Ursula in 2024: Tomes and Tunes part 2

White storks nesting in Mannheim

I'm Ursula, 52, an American who has been living in western Germany since the end of March 2023 (previously living in a bunch of other places but most recently Istanbul). In addition to the cats, I live here with my mathematician husband Morgan, 43. We share a few reads from time to time, and we share listening to a lot of music!

In books, I tend toward "serious" fiction book - by which I don't necessarily mean ones that are supposed to be Real Literature, just that I'm not likely to read a lot of funny, happy books ("uplifting" is not a descriptor that draws me!). It's not entirely intentional, because I don't really read reviews or blurbs so I rarely know what I'm getting into. I guess I'm just attracted to the covers for that sort of book. I read a little in the mystery/thriller and a little in the science fiction areas occasionally. I try to get some nonfiction in there too but I've been less successful than usual in recent years.

Last year I started posting my weekly listening roundups and I will continue that as well. I am usually listening from a variety of lists (the big one is the 1001 Albums before you die list - I'm starting this year in 1977) in addition to whatever things I just enjoy and new releases (yes, I still listen to new music).

I may also post photos of stuff around here, my cats, and maybe even some of my drawings.

Favorite reads of 2023
(in order I read them)

          

New Animal by Ella Baxter
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
Ducks by Kate Beaton
Death Is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa
The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Devil House by John Darnielle
Revenge by Yoko Ogawa
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama by Nathan Thrall
The Wager by David Grann

Favorite listens (new releases) of 2023
(in alphabetical order)

Currently reading


The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier


Salt Slow by Julia Armfield

Read in 2024

Januar

    
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck
My Soul To Keep by Tananarive Due
Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki
The Club by Takis Würger
Wool by Hugh Howey

Februar

    
Dear Child by Romy Hausmann
The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya
The Short End of the Sonnenallee by Thomas Brussig
The Promise by Damon Galgut
Gaza by Norman Finkelstein

März

     
The Doll Collection by Ellen Datlow
Network Effect by Martha Wells
Travelers by Helon Habila
Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval
The Premonition by Banana Yoshimoto
Battle Songs by Daša Drndić

April

    
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear by Mosab Abu Toha
60 Songs That Explain the '90s by Rob Harvilla
The Woman on the Stairs by Bernhard Schlink
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Lie by Petra Hammesfahr

Mai

    

Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange
Retrospective by Juan Gabriel Vasquez
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky
The Archive of Feelings by Peter Stamm

Well I realized I should probably start a new thread. I had posted last week's listening here, so if you missed it and you're interested in commenting, you can find it there.

>3 ursula: I requested Network Effect through interlibrary loan this weekend. I'm already starting to go through withdrawal at the thought that there are only a few Murderbot books left!

>6 labfs39: Morgan's caught up and ready for the new one (he will just go through a series all at once), but I need to get up to date. I already have the newest one on hold, I just keep postponing it.

Happy new thread, Ursula. I love the stork photo; when we were in Spain, we also saw lots of stork nests in high places in cities.

The cover for The Doll Collection is pretty creepy.

>8 BLBera: Yes! I know there are a ton of nests in Spain. I have always heard about people doing the Camino who see tons of nests on the churches as they go through.

Well then, job done! The book is a collection of creepy stories. :)

Happy new thread. I’m curious about Travelers.

>10 dchaikin: I'm about a quarter of a way into it so far. It's about people from several different African countries living in Berlin in various circumstances. I think it the narrative maybe doesn't stay in Berlin though. I think I remember seeing after checking it out that it said something about being set in various European countries.

I'm reading, but slowly. It's been a rough couple of weeks, in all honesty. But we've changed our workspaces around in the apartment and hopefully this enables me to feel less scattered.

I'm going to finish something tomorrow, I think. Mayyyybe today, but the better bet is tomorrow.

Weekly 5x5



Cry Sugar - Hudson Mohawke [electronic] (2022 lists)
GI - Germs [punk] (1001 Albums list) +
Reasonable Doubt - Jay-Z [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
The Undertones - The Undertones [punk] (1001 Albums list) +
The Specials - The Specials [ska] (1001 Albums list)

Viral Wreckage - Aunty Rayzor [dance/hip hop] (2023 lists)
Targala, la maison qui n’en est pas une - Emmanuelle Parrenin [ambient] (2022 lists) +
WOW - Kate NV [experimental pop] (2023 lists)
Live at the Witch Trials - The Fall [post-punk] (1001 Albums list)
Springs Eternal - William Doyle [indie] (2024 releases)

Boom. Done. - Anthony Green [singer-songwriter] (self pick)
The Past Is Still Alive - Hurray for the Riff Raff [Americana] (2024 releases)
Reggatta de Blanc - The Police [rock] (1001 Albums list) ♥
Harm’s Way - Ducks Ltd. [indie rock] (2024 releases)
Natural Wonder Beauty Concept - Natural Wonder Beauty Concept [dance/electronic] (2023 lists)

Nostalgia Por Mesozoica - Nikolaienko [ambient] (2022 lists)
DUSK - Plasma Canvas [alternative/indie] (2024 releases)
Everyone’s Crushed - Water From Your Eyes [indie] (2023 lists)
Regards/Ukłony dia Bogusław Schaeffer - Matmos [experimental electronic] (2022 lists)
The Vanity Project - IceBoy Violet [electronic] (2022 lists)

Blow Up the Fizz - PLAIINS [alternative] (2024 releases)
A Love Supreme - John Coltrane [jazz] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) +
Ground Aswim - Sinai Vessel [indie rock] (partial)
Spiral - Darkside [electronic] (partial)
Past Lives - LS Dunes [post-hardcore] (partial)

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Skipped for recency:
  Cut - The Slits (1001 Albums list)
  Back in Black - AC/DC (1001 Albums list)
  Hounds of Love - Kate Bush (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
  Live at the Apollo - James Brown (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
  Stankonia - Outkast (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
  Aja - Steely Dan (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)


• I also didn't do as much listening this last week as I normally do. But here's what I got through. My first time listening to The Germs, maybe surprisingly. It was pretty good. I feel like I also liked The Undertones, although I have no specific memory of it at the moment. Some good new releases - the country/folky Hurray for the Riff Raff and the really well-crafted Ducks Ltd. stand out for me.


• There was a lot of weird stuff this week! Nostalgia Por Mesozoica was an ambient concept album about exactly what it says - what the sounds of the Mesozoic might have been like. The Matmos album was also a lot of weird ambient type things. And Kate NV is reliably weird, if that's possible. We had previously done an album of hers a few years ago and here's a video for one of the songs, based on a Russian children's show if I remember correctly: Marafon 15. Emmanuelle Parrenin also was in the weird category, but in a good way.


• The worst thing I put in my ears this week was I guess the Aunty Rayzor. Not my thing at all. Jay-Z has also never been particularly inspiring to me but I did like one of his lines: "And even if Jehovah witness, bet he'll never testify."

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

As I was scanning through this week's list, I thought for a minute I was going to get through the whole thing without seeing a single album I've ever heard. (Well, I'm sure I've heard whatever hits were on that Police album, but I'm also positive I've never listened through the whole thing.) But then I got to the fiery, inspirational Coltrane album, A Love Supreme.

>14 rocketjk: Well I'm glad Coltrane was there to rescue you! :)

>15 ursula: Yes, it was a relief! :) And now I've got the opening theme from the piece playing in my head, which I don't mind at all. I'm looking forward to listening to the whole album straight through, now. (For those unfamiliar, John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" album consists of one long piece in four movements.)

Nice to see that you have included my all-time favourite album in your library. A Love Supreme of course. I still have the original LP, but of course I have updated it with a few CD versions since then.

Trane!! Several years ago I attended a live performance of 'A Love Supreme' in the new SFJAZZ Center; one of the artists who performed was John Coltrane's son, Ravi. It was a very nice concert, but it couldn't match the fire and intensity of that landmark album.

>16 rocketjk:, >17 baswood:, >18 kidzdoc: All the Coltrane love!

The Doll Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow

In the introduction to this anthology, Datlow says that she stipulated "no evil doll" stories. You know, the doll is actually the container for a demon or something. Boring! Let's do "creepy doll" in other ways.

The stories mostly deliver. We've got dolls in some sort of futuristic/post-apocalyptic landscape that play a sort of protective/advisory role, dolls that are stand-ins for bigger horrors, dolls that sit in judgment of the people who have wronged them, dolls in a seldom-frequented doll hospital, a new take on Pinocchio, a ventriloquist's dummy (rather: "a figure, sometimes a doll. Never a dummy."), the town's scary house with dolls nailed all over it, etc.

A couple of them didn't feel unsettling to me at all, and a couple more I didn't really see the point of, but there were some really solid stories in here. The one that took place in the town's scary house was truly horrific, in the best/most disturbing ways.

The authors were as follows:

Tim Lebbon
Stephen Gallagher
Joyce Carol Oates *
Gemma Files
Pat Cadigan *
Seanan McGuire
Carrie Vaughn
Stephen Graham Jones *
Miranda Siemienowicz *
Mary Robinette Kowal
Richard Bowes
Genevieve Valentine
Richard Kadrey *
Lucy Sussex
Veronica Schanoes *
John Langan
Jeffrey Ford

I've starred the ones who wrote the stories I enjoyed the most.

I continue to be way off-pace this year, but I did finish something else.



Network Effect by Martha Wells

You know, Murderbot.

Honestly, it might have been partially my frame of mind, but this felt much longer than 350 pages to me.

>21 ursula: I'm hoping to pick this one up from the library this week. The first one that isn't a novella.

>21 ursula:

I'm not good at picturing the geometry of action in these books. There were places where I had to reread in order to make some sense of what was happening and how.

>22 labfs39: Yeah - I see that the next one is actually chronologically before this one, and that the newest one picks up the action directly after Network Effect. My husband has just started reading the newest one, I may read it as well while this is still fresh in my mind. I read the first 4 in 2021, and let's just say they weren't fresh in my mind!

>23 LolaWalser: I have a lot of trouble with that as well. Usually I just sort of float along and hope that it all comes together for me at some point, but I can get pretty lost. There were a lot of people/machines and locations to keep track of in this one too.

