, 1994; George Foreman)
05. Nirvana, "Heart-Shaped Box" & "Rape Me" (Sep. 25, 1993; Charles Barkley)
06. Sinéad O'Connor, "Three Babies" & "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance" (Sep. 29, 1990; Kyle MacLachlan)
07. Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" & "Territorial Pissings" (Jan. 11, 1992; Rob Morrow)
08. A Tribe Called Quest, "We the People..." & "The Space Program" (Nov. 12, 2016; Dave Chappelle)
09. Taylor Swift, "All Too Well" (10-minute version) (Nov. 13, 2021; Jonathan Majors)
10. Robyn, "Call Your Girlfriend" & "Dancing on My Own" (Dec. 10, 2011; Katy Perry)
11. Rihanna, "Diamonds" & "Stay" (Nov. 10, 2012; Anne Hathaway)
13. The Cranberries, "Zombie" & "Ode to My Family" (Feb. 25, 1995; George Clooney)
14. Sia, "Alive" & "Bird Set Free" (Nov. 7, 2015; Donald Trump)
15. Rage Against the Machine, "Bulls on Parade" (April 13, 1996; Steve Forbes)
15. Talking Heads, "Take Me to the River" & "Artists Only" (Feb. 10, 1979; Cicely Tyson)
16. The Bangles, "In Your Room" & "Hazy Shade of Winter" (Dec. 3, 1988; Danny DeVito)
17. Beyoncé, "If I Were a Boy" & "Single Ladies" (Nov. 15, 2008; Paul Rudd)
18. Rosalia, "Chicken Teriyaki" & "La Fama" (March 22, 2022; Zoë Kravitz)
19. Fine Young Cannibals, "She Drives Me Crazy" & "Good Thing" (May 13, 1989; Wayne Gretzky)
22. Phoebe Bridgers, "Kyoto" & "I Know the End" (Feb. 6, 2021; Dan Levy)
23. Taylor Swift, "Ready for It?" & "Call It What You Want" (Nov. 11, 2017; Tiffany Haddish)
24. Britney Spears, "Me Against the Music" & "Everytime" (Oct. 18, 2003; Halle Berry)
25. Eminem, "Stan" & "The Real Slim Shady" (Oct. 7, 2000; Rob Lowe)
The Best of the Best (since Barcelona)
Like so many people around my age, the summer of 1992 was when I became thoroughly, and forever thereafter, locked in as an avid NBA fan (and not just for a given team). That Dream Team summer also marked a major historical turning point between the end of the Magic/Bird era and the apex of the MJ (+Pippen, et al!) Bulls, with exciting (if mostly unsuccessful) challengers ranging from Barkley's Suns and Hakeem's Rockets to the Shaq/Penny Magic and the Ewing/Starks/Oakley Knicks. These are my picks for the 32 best players over the 32 years since the Barcelona Olympics (i.e., factoring in bodies of work, with some consideration of international play, from the '92/'93 season forward, but not what preceded it):
Five Months in, Tops 5s so far
Dave Matthews and Peter Frampton got in – but not Sinéad: that's it, burn it all tf down now. Start all over. Whatever it is they're doing, they're doing it wrong if this dopey MOR dogshit gets in ahead of this.
This is the most heartening US political news in many moons: someone (and – holy shit! – a Republican not named Mitt Romney) had a conscience and backbone at the same time, and actually followed through in doing the right thing, for the future of democracy generally and imperilled democratic allies specifically.
'You. Look. Like. Taylor Swift': 16 31 Early Thoughts
01. Are the statuary vibes and composition of the alternate cover for the Anthology edition an allusion to the above?
02. From the album and track titles I was expecting something like a return to the folk-adjacent aesthetic of the pair preceding Midnights, yet, at least for 'side one' of the album-proper (the first 6 tracks here are all top-shelf TS), this is a superb New Wave mood record, more Movement than Closer, though had their lives matched up she would've 100% dated Ian Curtis.