>20 ursula: Ellen Datlow has so many anthologies, I didn't even have this on the radar.

Will be interested on your thoughts of Paradise Rot. These grotesque body horror books seem to having a moment. Never sure if they will be my thing and haven't been brave enough to try them, even though I have heard good things.

>25 stretch: I had never run across her name before, but someone said they were reading a different anthology and this one was available at my library.

I didn't realize this was grotesque/body horror. It has been pretty innocuous so far (35% maybe?). I don't read blurbs so I had no idea. I picked it up because I have listened to Jenny Hval's music - it's pretty weird!

Weekly 5x5



Darklife - death’s dynamic shroud [electronic/vaporwave] (2022 lists)
Escapology - Kode9 [electronic] (2022 lists)
City of Gold - Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway [bluegrass] (self pick)
All Shook Down - The Replacements [alternative] (self pick) ♥
Kings of the Wild Frontier - Adam & The Ants [new wave] (1001 Albums list)

My Soft Machine - Arlo Parks [indie pop] (2023 lists)
Memento Mori - Depeche Mode [synth pop] (2023 lists)
Searching for the Young Soul Rebels - Dexys Midnight Runners [new wave] (1001 Albums list) +
Crocodiles - Echo & the Bunnymen [post-punk/new wave] (1001 Albums list) ♥
Appetite for Destruction - Guns N’ Roses [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)

ILYSM - Wild Pink [indie] (self pick) ♥
23 - Blonde Redhead [shoegaze] (self pick) +
She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She - Chelsea Wolfe [electronica] (2024 releases) +
Another Blue - crosslegged [folk] (2023 lists)+
Paid in Full - Eric B. & Rakim [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)

Purge - Godflesh [industrial metal] (2023 lists)
Rust Never Sleeps - Neil Young & Crazy Horse [rock] (1001 Albums list) / vinyl ♥
Forgot About Me - Pouty [indie] (2024 releases)
Killing Joke - Killing Joke [post-punk] (1001 Albums list)
What Comes After the Blues - Magnolia Electric Co. [indie] (self pick) +

Remain in Light - Talking Heads [new wave] (1001 Albums list) ♥
Disharmonium - Blut aus Nord [black metal] (2022 lists)
Rolling Up the Welcome Mat (For Good) - Kelsea Ballerini [country] (2023 lists)
Arc Of a Diver - Steve Winwood [soft rock] (1001 Albums list)
Him, fast sleeping ,soon he found In labyrinth of many a round, self-rolled - Manja Ristić [ambient] (2022 lists)

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Below the list:
  
Left to Rot - Erupt (2022 lists)
  Ani Klang LP - Ani Klang (2022 lists)
  A Lot More Free - Max McNown (2024 releases)

  
  Skipped for recency:
  Iron Maiden - Iron Maiden (1001 Albums list)
  Closer - Joy Division (1001 Albums list) ♥
  British Steel - Judas Priest (1001 Albums list)
  Ace of Spades - Motörhead (1001 Albums list)
  Peter Gabriel (Melt) - Peter Gabriel (1001 Albums list) ♥
  Astral Weeks - Van Morrison (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
  Talking Book - Stevie Wonder (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥
  Led Zeppelin IV - Led Zeppelin (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
  The Band - The Band (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥


• This is so late this week! I have been trying to deal with some things around how I have space and time to get things done around here and it's resulted in me being scattered and mostly not being on the internet. Yay, I guess?
  
  So I'll make this quick: I had never listened to an entire album of either Adam and The Ants or Dexys Midnight Runners. The former was gloriously weird, the latter was surprisingly good. I also had not listened to Blonde Redhead even though I know they're one of Morgan's favorite bands. This album is so good, listen to it! Continuing exploration of Magnolia Electric Co., something I missed entirely when Jason Molina was alive, unfortunately. Such good music.


• I listened to Molly Tuttle because apparently my daughter went to high school with her. In one of the songs on this album, in fact, she mentions Paly (Palo Alto High). The album is pretty good! This was Chelsea Wolfe's most recent album, she makes weird but interesting music.


• The worst thing I put in my ear holes this week was Killing Joke, no question. Morgan said he thinks they're maybe the most influential terrible band out there. (Or most terrible influential band? I guess either way works.)

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

Great list this week!

Adam and the Ants was one of my favorite bands of the early MTV days, but like you (until now!) I've never listened to one of their albums straight through.

Rust Never Sleeps wasn't my favorite Neil Young album when it was first released but I've come to appreciate it more over the years.

I really like The Talking Heads but there is so much going on in the lyrics and the production (that's meant as a compliment in their music that I only put one of their albums on when I can give the music my full attention. Remain in Light maintains their high quality.

I recall Arc of the Diver as having a few good songs but also a lot of tedious material. But it's been years since I listened to the it. I might revise my opinion upon further review.

>28 rocketjk: Glad you found some touchpoints here!

There are so many 80s bands that I've never heard more than a few songs from because the rest weren't played on the radio and I didn't have friends who listened to them. So there's a lot of undiscovered area out there in my supposed wheelhouse.

Arc of the Diver was a pretty short album - maybe 7 songs? (Which doesn't rule out having lots of tedious material!) I knew the first song on it (While You See a Chance), but nothing else. I expected bad 80s soft rock and got ... something slightly better than that, I guess. I don't remember hating it.

>29 ursula: Well, Stevie Winwood's had a very deep and strong body of work behind him when he released that album, having been, as I'm sure you know, a founding member and more or less the leader of Traffic, a band that got more interesting and inventive as they went along (at least to my taste), so I wouldn't have expected pablum for him. Even his attempt at 80s mellowness had a bid more depth to it than the average offering of that genre. Still, as I said, I remember tediousness there, but maybe that was just in comparison to works like The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys, which I loved.

>30 rocketjk: Traffic is okay. To my undiscerning ear, there isn't much difference between Back in the High Life and whatever other songs of a similar ilk (and the one song I knew off this album). But I was never much of a listener for specific instruments or music theory, so take it with a big lump of salt.

Travelers by Helon Habila

First line: We came to Berlin in the fall of 2012, and at first everything was fine.

The main narrator of this book is a Nigerian man who is living in Germany. He meets other Africans who are living in Germany, or passing through there, as well as through some circumstances, people living in a refugee camp in southern Italy.

One of the characters in this book was so revolting to me I don't know why it doesn't appear in any of the reviews I skimmed but hey, maybe I'm the only one bothered.

Anyway, people seem to think this is "moving" and "powerfully written" so you might like it.

Quote: “Are you traveling in Europe?” he asked. I caught the odd phrasing. Of course I was traveling in Europe, but I understood he meant something else; he wanted to know the nature of my relationship to Europe, if I was passing through or if I had a more permanent and legal claim to Europe. A black person's relationship with Europe would always need qualification—he or she couldn't simply be native European, there had to be an origin explanation.

I take it you did not find it moving? Lois sent me a book by Habila years ago that i was quite taken by - Oil on Water

I had a hard time connecting to most of the characters, and like I said the one was so vile to me that it made me really question the overall maleness of the viewpoint.

But I have been struggling with my reading this year overall so I have no idea what someone else might think about it.

>32 ursula: Anyway, people seem to think this is "moving" and "powerfully written" so you might like it.
I think “moving” and powerfully written “ are give-aways. Sure signs that the reviewer could not think what to say.

>35 kjuliff: I don't see any reason those terms are emptier than a lot of others people use in reviews.

Hello, my neglected thread! I've finished a couple of books, listened to a bunch of music, done some stuff, have some other stuff coming up, etc. Details to follow.

Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval

First line: There, and not there.

A young woman comes from Norway to a town in England to study. She moves into a strange apartment with not-quite-there walls with a roommate named Carrall. Things get weird. I've listened to Jenny Hval's music and "things get weird" also describes that pretty well so I probably should have guessed the same would be true here.

I feel like this is one of those books that just gives you a sense of unease and things happening (or not happening) mostly at the edges of your vision. Body horror, sure, but not very graphic and also maybe more nature/decay horror?

>38 ursula: I like the cover! Probably not for me though.

>38 ursula: Yeah, if there's a doubt then probably not. I agree that it's a pretty cool cover, though!

Weekly 5x5



The Great Twenty-Eight - Chuck Berry [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
Exile in Guyville - Liz Phair [indie rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
Electric Ladyland - The Jimi Hendrix Experience [psychedelic rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥
Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables - Dead Kennedys [punk] (1001 Albums list)
Falling or Flying - Jorja Smith [R&B] (2023 lists)

Group Sex - Circle Jerks [punk] (1001 Albums list)
Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d’amore - Silvia Tarozzi & Deborah Walker [classical crossover] (2022 lists)
Songs the Lord Taught Us - The Cramps [psychobilly] (1001 Albums list) +
Peacock Pools - Pink Mountaintops [rock] (2022 lists)
Sound Affects - The Jam [new wave] (1001 Albums list) +

Infants Under the Bulb - Uranium Club [alternative] (2024 releases)
The Collective - Kim Gordon [alternative] (2024 releases)
Antiphony of the Trees - Laura Cannell [classical] (2022 lists)
More Specials - The Specials [ska] (1001 Albums list)
Llegó el Domi - Kiko El Crazy [urbano latino] (2022 lists)

ALMA - Nicki Nicole [latin] (2023 lists)
Good Living Is Coming for You - Sweeping Promises [indie rock] (2023 lists) ♥
Seventeen Seconds - The Cure [post-punk/gothic rock] (1001 Albums list) +
Underwater Moonlight - The Soft Boys [post-punk/neo-psychedelia] (1001 Albums list) +
Ferried Away - Stay Inside [rock] (2024 releases) +

The Parts I Dread - Pictoria Vark [indie] (2022 lists) ♥
Only Love From Now On - Carmen Villain [electronic] (2022 lists)
The Great Escape - Larry June & The Alchemist [hip hop] (2023 lists) / (partial album)
Station to Station - David Bowie [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥
72 Seasons - Metallica [metal] (2023 lists) / (partial album)

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Below the chart:
  Signs - Purelink (2023 lists) +
  Skipped for recency:
  Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)


• I'm now a full week behind, these were the albums for the week ending 15 March, which means I don't remember a lot of stuff terribly well. It also means that I'll be posting last week's list hopefully relatively shortly. Milestones: I was just ready to start the top 50 of the Rolling Stone list. I'm also past 450 on the 1001 list, if I haven't previously mentioned that one.


• A fair amount of stuff on this week's list that I knew of, or had heard a couple of songs from, but was no more familiar than that. In this category: Liz Phair, Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, (more of) The Jam. I'd never listened to this album by The Cure, but unsurprisingly I liked it. I didn't need to listen to more than 5 songs of the Metallica album, not that much has changed since their late 90s work. Of the new releases, I liked Stay Inside a lot, and will listen to Uranium Club again - it was definitely a weird one, and I think it was a good sort of weird but need to run through it again to decide.


• The worst thing I put in my earholes this week was Peacock Pools, which wasn't awful, I guess, but it sounded like a cover band trying to do a little bit of all the crowd pleasers.

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

You have added some good albums to your library. That early Cure release is a good one and I like most of the releases by The Cramps. Any week which has Electric Ladyland has got to be a great week. Station to Station is one of my least favourite Bowie albums, but I have met a few people who think it was the best album he ever released.

Chuck Berry double LP was one of my first "autonomous" musical purchases (I think this was weird in the 1980s...) I loved that Liz Phair album.

>42 baswood: Yeah it's kind of funny, I'd consider myself a reasonably big Cure fan but I'd literally never listened to that album before. The Cramps were only a name to me, so it's good to gain some sort of familiarity there. When I originally listened to the 3 Jimi Hendrix albums (they're all pretty close together on the 1001 Albums list), I thought Axis: Bold as Love was my least favorite, but now I think it's Electric Ladyland. Although Crosstown Traffic is incredible. And also it's not like there's a huge gap between "favorite" and "least favorite" among them. Anyway.

Station to Station is not my favorite, but I can see the appeal.

>43 LolaWalser: I love that that was among your first purchases! I was buying Simon & Garfunkel in the '80s so maybe I'm not a measure of weird! I watched part of an old interview with Liz Phair on 120 Minutes on MTV and boy, the casual misogyny in essentially every question. How she kept from punching the guy, I have no idea.

The Premonition by Banana Yoshimoto

First line: The old house was on a residential street, some distance from the train station.

The main character, Yayoi, is a young woman from a decent family, but she feels like there's something missing in her life. As in, she feels like she's forgotten some important aspects of her childhood. She goes on a journey of discovery and indeed, there are some things she has perhaps blocked out. How relationships develop from there is maybe surprising, maybe off-putting. I honestly don't know how I felt about those things, but overall I tend to find Yoshimoto's book quick, easy reads even if always a little off-kilter.

Quote: My aunt loved Friday the 13th movies, and that night, she was lying on the floor engrossed in watching whichever installments she'd checked out from the video rental place that week.

"What do you like so much about them?" I'd asked her.

After thinking for a minute, she said, "It's nice how the same person always comes back. So you don't feel lonely."

I made some deductions. Could she be talking about ... Jason? And was my aunt lonely?

>46 ursula: Interesting review. I’ve added it to my tbr. New writer for me.

>46 ursula:

Could she be talking about ... Jason?

lol!

I recently read Yoshimoto for the first time, her debut novel Kitchen. Not really my thing, but she reads gentle and likeable enough.

>45 ursula:

I was drawn by the song title "Roll Over Beethoven". I had the dimmest notion about the genre, as I picked up on early rock and rockabilly from... Elvis Presley movies I think? At the time, there was no other way to explore that music except buying it, if anything was available. It didn't exactly rule the radio waves or TV, I knew nobody who listened to it... such random encounters in old movies were probably the most common way of hearing it.

Simon & Garfunkel in the '80s

Yeah, whatever is missed by a decade or so seems more passé than what is well and truly old.

>47 kjuliff: I read her book Kitchen a million years ago. She's got a pretty specific "feel", or style I guess.

>48 LolaWalser: Yeah that really made me laugh out loud too!

At the time, there was no other way to explore that music except buying it, if anything was available.

Right? There are so many things I missed, contemporary and otherwise, just because of that. I heard a bunch of the more popular old songs because my mom listened to oldies radio a lot.

Weekly 5x5



Aquemini - OutKast [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
The Blueprint - Jay-Z [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
Tuqoos - Julmud [experimental hip hop] (2022 lists) +
(watch my moves) - Kurt Vile [indie] (2022 lists)
Hypnotised - The Undertones [punk] (1001 Albums list)

Deeper Well - Kacey Musgraves [country] (2024 releases)
Red Moon in Venus - Kali Uchis [R&B] (2023 lists)
Signing Off - UB40 [reggae] (1001 Albums list)
Kilimanjaro - The Teardrop Explodes [post-punk] (1001 Albums list)
Time Ain’t Accidental - Jess Williamson [indie folk] (2023 lists)

After the Magic - Parannoul [emo] (2023 lists) ♥
I’d Say I’m Not Fine - Barely Civil [indie] (2024 releases) +
Mask - Bauhaus [post-punk] (1001 Albums list)
Illmatic - Nas [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
Heaven Is a Junkyard - Youth Lagoon [rock] (2023 lists) +

Heartattack and Vine - Tom Waits [rock] (1001 Albums list) +
Sun Arcs - Blue Lake [indie/instrumental] (2023 lists)
Perfect From Now On - Built to Spill [indie] (self pick) ♥
Collection Particulière - Omertà [indie pop] (2022 lists)
Being Funny in a Foreign Language - The 1975 [indie/pop rock] (self pick) / partial ♥

A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships - The 1975 [indie/pop rock] (self pick) / partial ♥
Growing Eyes Becoming String - The Telescopes [alternative] (2024 releases) +
We Jazz Reworks, Vol. 2 - Carl Stone [jazz] (2022 lists)
Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome - Parliament [funk] (Morgan’s pick)
Nocturnal Trance - Candelabrum [black metal] (2022 lists)

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Skipped for recency:
  The Visitors - ABBA (1001 Albums list)
  Damaged - Black Flag (1001 Albums list)
  Exodus - Bob Marley & The Wailers (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
  Ramones - Ramones (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
  Graceland - Paul Simon (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥
  Sign O’ The Times - Prince (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)


• I had such good intentions to get this posted earlier in the week! Then there were a couple of difficult days and then our internet just disappeared. Once we figured out what was going on (some sort of "cable problem"), they told us they'd have it repaired by June 5. Let me repeat that: June 5. They gave us some sort of cell attachment for our router that is supposed to hold us over until whenever. Sigh.


• Okay so, music! This was a pretty okay week. Listened to a couple of classic rap albums - Jay Z and Nas. Jay had great beats, the lyrics weren't as terrible as other albums of his I've listened to but still not great. Nas was great, honestly. I would have to ignore most of those lyrics too in order to listen again, but it was such a fun album. Julmud is experimental rap from Palestine and was really interesting - lots of distortion in the music and I just generally wasn't sure what direction it was going to go on any song. I'd never heard of The Teardrop Explodes, and never listened to Bauhaus before. No real opinions there.


• Although I have enjoyed a couple of Kacey Musgraves albums, this one didn't do it for me on a first listen. I'm sure I'll check it out again to solidify my opinions though. The worst thing I put in my ears this week was - honestly nothing was awful but I'll say Jess Williamson, I didn't enjoy it at all.

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

Here are my reading stats so far this year:





A slow start, but the percentage of Americans is nicely low at the moment at least.

>51 ursula: I like that the percentage of Americans and Germans is exactly the same 🙂

>52 FlorenceArt: We'll see how long it stays that way!

Battle Songs by Daša Drndić

First line: Jadranka said: Don't go.

This novel is narrated by a woman who left Yugoslavia (Croatia) for Canada during the war for Croatian independence. She came with her daughter, and some of the book is about the immigrant experience, hers and that of others. But it's also about the past - her mother, who was denounced by someone (could that someone have been the mother of a fellow immigrant she meets in Canada?), her grandparents who independent from each other wrote letters to Tito. And the past not directly tied to her family, particularly war criminals who left the former Yugoslavia and settled elsewhere, often Canada. And the process of adopting a cat from a shelter. It's also about digressions about pigs of various varieties.

Yep. Pigs. (Thus the cover I suppose!)

I'm not familiar with many of the real people mentioned, or the events, so I googled some and just let some of it pass me by with the information in the multitude of footnotes. There's often a sly, dark humor in the narrator's voice, though it also turns on a dime to be a sharp commentary on humanity.

I enjoyed this, although in googling it doesn't seem to be considered one of her best. The library has others so I'll probably check those out as well.

Quote: But Canada is a land of thrifty people. Although food, for instance, is thrown away in huge quantities, despite the fact that there are many cookbooks especially devised for recycling everything left over from a meal (because Canada is among the top countries in the world when it comes to recycling), paper is kept (so it can be recycled.) Cookbooks for recycling edible leftovers are so luxuriously produced that they are more expensive than a Dostoyevsky, for instance, but among other things that’s because Dostoyevsky is old and the cookbooks are new. The cookbooks are bought by an elite, although not the ones for preparing meals from leftovers, because the elite don’t eat leftovers but rather French cuisine. The poor, black, yellow, and white, local and immigrant cannot afford such cookbooks. A lot of food is thrown away here. But paper is kept.

>54 ursula: I like the quote.

>54 ursula: Sounds interesting and a bit quirky. I she doesn’t seem to be a very popular writer. What lead you to read this book?

>54 ursula: Sounds interesting. Noting.

OK, finally caught up on this thread and the one before—as always, enjoying both your reading and listening. I appreciate your posting your favorite new albums of last year, because I'm trying to listen to more new stuff... along those lines, I also really liked Hurray for the Riff Raff and was underwhelmed by the Kacey Musgraves cuts I've heard from this album, which encourages me to give your other picks a listen.

>54 ursula:

Nice. She's very good. I'd love to read that but preferably not in English. She did spend time as a refugee-immigrant in Canada and it was an exceedingly unhappy one.

I don't know her ethnic background but she was a dispossessed Yugoslav (a category of choice), like Ugresic (ethnic Croat) or Bora Cosic (ethnic Serb). And for such people, Canada with its myriad shady nationalist diasporas had little to offer.