03. The Anthology bonus material comes somewhat closer to Folklore/Evermore territory. It could've on its own been LP #12. She is exceedingly generous, and not only to hard-working truck drivers.
04. "Fortnight" reminds me distinctly of FYC; something like "I'm Not the Man I Used to Be," not "Good Thing" or "She Drives Me Crazy," obviously.
05. "Down Bad" sounds like a Cyndi Lauper deep cut, its sparkly dreaminess belying its bitterness. She sure says "fuck" a lot. If she adds that one to future setlists, there will be some tender ears being covered by some parent chaperones.
06. It is ironic that she is ostensibly/superficially so au courant, because from "Tim McGraw" to "loml" (='Loss of My Life,' evidently: did she coin this acronym?) one constant, near-signature aspect of her songwriting is that the here-and-now present is such a fleeting abstraction, existing only insofar as it generates soon-to-be wistful memories, doors closed too soon, sadly contracted horizons.
07. "So Long, London" is one such closed door, and it's quietly wrenching. Track five, naturally.
08. "I Hate It Here," a national anthem for Cottagecore fantasists and (in truth) many professional historians, sounds like her most personal song in a while that fully passes the Bechdel Test, but really that's anyone's guess; to each their own preferred Taylor.
09. Parataxically: she should really read Helen Waddell's The Wandering Scholars. I strongly suspect she'd enjoy it. Might even inspire a nice song cycle about the clerici vagantes.
10. Who else was surprised she went with the 1830s (so charmingly particular!) rather than the 1920s? Does this subtly mark the end of her F. Scott Fitzgerald Era?
12. Give or take "Down Bad," "Clara Bow" might be, as of now, my favourite from the album-proper (insofar as that distinction matters?): "It's hell on earth / to be heavenly. / Them's the breaks. / They don't come gently."
13. "It's fun putting your name in songs."
14. (I would be curious to see how many more hits than usual the Clara Bow Wikipedia page has received since TS announced the tracklisting and then since Thursday night.)
15. "But Daddy I Love Him" is her "Papa Don't Preach," right? In effect, though, it's a double fake-out: she's not actually 'in a family way' ("but you should see your faces") and hasn't made a song that has anything to say about procreative rights post-Dobbs v. Jackson.
16. Cowboy Carter is an Election-Year Album. TTPD is not, or only incidentally so. The closest she comes to politics is opting out of the present in favour of the 1830's "but without all the racists and getting married off for the highest bid." Potentially also "the family / the pure greed / the Christian chorus line / They all said nothing / Blood's thick / but nothing like a payroll / Bet they never spared a prayer for my soul" –– until you realize, or read somewhere, that it's just about the Kardashians, not the Trumps and the 'God Bless the USA' Bible.
23. Travis Kelce may have dreamed about winning three Super Bowls...but did he ever anticipate that someone would someday write a song about him called "The Alchemy"? Let's hope love will keep them together, not tear them apart. :)
24. "How Did It End?" is beautiful and so alluringly cryptic and I am half-terrified to Google it because I really don't wanna know all the reasons that it's about the guy from The 1975. Because fuck that guy.
25. "Imgonnagetyouback" sounds terrific in headphones. Another great New Wave ballad.
26. "I Look in People's Windows" reminds me of my favourite Canadian (and specifically Vancouver-set) short story: "The Window" by Ethel Wilson.
27. "Florida" is the only song here that I dislike...
28. ...which means it'll almost definitely be selected as a single.
29. Solidly generalizable rule, it seems: no TS song has actually substantially benefitted from a featured credit. She's just not that kind of artist-as-artist, despite her social-networking instincts and philanthropic good will. The one with LDR on Midnights was ok-but-just-ok. The Evermore bonus track "Nothing New" is the nearest exception, yet –– while I really, really like Phoebe Bridgers –- it would be approximately as good with Swift singing all of it. Post Malone brings nothing ameliorating to the table on "Fortnight," and Florence Welch is a net-negative (fortunately, in a sense) on the album's worst track.