>55 FlorenceArt: There were more than a couple I had to choose between!

>56 kjuliff: Same as usual: available digitally from the library, and the cover looked interesting.

>57 labfs39: It was one of those where I wasn't always sure what I was reading, what with factual things, digressions and footnotes all mixed in.

>58 lisapeet: Nice to see you! It's always interesting to me to see where tastes converge and then diverge. I like that you're willing to listen to new stuff - there's good music out there across all genres. If you like Hurray for the Riff Raff, you may also enjoy Waxahatchee, if you haven't listened to them before.

>59 LolaWalser: Have you read other Drndić? I figured you would have some familiarity with her, I was hoping you'd weigh in!

Another quote from the book:

Among themselves they speak Serbian, but when they’re with you they say they speak Serbo-Croatian so as not to offend you. When you say that you speak Croatian or Bosnian, they say those languages don’t exist.

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear by Mosab Abu Toha

Poetry is not my thing! But this is the second book of poetry I've read from Palestine (the first was Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd)

The book opens with an alphabetical section.

A

An apple that fell from the table on a dark evening when man-made lightning flashed through the kitchen, the streets, and the sky, rattling the cupboards and breaking the dishes.

"Am" is the linking verb that follows "I" in the present tense when I am no longer present, when I'm shattered.

B

A book that doesn't mention my language or my country, and has maps of every place except for my birthplace, as if I were an illegitimate child on Mother Earth.

Borders are those invented lines drawn with ash on maps and sewn into the ground with bullets.

---------

Here's another:

ON A STARLESS NIGHT

On a starless night,
I toss and turn.
The earth shakes, and
I fall out of bed.
I look out my window. The house
next door no longer
stands. It's lying like an old carpet
on the floor of the earth,
trampled by missiles, fat slippers
flying off legless feet.
I never knew my neighbors still had that small TV,
that the old painting still hung on their walls,
that their cat had kittens.

--------

A good part of the book is taken up with the author interview at the end, which is also extremely worthwhile.

>63 ursula:

I'm inching at a snail's pace through Mahmoud Darwish's The butterfly's burden because it keeps flashing in my mind "people are getting slaughtered and I'm reading their poems".

>62 ursula:

Telling quote. About the people she ran into here. Her Wikipedia encapsulates her Yugoslav experience/orientation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da%C5%A1a_Drndi%C4%87

ETA: Btw, I don't mean to say any of this indicates her ethnic background. They say she's a Croatian writer, but that could simply mean that she wrote in Croatian.

>64 LolaWalser: it keeps flashing in my mind "people are getting slaughtered and I'm reading their poems".

Yeah, I know that feeling exactly. And yet, there's not much else I can personally do.

I definitely would not wade in on what Drndić's ethnic background was. I don't begin to understand the ins and outs. But the language thing struck me because I have seen the same conversation (well okay, argument) in other language learning places.

Weekly 5x5



My Life in the Bush of Ghosts - Brian Eno & David Byrne [experimental rock] (1001 Albums list)
Kollaps - Einstürzende Neubauten [industrial/experimental] (1001 Albums list)
The Chronic - Dr. Dre [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
The Low End Theory - A Tribe Called Quest [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
Blonde on Blonde - Bob Dylan [folk rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥

My Life in Subtitles - Carpool [emo] (2024 releases) +
Tigers Blood - Waxahatchee [indie] (2024 releases) +
Fish Bowl - Kate Davis [alternative] (2023 lists)
No Sleep ’Til Hammersmith - Motörhead [metal] (1001 Albums list)
OK Computer - Radiohead [indie] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)

Back to Black - Amy Winehouse [soul] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) +
Mask - Bauhaus [post-punk] (1001 Albums list)
Oh Me Oh My - Lonnie Holley [experimental] (2023 lists) +
Illmatic - Nas [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
WAR & WAR - Weak Signal [rock] (2022 lists) +

I’d Say I’m Not Fine - Barely Civil [indie] (2024 releases) ♥
Decomposed - Blind Eye [punk] (2022 lists)
Yard - Slow Pulp [rock] (2023 lists) +
Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret - Soft Cell [synth pop] (1001 Albums list)
Tomorrow’s Fire - Squirrel Flower [indie folk] (2023 lists) +

Syphon - Wojciech Rusin [electronic] (2022 lists)
Heaven Is a Junkyard - Youth Lagoon [rock] (2023 lists)
Penthouse and Pavement - Heaven 17 [synth pop] (1001 Albums list)
The Poet - Bobby Womack [r&b] (1001 Albums list)
We Jazz Reworks, Vol. 2 [jazz] (2022 lists)

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Below the chart:
  I do not wish to be known as a Vandal - Sam Slater (2022 lists)
  
  Skipped for recency:
  Moving Pictures - Rush (1001 Albums list)
  Let It Bleed - The Rolling Stones (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
  The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars - David Bowie (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥
  Remain in Light - Talking Heads (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥
  Off the Wall - Michael Jackson (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
  Rubber Soul - The Beatles (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥
  Innervisions - Stevie Wonder (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
  


• I think I posted the wrong chart last week - I do a chart that runs Monday-Sunday to post somewhere else (this one runs Saturday-Friday), so it means there was a little overlap on this week's chart. I just used strike through to remove those albums from this week's list, so to speak. Okay, onward!


• My first experience with Einstürzende Neubauten, in spite of them being popular with a certain subset of people I went to college with. They're not for me! Another live album, this time by Motörhead. It was fine. The most interesting thing about it to me is that this is where the Beastie Boys got "No Sleep till Brooklyn". The Slow Pulp album almost made it to Morgan's top 10 of last year, I found out. It was good!


• I don't feel like I was missing anything by not having listened to an entire Soft Cell album before. The worst thing I put in my ear holes this week was ...I mean, Radiohead is the easy answer here because I just don't like them, but to be honest, this album wasn't the worst one of theirs I've had to listen to. But I could also say Wojciech Rusin just because weird electronic is not my preferred genre by quite a stretch.

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

>65 ursula:

Yeah, languages are always political...

>66 ursula:

Einstürzende Neubauten

Aw, I'm a huge fan. Maybe try a somewhat untypical later album, like Silence is sexy? But in any case, I will shamelessly use this occasion to yet again plug this gorgeous song by Blixa and Meret Becker:

Einstürzende Neubauten - Stella Maris (1996)

>67 LolaWalser: Indeed. I had someone ask me why I would say the divide between dialect and language is political. Because it clearly is?

I'll check out more, and I'll try this one again. I'm curious in what context you might listen to this album? (This is a question I sometimes ask Morgan about some of his music too, like in what setting or mood does this seem like the thing to listen to? Which, typed out sounds a lot more critical/confrontational than I mean it! It's genuine curiosity.)

Oh, and I'll have a listen to that song as well!

>63 ursula: I've been trying to read more from Palestine, so this selection goes on my WL.

>54 ursula: I would like to read something by her. This book does sound interesting.

>51 ursula: Great stats. I find that it's hard to keep the American author percentage down. I am trying to read more in translation, so that will help.

As always I love your music commentary. I need to expand my musical horizons.

>69 BLBera: It's really hard to keep the number of American authors down. Of course, I'm reading from American libraries so that's a big part of it. But choosing focus areas this year and last year has helped a lot. I feel like there aren't a ton of German authors in translation at my various libraries though so we'll see what happens with the rest of this year.

>68 ursula:

in what setting or mood does this seem like the thing to listen to?

For me, it can be almost any sort of mood, although maybe leaning toward the darker end of the spectrum--anger, depression, despair... then, it cheers me up. It's surely not that different from what people get out of screaming metal and punk (stylistically they came out of punk, mostly)?

>71 LolaWalser: Makes sense. I think that it depends on what you're used to in a lot of ways. Morgan can listen to some stuff I find incredibly abrasive and distracting while he's working, but he's familiar with it. He listens to a ton of punk, black metal, etc.

From years in a record store, I can tune out 99% of things I don't want to focus on, but that's not really the same thing as listening!

Finished up a couple of books, so here we go:



60 Songs That Explain the '90s by Rob Harvilla

nonfiction, audio

I guess that this guy has a podcast by the same name and covers there, as well as in the book, far more than 60 songs. They're sort of breezy little snippets about the songs, personal mixed with the larger picture. Mostly they were just okay for me. He's a certain kind of guy, you know? But the part about Stephan Jenkins and Third Eye Blind in particular was worth checking it out.

From the podcast website, a couple of the quotes mentioned in the book:

“Stephan Jenkins is a total megalomaniac freak. He’s so narcissistic that he’s not really capable of rational thought.” —Kevin Cadogan, former lead guitarist and Stephan Jenkins bandmate, Third Eye Blind

“Stephan Jenkins has caused a lot of misery in his lifetime. He’s a net negative as a person.” —John Vanderslice, San Francisco singer-songwriter and producer

“He made fun of me. Called me a fat guy. Screw you! He has no soul whatsoever. He and his band got into a fight once because he wanted to put just his picture on their T-shirt. I just think, ‘You are walking, breathing, living cheese!’” —Rob Thomas, frontman, Matchbox Twenty. Rob had gained 40 pounds on the first major Matchbox Twenty tour.

------

In the book, it's mentioned that Jenkins responded to Rob Thomas calling him cheese, saying something like "see, he can't even insult me without talking about food."

Anyway! Besides that, there's the obligatory talk about Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, Radiohead, Tupac and Biggie, "Groove Is in the Heart" and how much of his life he's spent waiting for Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill to show up at their own concerts. And a bunch of other stuff. He covers a variety of genres of music, but I still walked away feeling like I wasn't really the audience for the book. I'm kind of allergic to music dudes.

Oh and I guess I never posted in this thread about going to The 1975 concert, here's that:





And a link to one of my videos from the show (it's much better quality on my computer/phone than it is at the link but *shrug*): https://share.icloud.com/photos/0cd2dWohYxsBDkePm7o6sQwBg

As always, if you check it out, just click on the thumbnail at the bottom; I have no idea why it wants to give a giant "download" at the top and a tiny option for playback.

Morgan (and I, I suppose) got yelled at by the woman behind us for standing up. We were in the seated area, yes, but I was on the aisle and we moved over that direction specifically to avoid blocking people behind us. As well, we didn't stand up until the people in front of us had stood up. The woman was complaining not that he/we were blocking the stage, but that we were blocking the screen. She wasn't happy enough with the actual stage and the other screen. Sigh. And I'm not even convinced we were really blocking it. But whatever, we told her the other people were standing up, she wouldn't have been able to see anyway and then we ignored her thoroughly.

In other news, I took the placement test for the Integrationskurs that I'm required to take. It consists of 6 five-week language units (2 each for A1, A2 and B1) and an Orientierungskurs about German history, law and culture. We did a written test and then a short interview in German.

The woman asked how long I'd been learning (15 months) and where (on my own) and she was quite surprised. She said that she would place me in the last language unit, the second half of B1 based on my test. I asked to be put into the first B1 class though because I'm not that confident in my speaking. She said I'd get an email letting me know when the class would start, which I got yesterday. It said there's no availability for a B1 class but I am on the waiting list and can come to the first day of the next class, on June 10. So I might be starting that right after our home internet gets fixed. <insert skull emoji here>

Our German friend said I should be able to do the orientation as follows: Just walk around the neighborhood and complain about everyone who hasn't parked properly or didn't sort their trash correctly. OR complain about the people who do that. He said I have to decide what kind of German I want to be. ;)

>74 ursula: I think that the cranky person upset that people are standing and dancing and cheering at a rock concert is a tradition. I had the same thing happen at a raucous U2 concert at a stadium in the late 80s. The only thing to do is to ignore them and enjoy yourself.

>75 ursula: I've taken that class and it's interesting, especially the other students who are there for far more serious reasons and have interesting life stories. For me, it was eye-opening to just talk to people who had to flee their countries of origin for various reasons.

>76 RidgewayGirl: Yeah it's a thing at concerts, definitely. She was persistent, she kept tapping Morgan on the shoulder and telling him he should/should have gone to the floor (not possible without the right ticket of course), but we did indeed ignore her. If she wants to spend her whole concert experience yelling, that's her business.

>77 RidgewayGirl: I did that already in Istanbul. I'm just looking to get in and out, take the test and be done with it.

The Woman on the Stairs by Bernhard Schlink

First line: Perhaps you will see the painting one day.

The book starts out like you might be getting some sort of lawyer Sam Spade - essentially a man walks into his office with a momentarily mysterious dame and asks for help with an odd situation. The man is a painter, and he wants permission to go into the home of the man who owns one of his paintings so that he can repair it after it's been damaged. The other man doesn't want to let him do it. The painting is The Woman on the Stairs, and the woman in question is, of course, the woman in the office. She is/was the wife of the painting owner, and is now with the painter.

There's some back and forth with the painting and various situations, and in short order it becomes clear the lawyer also fancies himself in love with the woman (Irene), and conspires to help her out of the whole situation. It doesn't work out, which we know because the story starts out when he's old and Irene-less and reflects on what happened. In fact he's come to find her in his old age.

This book is the epitome of old white guy problems (and solutions). Not recommended.

Quote: Why do women always need to hear how you feel? They have to hear it - knowing it isn't enough. It's like in the army, where it's not enough that you serve loyally, you have to face the flag every morning and pledge allegiance. It's a ritual of submission, one which I refused to surrender to with my wife, and one which she eventually abandoned. At some point, she gave up asking me how I felt.

>79 ursula: Ugh, that quote is dreadful. Hard pass for me on that book.

>80 labfs39: I think it was supposed to represent some sort of discovery on his part, that he was willing to answer the question with his Manic Pixie Dream Crone when he was never able to see the point of it the rest of his life. But that doesn't improve it any!

>79 ursula: Why don’t men discuss their feelings?
—-They don’t have any

Weekly 5x5



The Beatles - The Beatles [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥
Cruel Country - Wilco [indie] (2022 lists)
COWBOY CARTER - Beyoncé [country] (2024 releases)
Voodoo - D’Angelo [r&b] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
emails i can’t send - Sabrina Carpenter [pop] (2022 lists)

Wild Gift - X [punk] (1001 Albums list) +
Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) - Wu-Tang Clan [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
The Lexicon of Love - ABC [new wave/pop] (1001 Albums list)
Don’t Know What You’re in Until You’re out - Gladie [indie rock] (self pick)
Oh Me Oh My - Lonnie Holley [experimental] (leftover from last week)

Beauty and the Beat - The Go-Gos [new wave] (1001 Albums list)+
Fire of Love - The Gun Club [post-punk] (1001 Albums list) +
Boeckner! - Boeckner [indie] (2024 releases)
Velveteen - Pony [indie pop] (2023 lists)
Dare - The Human League [synth pop] (1001 Albums list)

Talk Talk Talk - The Psychedelic Furs [new wave] (1001 Albums list)
Greg Mendez - Greg Mendez [indie rock] (2023 lists) +
Juju - Siouxsie and the Banshees [gothic rock] (1001 Albums list) ♥
Vidrio (feat. I la Católica & Mabe Fratti) - Titanic [experimental] (2023 lists)
Horses - Patti Smith [punk] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥

O Monolith - Squid [post-punk] (2023 lists) ♥
Tom Tom Club - Tom Tom Club [new wave] (1001 Albums list) +
BIEN O MAL - Trueno [Latin hip hop] (2022 lists)/partial
TX, ’98 - FLIGHT MODE [emo] (self pick)
NewJeans 1st EP - NewJeans [kpop] (2022 lists)

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Skipped for recency:
  Lemonade - Beyoncé (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
  Kind of Blue - Miles Davis (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥
  Are You Experienced - Jimi Hendrix (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥


• Patti Smith was #26 on the Rolling Stone list, so from here on out I’m listening to all of the albums there again no matter what. (I reserve the right to go back on that declaration - I haven’t actually looked at what is in the top 25.)


• I'd never heard of The Gun Club, but I liked this album! It seems that they were at the forefront of punk blues/cowpunk and so it makes sense I would probably like it.
  This 2022 Wilco album came right after I realized maybe I could get into them on my 3rd-or-so listen to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. But this album was just too long, and too same-y. There's some good stuff in there but it's buried underneath 18 other songs.
  Speaking of albums that are too long: it's been forever since I really put on The White Album and listened to it all the way through. There are a couple of really good runs of songs here but there's also a lot of substandard dreck.
  The Beyoncé album has been divisive for so many reasons - is it a country album by Beyoncé? Is it a Beyoncé album with country songs/perfomers? Is it a Frankenstein's monster of an experiment that never should have seen the light of day? Overall, I liked it. I particularly enjoyed the song she did with Miley Cyrus.
  Also enjoyed X. I've listened to their album Los Angeles a couple of times, but I would have said I didn't know anything on this album - then White Girl started playing. So you never know what you know!
  Really loved this Greg Mendez record. I didn't know anything about him, but apparently this is his 3rd album so I'll have to go back and listen to the others.


• The worst thing I put in my ear holes this week was ... I'm going to say ABC. Didn't like it in the '80s, didn't like it now.

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

>82 kjuliff: Ha.

I stumbled across The Gun Club a couple years ago (they’re from the 80’s). I really enjoyed them.

>85 dchaikin: Yes, they're from the 80s. :)

There's so much out there that I didn't even know existed, it's interesting to see as I get into the 80s on the 1001 list. I expect I'll be familiar with more of it just because I already did a different list of 200 albums from the 80s, but I'm sure there will still be surprises.

>79 ursula: Great comments and one book I won't be adding to my WL. Thanks, Ursula.

>73 ursula: Oh dear, I feel like I shouldn't have laughed, but I did. "He's a certain kind of guy, you know?" - I've heard the podcast, I can't think of a better way to put this.

>87 BLBera: For a second I misread that and thought you said you were going to add it to your WL and I thought "What did I say that would make someone do that?" haha. But yeah, run away!

>88 rv1988: Validating!

Weekly 5x5



Ready to Die - The Notorious B.I.G. [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #22)
Imperial Bedroom - Elvis Costello & The Attractions [new wave] (1001 Albums list) ♥
Let’s Start Here. - Lil Yachty [alternative] (2023 lists)
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list - #24 ♥
Tapestry - Carole King [singer-songwriter] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list -#25)

Pelican West - Haircut 100 [pop/new wave] (1001 Albums list)
I’ve IVE - IVE [kpop] (2023 lists)
Cainsmarsh - Rigorous Institution [metal punk] (2022 lists)
Languoria - Sofie Birch & Antonina Nowacka [ambient] (2022 lists) +
Headful of Sugar - Sunflower Bean [alternative] (2022 lists)

Junkyard - The Birthday Party [post-punk] (1001 Albums list) +
Bows + Arrows - The Walkmen [indie rock] (Morgan’s pick, from some list)
Sulk - Associates [post-punk/synth pop] (1001 Albums list)
The Ballad of Darren - Blur [alternative rock] (2023 lists)
Too Rye Ay - Dexys Midnight Runners [pop rock] (1001 Albums list)

Spunky! - Grrrl Gang [indie rock] (2023 lists)
Love in Constant Spectacle - Jane Weaver [alternative] (2024 releases)
Trials & Errors - Magnolia Electric Co. [indie] (self pick) ♥
Food For Worms - Shame [alternative] (2023 lists)
The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground [rock] (self pick) ♥

Violator - Depeche Mode [synth pop] (TrebleZine 100 all-time favorite albums list) ♥
LP.8 - Kelly Lee Owens [electronic] (2022 lists) +
The Nightfly - Donald Fagen [jazz pop] (1001 Albums list)
The Message - Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five [hip hop] (1001 Albums list)
The Heavy Hours - The Heavy Hours [indie] (self pick) ♥

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Skipped for recency:
  Nebraska - Bruce Springsteen (1001 Albums list)
  Strange Disciple - Nation of Language (2023 lists) ♥
  Memento Mori - Depeche Mode (2023 lists)


• Well! This was, honestly, not my favorite week. But we’re into the top 25 of Rolling Stone, so I’ve started listing the ranking of each of the albums there. And as I said last week, I believe, the 1001 list is now into not-my-favorite-era of ‘80s music. But I had Elvis Costello, at least, and I’d never listened to The Birthday Party before but I also liked that. (It's pretty out there, though.)