30. After a dozen or so full listens, plus many more for certain songs, over less than 48 hours, it's readily apparent that TTPD is a masterpiece. Not a perfect record but there are at most maybe a few dozen of those in existence. Where it places in her discography necessitates much more time and careful consideration (at least for habitual list-makers, comme moi).
31. Bottom line, though: No one this big has been this ambitious and this prolific since Prince ca. Sign o' the Times. That was 1987, so that is, indeed, a Big Fucking Deal. That the same can arguably be said of Beyoncé might be the only distinctively interesting-in-a-good-way thing about the world in 2024. Otherwise "I Hate It Here" is a fair take.
A Mood
It is in some sense...comforting (?), reassuring (?) that, e.g., The Simpsons is still on (even if I almost never watch new episodes), that LeBron is still playing at a high level (even if he's never been one of my favourite players and I've mainly rooted against the teams he's played on), and that Sleater-Kinney is still exploring new vistas of rock n' roll fun and romantic/sexual/personal/existential frustration (even if their latest album, though quite excellent and their best since The Woods, is haunted by the sonic absence of the most dynamic drummer of her generation).
In other words, last night at the Vogue Theatre was some kinda bliss –– if slightly complicated bliss, because, well, that's the bliss we get 30 years on, take it or leave it, not any which way but loose anymore but any which way you can, "loose" notwithstanding. The Little Rope stuff sounded fantastic (esp. the volcanic "Untidy Creature"; see above), as did the (pre-Janet) Call the Doctor classics gifted to us in the encore, plus "One More Hour," a love/heartbreak forever song that predates Dig Me Out topically if not compositionally, with Corin and Carrie still singing the darkest-eyes blues as if they'd just broken up yesterday. But, alas, "Get Up!," "Oh!," "Jumpers," "The Fox," "All Hands...," and "Dig Me Out" –– though still (to be sure) fucking rocking and competently performed by C & C's tour-band backers –– were poignant and probably inevitable reminders that, well, some things you lose, some things you give away; i.e., replacing Janet Weiss is a fool's errand.
In any case, in honour of the three decades since S-K first formed, here is an updated accounting of their 60 best songs (=30 x 2, because, tellingly, I couldn't satisfactorily stop at just 40 or 50):
01. “Good Things”
02. “Turn It On”
03. “One More Hour”
04. “The End of You”
05. “I’m Not Waiting”
06. “Call the Doctor”
07. “Not What You Want”
08. “Dig Me Out”
09. “Sympathy”
10. “Untidy Creature”
11.“I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone”
12. “Youth Decay”
13. “Start Together”
14. “Get Up!”
15. “Oh!”
16. “Stay Where You Are”
17. “#1 Must-Have”
18. “Jumpers”
19. “The Day I Went Away”
20. “It’s Enough”
21. “The Remainder”
22. “Far Away”
23. “Words and Guitar”
24. “Modern Girl”
25. “Night Light”
26. “The Last Song”
27. “Write Me Back, Fucker”
28. “The Drama You’ve Been Craving”
29. “One Beat”
30. “My Stuff”
31. “Taste Test”
32. “Entertain”
33. “Step Aside”
34. “A Real Man”
35. “You’re No Rock n’ Roll Fun”
36. “No Cities to Love”
37. “Little Mouth”
38. “Little Babies”
39. “Crusader”
40. “Hell”
41. “The Fox”
42. “Burn, Don’t Freeze!”
43. “Things You Say”
44. “Say It Like You Mean It”
45. “You Ain’t It”
46. “Anonymous”
47. “The Size of Our Love”
48. “Buy Her Candy”
49. “What’s Mine Is Yours”
50. “All Hands on the Bad One”
51. “Ironclad”
52. “Don’t Think You Wanna”
53. “How to Play Dead”
54. “Combat Rock”
55. “Ballad of a Ladyman”
56. “A Quarter to Three”
57. “Six Mistakes”
58. “Price Tag”
59. “White Rabbit”
60. “More Than a Feeling”
Ten Things