• I may have finally found a live album I like. Trials and Errors by Magnolia Electric Co. is live, although I didn’t know that when I started listening to it, and in fact didn’t realize it till the end of the first song. But there was something about the sound that I loved right from the beginning.
  
  

It turned out to be kind of appropriate to have listened to Blur shortly before reading about Damon Albarn’s mini-meltdown at Coachella over the crowd not singing along to a song that came out in *checks notes* 1994. I’ll be honest, this album was better than my general impression of Blur, but I still didn’t like it much.


• The worst thing I put in my ear holes this week was The Nightfly by Donald Fagen. I was telling Morgan about all the ways I didn't like it when suddenly I realized I was hearing a similarity to something in my head - looked him up on Wikipedia and yep, he's from Steely Dan. It all made sense.

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

First line: If on a sunny day you climb the steep path leading up from the little wooden bridge still referred to around here as 'the Bridge of Hesitation', you will not have to walk far before the roof of my house becomes visible between the tops of two gingko trees.

My first 1001 Books list book of the year. I think this is my 4th Ishiguro book (The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go, Klara and the Sun). Honestly, I'm not sure what to say about this one. In a lot of ways it reminded me of The Remains of the Day in the sense that the main character is pretty reserved and things are mostly just suggested. In this case, there's the added layer of it taking place in Japan in the late '40s/early '50s and everyone is still feeling the aftereffects of "the surrender".

The main character, Ono, is an artist and his younger daughter is on her second attempt at getting married. The negotiations on the first engagement broke down for reasons that Ono doesn't seem to entirely understand. His older daughter suggests that perhaps it had something to do with his past, and after denying that's even possible, he goes to talk to some people from his past to see if he can mitigate any damage it might do to this second negotiation.

Did he do something? How do his past associates actually feel about him? Is that really what his daughter was saying to him at all? It's such an odd feeling to spend 3/4 of the book wondering what awful thing he might have done and then 1/4 of the book contemplating the nature of gaslighting.

Anyway, it was a good book and tackled a changing world from the point of view of an older generation while also drawing some parallels between personally moving on from WWII and the nation moving on from it, and I think left an open question of how much self-reflection and self-recrimination are healthy or necessary.

This sounds really good, Ursula. I loved Klara and the Sun; Ishiguro did Klara's voice so well. Never Let Me Go creeped me out, but I still think about it, so he obviously did what he set out to do.

I just wanted to say that I'm having a bear of a work day and this
Manic Pixie Dream Crone
made me laugh out loud, so thank you.

>90 ursula:

Ooo, me too hearting The violator.

/sick romantic

>94 lisapeet: Oh good! I was hoping it would make someone besides me laugh. :) All the better that it was a moment in the middle of a bad day for you. Hope things are looking up now.

>95 LolaWalser: Yeah, it's good stuff.

>91 ursula: Ishiguro is one of the many authors that I "should read some day". An Artist of the Floating World sounds like a book I could like. Thanks for the great review.

>97 FlorenceArt: I like him but also find him somewhat challenging to read sometimes because so much of the story is often between the lines.

Weekly 5x5



London Calling - The Clash [punk] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #16) ♥
To Pimp a Butterfly - Kendrick Lamar [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #19)
The Tortured Poets Department - Taylor Swift [pop] (2024 releases) +
Careful! - Deeper [indie rock/post-punk] (2023 lists) +
This Could Be Texas - English Teacher [indie rock] (2024 releases)

German Error Message - German Error Message [folk] (2024 releases) +
Mañana Será Bonito - Karol G [reggaeton/latin pop] (2023 lists) / partial
Baiser Mortel - Lala &ce & Low Jack [French hip hop] (2022 lists) +
Messy - Olivia Dean [pop] (2023 lists)
Hackney Diamonds - The Rolling Stones [rock] (2023 lists)

3D Country - Geese [alternative country] (2023 lists) ♥
1999 - Prince [funk] (1001 Albums list)
Kid A - Radiohead [alternative rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #20)
The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico [art rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #23) ♥
Nails - Benefits [noise punk] (2023 lists)

Final Summer - Cloud Nothings [indie rock/noise rock] (2024 releases) +
The Dreaming - Kate Bush [art rock] (1001 Albums list)
Gifted - Koffee [reggae] (2022 lists)
Music for Films Edited by Moths - Kramer [alternative/indie] (2022 lists)
Don’t Forget Me - Maggie Rogers [indie pop] (2024 releases) +

Rip It Up - Orange Juice [post-punk] (1001 Albums list) +
Highway 61 Revisited - Bob Dylan [folk rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #18) ♥
Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #21)
New Gold Dream (81/82/83/84) - Simple Minds [new pop] (1001 Albums list)
Pornography - The Cure [gothic rock] (1001 Albums list) +

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Below the chart:
  Say Laura - Eric Chenaux (2022 lists)
  Hexen Valley - Gnod (2022 lists)
  This Could Be Heaven - 10 Minute Warning (self pick) +
  Keeper of the Shepherd - Hannah Frances (2024 releases)
  
  Skipped for recency:
  The Number of the Beast - Iron Maiden (1001 Albums list) ♥
  Thriller - Michael Jackson (1001 Albums list)
  Crazymad, For Me - CMAT (2023 lists)
  
  Skipped because Kanye:
  My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - Kanye West (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #17)


• Turns out I did have something I had to skip from the top 25 of the Rolling Stone list! No Kanye, ever.
  
  Kind of a lot of good stuff for me this week. Looking at the other albums from the top 25 for a moment: I'm never mad about listening to London Calling, at least most of which is probably embedded in my DNA at this point. Kendrick Lamar made a musically good album here but I still don't really enjoy it, some songs are great but most of the lyrics are just not appealing. I can't stand Radiohead, listening to this one (I have never sat down and listened to this one before) didn't change anything! If I were forced to add one Radiohead album to my collection, it would be OK Computer, I guess. The Velvet Underground & Nico, I mean come on, stone cold classic. I'm not always crazy about Nico but pretty much everything here works. Highway 61 Revisited, yep. Had a lot of that in my head for the last week, and that's pretty impressive in a week where I also listened to London Calling. Did my due diligence and listened to Born to Run again. My opinion remains the same.


• Other stuff - I'd never actually listened to Pornography in full either, even though I consider myself a Cure fan. Shockingly, this was good too. ;) This album by 10 Minute Warning was something I ran across when someone was posting about the best grunge albums. This is subtitled something like "the lost 1984 recordings" so it's proto-grunge, but it was really good, and it was interesting to be able to hear the glam rock, metal, psychedelic etc all coming together in what would form the grunge sound. Orange Juice was a band I'd never heard but I liked the album.
  
  New releases: Of course I listened to the new Taylor. Especially as it turns out a good part of this album seems to be about Matty Healy, the lead singer of The 1975, who I just saw in concert last month. It's pretty good. A lot of people are complaining about the sameness to Midnights, but I never really got into that album so maybe I'm immune to that. There are some typically corny lyrics here but she also gets realer than I feel like she has in the past. A song telling her fans to mind their own business! A song about masturbating while thinking about someone else when you're in a relationship! A song about performing epic shows when you want to die!
  
  Maggie Rogers made one of my favorite albums of 2022, so I was very excited about her new album, which was a lot to live up to and therefore it was a little bit of a letdown. But I've only listened to it once, and I'll be going back to it. It's good, it just didn't grab me the way the last one did.
  
  German Error Message was a random find somewhere and I don't know that I was expecting folk, but it was pretty good!


• The worst thing I put in my ear holes this week was: Simple Minds. I haaaaaaate them. I've hated them since I first became aware of their existence back in 1983 or whatever. Honorable mention: Kate Bush. Like Bjork, I've just never understood the appeal.

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

The Lie by Petra Hammesfahr

First line: It was a horrible night, even for the boy who, at fourteen, has already witnessed much barbarity, though not in this country.

Let's just get this out of the way immediately: this was terrible. It's a thriller about a woman who meets her double, and the double has a job for her: stand in with her husband for a weekend so that the double can go and spend that time with her lover.

Of course there is much more going on, and it's a hard job pretending to be someone else, requiring more than just picking a fight with the husband so that you don't have to really talk to him. The "much more" in this case just gets more and more ridiculous and the ending ... predictable but laughable. No one cares about anyone who dies; it's sort of amazing when the surviving people are not supposed to be psychopaths.

I guess Hammesfahr's book The Sinner was the basis for the first season of the Jessica Biel show, which I haven't seen but am now vaguely curious about. Is it as bad?

We're now 1/3 of the way through the year and my stats haven't changed a ton, but here they are anyway.



Keeping the Americans down by reading awful books written by Germans.



I think I have another nonfiction audio book in my future to bump that percentage up a little, I can't remember what I put a hold on. This is one of the lower percentages of "literature" I've had, usually it dwarfs everything else but beggars not being able to be choosers with German authors is what's tipping this one, I think.

>101 ursula: I love stats. Thanks for sharing!

>102 labfs39: I love stats too, and although they change slowly for me throughout the year it's always interesting looking back and comparing to previous years, thinking about what drove them.

Oh my god, I did it again - totally forgot to post this at the beginning of the week in spite of having it mostly finished.

Weekly 5x5



Exile on Main St. - The Rolling Stones [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #14)
Exile in Guyville - Liz Phair [rock] (self pick, to go with Exile on Main St.)
Work of Art - Asake [hip hop] (2023 lists)
It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back - Public Enemy [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #15)
Colour by Numbers - Culture Club [new wave] (1001 Albums list)

Revolver - The Beatles [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #11) ♥
UTOPIA NOW! - Rosie Tucker [singer-songwriter] (2024 releases)
The Lamb as Effigy - Sprain [experimental rock] (2023 lists)
In Lieu of Flowers - Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties [indie rock] (2024 releases) +
I Never Loved a Man The Way I Love You - Aretha Franklin [soul] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #13) ♥

Stone - Baroness [metal] (2023 lists)
Porcupine - Echo & The Bunnymen [post-punk] (1001 Albums list) +
Pyromania - Def Leppard [hard rock] (1001 Albums list) +
Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) - Eurythmics [synth pop] (1001 Albums list)
But I’ll Wait for You - Local Natives [indie] (2024 releases)

Sonancy - Loop [space rock] (2022 lists)
Black Metal - Venom [metal] (1001 Albums list)
Mutate - Abadir [electronic] (2022 lists) +
New Blue Sun - Andre 3000 [new age] (2023 lists)
Rio - Duran Duran [new wave] (1001 Albums list) ♥

Thriller - Michael Jackson [pop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #12)
Growing Eyes Becoming String - The Telescopes [alternative] (2024 releases) ♥
The Portrait You Painted of Me - Alison Cotton [singer-songwriter] (2022 lists)
Versions of Me - Anitta [pop] (2022 lists) / partial
Life Under the Sun - Militarie Gun [hardcore punk] (2024 releases)

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Skipped for recency:
  Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes (1001 Albums list)
  Duck Rock - Malcolm McLaren (1001 Albums list)


• I took the opportunity of having Exile on Main St. come up on the part of the Rolling Stone list where I'm not skipping any albums to play it alongside Liz Phair, song 1 - song 1, etc. It was an interesting experiment. I know she said it wasn't exactly an answer, as in the themes didn't necessarily match, but she was trying to match the mood and feel of the album overall. It worked surprisingly well like this, I think. It felt pretty much like a single album with every other song just sung by a woman.
  
  Listening to Thriller again, maybe my biggest takeaways were that 1. That Vincent Price interlude in the title track is just really goofy if you listen to what it actually says, 2. Speaking of goofy, The Girl Is Mine is just a deeply terrible track and is only made worse by the lyrics of 25-year-old Michael and 41-year-old Paul McCartney trying to pretend they're fighting over the same girl, and 3. One of the most problematic songs on the album is the most fun musically (PYT).


• The 1001 Albums list is firmly into the territory of music that was happening while I was becoming aware of music - I was 11 in 1983. I owned the Duran Duran and Def Leppard albums. I hadn't listened to that second one in a million years, but it's really still a good album. This is maybe the third Echo & The Bunnymen album I've listened to on various lists, and I liked it quite a bit. The last one wasn't great for me (Ocean Rain). I didn't listen to them much at the time, aside from whatever hit the radio, so it's interesting to visit their music now. I also certainly wasn't listening to Venom at the time. Interesting that this is where the term "black metal" came from, even though they don't sound anything like what falls under that genre. I read on Wikipedia that they sang about Satanism and such because they felt like it was entertaining in the way of a horror movie.
  
  Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties is a project by the lead singer of The Wonder Years, in which he has adopted an entirely different persona. Aaron West is trying to make it as a musician, though with only middling success, and he's an alcoholic who has been slowly destroying most aspects of his life. Sounds grim, but it's really not that different from the songwriting of a lot of artists who are sort of in that situation. This is the last of the trilogy of albums and it seems that Aaron finally decides to find a way out of where he's been. I enjoy this project a lot.
  
  André 3000 of Outkast infamously put out an album last year that was not hip hop or funk, but instead a flute album in a new age vein. It's all right, but I don't feel like I am at all equipped to actually judge.


• The worst thing I put in my ear holes this week was Sprain. There was a lot of yelling at me about god and such.

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

>104 ursula: I really enjoyed Exile in Guyville for a while. I think I might have listened to it too much and oversaturated myself. It is interesting that you listened to them together like that - I will give it a try.

>105 rv1988: With ya there. I listened to Exile in Guyville constantly when I was in my early 30s and my marriage was on its last legs—it was such a cathartic piece of art for me. And then at one point I was driving with my 8-year-old son in the front seat next to me and realized that he was singing along with a word-for-word accompaniment of "Fuck and Run" and decided hmmm, maybe better give it a rest.

So many seminal albums for me on that list. Not all that I'm proud of... Rio? But yeah, listened to that plenty in the early 80s. MTV definitely did what it set out to do with all those videos. Ditto Colour By Numbers, Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These), etc.

>105 rv1988: I'd never listened to it before I ran across it on one of these lists. I knew the name Liz Phair, but that was it. I'm curious what you think if you play them both together like that!

>106 lisapeet: I loved Rio, no shame there. I had Morgan listen to The Chauffeur a couple of years ago and he was really surprised that it was Duran Duran, it didn't fit his conception of them. Yeah, I have a lot of stored visuals with these albums too, thanks to MTV.

>106 lisapeet: I am thinking of my teenage self, sitting in my room doing extra homework for fun, singing along to Liz Phair and feeling like a real rebel while eating the orange slices my mom gave me.

>100 ursula: Well I suppose it could be a candidate for a worst first line competition.

>101 ursula: How did you generate your author by nationality graphic? I can’t find it in the standard ones in Charts and Graphs.

>109 kjuliff: And to top it off, it had very little relation to the rest of the book (I mean, it describes something that happens near the end, but the scene is not otherwise depicted). It was so odd that I actually went back when I was writing my comments to make sure that really was the first line of the book.

>110 kjuliff: My stats aren't from LT, they're from a spreadsheet I keep.

Weekly 5x5



Hovvdy - Hovvdy [indie] (2024 releases)
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill - Lauryn Hill [neo soul] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #10)
Architecture & Morality - Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark [synth-pop] (1001 Albums list)
Meat Puppets II - Meat Puppets [cowpunk/psychedelic rock] (1001 Albums list)
Murmur - REM [alternative rock] (1001 Albums list) ♥

Rumours - Fleetwood Mac [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #7)
Hearts and Bones - Paul Simon [pop] (1001 Albums list) ♥
Bless This Mess - U.S. Girls [pop/r&b] (2023 lists)
Blood on the Tracks - Bob Dylan [singer/songwriter] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #9) ♥
Radical Romantics - Fever Ray [alternative] (2023 lists)

Echo the Diamonds - Margaret Glaspy [rock] (2023 lists)
Salome - Marriages [post-rock] (50 best post-rock albums) +
Beyond the Uncanny Valley - myst milano. [hip-hop] (2023 lists)
Nonetheless - Pet Shop Boys [synth-pop] (2024 releases)
Out of Step - Minor Threat [hardcore punk] (1001 Albums list)

Below the House - Planning for Burial [post-rock] (50 best post-rock albums) +
Purple Rain - Prince & The Revolution [r&b] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #8)
Phase Corrected - Shit & Shine [rock] (2022 lists)
Deep Politics - Grails [post-rock] (50 best post-rock albums)
Intimate Publics - Osheyack [electronic] (2022 lists)

Soul Mining - The The [pop] (1001 Albums list) +
Dream Talk - Still Corners [indie] (2024 releases) / partial
Living Torch - Kali Malone [ambient] (2022 lists) +
Stew - A Will Away
Mutate - Abadir

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Skipped for recency:
  The Lamb As Effigy - Sprain (50 best post-rock albums)


• I had to use a different album generator, so there are no name overlays in the graphic, sorry! Listening to the top 10 of the Rolling Stone list now. I feel like I've finally come back around to Purple Rain - I loved it at the time, but over the years I'd grown to really hate When Doves Cry and it made me think maybe I was just over the album. I really enjoyed it this time through though.
  
  1001 list continues to be a mix of artists I listened to endlessly: REM, ones where I only knew the hits: OMD, and ones that I never listened to at all: Minor Threat, The The.


• I didn't expect a new Pet Shop Boys album, but in looking at their Wikipedia, it appears they've been putting one out about every 4 years and I had no idea. This one was fine.
  
  Two discoveries from the recent albums: Marriages was amazing, and if you're into ambient, check out Kali Malone - the album is just two long tracks.


• The worst thing I put in my earholes this week was a tie, I think, between Osheyack and U.S. Girls. (Morgan also hated the first one, and said he couldn't imagine ever putting the second one on again, but didn't have such a visceral reaction).

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

First line: There were children, and then there were the children of Indians, because the merciless savage inhabitants of these American lands did not make children but nits, and nits make lice, or so it was said by the man who meant to make a massacre feel like killing bugs at Sand Creek, when seven hundred drunken men came at dawn with cannons, and then again four years later almost to the day the same way at the Washita River, where afterward, seven hundred Indian horses were rounded up and shot in the head.

I really loved There There by Tommy Orange. I didn't love this one, although there are certainly things to appreciate about it. This is a saga over the years, starting in the late 1800s, and eventually ending up with the characters from There There - Jacquie Red Feather and her children Orvil, Loother and Lony, and her half-sister Opal. I think Orange writes beautifully both about the Native experience (and the experience of wondering what it means to be Native when your culture has been diluted, denied, and beaten out of your ancestors), and about addiction.

But I feel like a common problem of these "family through generations" type of books is that inevitably not a lot of time is spent with most of the characters and therefore you don't feel that connected to them. I think it's worth reading, but his debut was definitely better.

Also, how the heck does he have a character visit California in 1924 and mention "the earthquake in 1905"? 1906!!!

Quote: To endure or pass through endurance test after endurance test only ever gave you endurance test passing abilities. Simply lasting was great for a wall, for a fortress, but not for a person.

>108 rv1988: I love this snapshot, Rasdhar.

Weekly 5x5



I Am Not There Anymore - The Clientele [indie pop] (self pick)
Songs in the Key of Life - Stevie Wonder [r&b/soul] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #4)
Abbey Road - The Beatles [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #5) ♥
Swordfishtrombones - Tom Waits [experimental rock] (1001 Albums list) +
Nevermind - Nirvana [grunge] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #6) ♥

Madness Presents the Rise & Fall - Madness [ska] (1001 Albums list)
Broken Hearts Club - Syd [r&b] (2022 lists)
Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #2) ♥
A La Sala - Khruangbin [psychedelic rock] (2024 releases)
Macha - Macha [post-rock] (50 best post-rock albums)

White Trash Revelry - Adeem the Artist [country] (self pick)
Take in the Sun - Bike [alternative] (self pick)
Blue - Joni Mitchell [folk] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #3)
Kaytraminé - Aminé & Kaytranada [hip hop] (2023 lists)
Synchronicity - The Police [rock] (1001 Albums list) ♥

Back to Mystery City - Hanoi Rocks [rock] (1001 Albums list)
True Crime - Jophus [alternative] (2024 releases)
Atlas - Laurel Halo [ambient] (2023 lists)
War - U2 [rock] (1001 Albums list)
What’s Going On - Marvin Gaye [soul] (TrebleZine 100 all-time favorite albums list/Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #1) ♥

Funeral for Justice - Mdou Moctar [tuareg] (2024 releases)
BORN PINK - BLACKPINK [kpop] (2022 lists)
LEGENDADDY - Daddy Yankee [latin hip hop] (2022 lists) / partial
To Everybody - 90 Day Men [post-rock] (50 best post-rock albums)
Agriculture - Agriculture [black metal] (2023 lists) ♥

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Below the list:
  Ghosts - Haress (2022 lists) +
  A Gaze Among Them - Big Brave (50 best post-rock albums) +
  Dry Stone Feed - Main (50 best post-rock albums)
  Skipped for recency:
  The Whaler - Home Is Where (2023 lists) (also one of my personal 10 best of 2023)


• Well, that's it! This week marks the end of the Rolling Stone list! 🥳 And a further cause for celebration: I never have to listen to Joni Mitchell Blue again! I have enjoyed a couple of her other albums, and I've now listened to Blue 3 times, but it just never took.
  
  Another Tom Waits album I'd never listened to, and another one I liked. Morgan and I have a difference of opinion on U2 - he can't stand them, and I have a soft spot for these early albums. Is it MTV indoctrination? I have no idea. Marvin Gaye ❤️.


• Adeem the Artist makes non-binary, liberal country music. I'd heard their name around a lot but never listened to one of their albums till now. I really liked this one, so I'll be checking out their release from this year soon. Bike was brought to my attention by an online friend - the album is from 1999 and is a fun, poppy, alternative listen.
  
  Continuing to love the music Mdou Moctar puts out. I'd definitely recommend this new release. Also, if you like (or think you might like) weird folky-psychedelic-bordering-on-ambient music, give that Haress album a shot.


• The worst thing I put in my earholes this week ... is it fair to say Madness if I was already sure I'd hate it? If so, that. If not, I guess Daddy Yankee can take the spot.

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

I'm way behind in reading threads, updating my own thread, etc. I have finished 2 books that I need to write something about, and that chart was the previous week's chart, so there will also be another one of those coming up shortly.

Retrospective by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

First line: According to what he told me himself, Sergio Cabrera had been in Lisbon for three days when he got the phone call telling him of his father's accident.

This is a really straightforward book in one sense and a really strange one in another sense. Straightforward in that it tells the story of a family from Colombia who, thanks to the revolutionary mindset of the parents, lands in China in the 1960s. Sergio and his sister Marianella go to school in Beijing, speak Chinese, join the Red Guard, etc. But then things get bad for foreigners there and their parents leave them (late teenagers) alone in Beijing while they go back to Colombia to be part of the guerrilla forces there. Eventually, the parents recall the siblings to Colombia and they also join the guerrillas. Much later, Sergio becomes a film director and the title of the book is from the fact that we meet him when he's attending a retrospective of his films in Barcelona, and telling the story of his family to his own son, Raul.

Where it's strange is that it's a true story. Sergio Cabrera is a director, he did spend most of his formative years in China, he was part of the guerrillas in Colombia, etc. The book is based on years of interviews with him, his father, his sister, and so on. Why make it a novel instead of a biography? I guess it's the same thing that prompted Truman Capote to write In Cold Blood as a nonfiction novel.

I think that sometimes, when truth is as crazy as this family's lives were, you want to take that material and run with it. Understandable. And while it wasn't exactly a page-turner the entire way through, I definitely stuck with it to find out what would happen to everyone in the end. Way better than a Wikipedia page. ;)

>117 ursula: I get frustrated with this type of novel because I never know what is fact and what is fiction and spend more time searching the Internet than reading. Personally I would prefer the straight up bio. I do have a book by Juan Gabriel Vásquez to read called The Informers. While historical in nature, it's a straight up novel I think.

>118 labfs39: It doesn't bother me. I googled partway through to see what the deal was because there were photos in the book, and I was wondering if they were found photos that drove the story or what. But other than that, I just take the story for what it is. Afterwards, I googled and skimmed a short wikipedia article and the major events tracked. I don't feel a need to know if smaller incidents were fictional or actually happened to someone whose existence I had never heard of before.

Weekly 5x5



Burning Desire - Mike [hip hop] (2023 lists)
The Water Is the Shovel of the Shore - Shovel Dance Collective [neo-folk] (2022 lists) +
Welcome to the Pleasuredome - Frankie Goes to Hollywood [pop] (1001 Albums list)
Rattlesnakes - Lloyd Cole & The Commotions [jangle pop] (1001 Albums list) +
Glasgow Eyes - The Jesus and Mary Chain [alternative rock] (2024 releases)

Way to Be - youbet [indie] (2024 releases)
Cloud Nothings - Cloud Nothings [indie rock] (self pick/discography listen, in progress) +
Finally We Are No One - múm [post-rock] (50 best post-rock albums)
Eliminator - ZZ Top [rock] (1001 Albums list)
69 - A.R. Kane [post-rock] (50 best post-rock albums)

The King - Anjimile [alternative] (2023 lists)
HIT ME HARD AND SOFT - Billie Eilish [alt pop] (2024 releases) +
International Treasure - The Utopia Strong [psychedelic] (2022 lists) +
Ocean Rain - Echo & the Bunnymen [post-punk] (1001 Albums list) ♥
Run-DMC - Run-DMC [hip hop] (1001 Albums list)

Two Sisters - Sarah Davachi [minimalism/modernclassical] (2022 lists) +
The Horgenaith - sarahsson [avant garde] (2022 lists)
Adzi Akal - NZE NZE [alternative electronic] (2022 lists) +
More Friends Than Fans - Various Artists [emo] (2024 releases) +
City of Caterpillar - City of Caterpillar [post-rock] (50 best post-rock albums) +

A Walk Across the Rooftops - The Blue Nile [art rock] (1001 Albums list) +
Tamiditine - Moussa Tchingou [tuareg] (2023 lists) +
11:11 - Pinegrove [indie] (partial)
Dereconstructed - Lee Bains + The Glory Fires [alt rock] (partial)
Skylight - Pinegrove [indie] (partial)

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******Notes on this week:

• Below the chart:
  We Sick - deVon Russell Gray, Nathan Hanson & Davu Seru (2023 lists)


  
  Skipped for recency:
  Born in the USA - Bruce Springsteen (1001 Albums list)
  She’s So Unusual - Cyndi Lauper (1001 Albums list) ♥
  Treasure - Cocteau Twins (1001 Albums list) ♥
  Double Nickels on the Dime - Minutemen (1001 Albums list)
  Purple Rain - Prince & The Revolution (1001 Albums list)
  Purge - Godflesh (2023 lists)


• This was a pretty good listening week, with a number of albums added to my library. The 1001 list introduced me to an 80s album I'd never heard of, by Lloyd Cole & The Commotions. Unsurprised to see it classified as jangle pop, that seems to be a sweet spot for me. And I also got to a second album by The Blue Nile. I might have liked this one more than Downtown Lights, I'm not sure yet. I can definitely see the major influence they had on The 1975. Also some interesting stuff on the post-rock and 2022 list (working on the last part of the last list, by The Quietus, which always has weird, offbeat choices).
  
  Found a new tuareg artist to enjoy, Moussa Tchingou. Shovel Dance Collective put together an album based on folk songs, especially from the British Isles and Ireland. This was really interesting listening.
  
  The new Billie Eilish album seems to be getting mixed reactions online, but I liked it on a first listen. More time with it needed to really firm up anything. But the song Lunch is an undisputed banger.


• You know you’re going to be in for something weird when the first track on the Sarahsson album is called Ancient Dildo Intro. And indeed, it’s like a mix between classical, metal, experimental, and more. Not really for me but undoubtedly interesting. I didn't really get on that well with the múm album but if you like pretty mellow post-rock it might be one to check out - Morgan definitely liked it more than I did.


• The worst thing I put in my ears this week was a tie between Anjimile and the new one from The Jesus and Mary Chain.

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

First line: We are at rest five miles behind the front.

What can I say about this one? It's a classic for a reason. And I say that even though I think this was my 4th attempt to read it. I have no idea why, but I just never was able to get more than 10 or so pages into it on previous tries. But this time it worked for me. World War I was brutal, this time seen from the German side. Enough said.

>121 ursula: Oh how I know that sort of classic book. I have several I’ve tried so many times. But not this one. I’ll give it a try.

>122 kjuliff: What are some of the ones you've tried multiple times and still not made headway with? If you have any you remember off the top of your head.

>123 ursula: Moby Dick, The Old Man and the Sea and The Catcher in the Rye spring to mind. But there are others.

Weekly 5x5



Entroducing….. - DJ Shadow [hip hop] (TrebleZine 100 all-time favorite albums list)
Music for Four Guitars - Bill Orcutt [rock/instrumental] (2022 lists)
Café Bleu - The Style Council [pop] (1001 Albums list)
Albion - Harp [alternative] self pick
J/P/N - Kasai [idm/experimental] (2023 lists)

Black - Kevin Richard Martin [ambient] (2023 lists)
Silver Apples of the Moon [post-rock] (50 best post-rock albums)
Hunting High & Low - a-ha [pop] (1001 Albums list)
Frog in Boiling Water - DIIV [shoegaze] (2024 releases) +
Cold House - Hood [post-rock] (50 best post-rock albums)

Beans on Toast with Pythagoras - One More Grain [experimental] (2022 lists)
Private Dancer - Tina Turner [pop] (1001 Albums list)
Of the Sign… - Spirit Possession [black metal] (2023 lists)
1984 - Van Halen [rock] (1001 Albums list)
Inferiority Complex - Yossari Baby [alternative] (2023 lists)

Attack on Memory - Cloud Nothings [indie rock] (discography listen, in progress) ♥
Weakness, Etc. - Ruston Kelly [country] (2024 releases) +
Don’t Stand Me Down - Dexys Midnight Runners [new wave] (1001 Albums list)
Labradford - Labradford [post-rock] (50 best post-rock albums) +
Sept duos pour guitar acoustique et piano préparé - Stephen O’Malley & Anthony Pateras [idm/experimental] (2023 lists)

Amaryllis - Mary Halvorson [jazz] (2022 lists)
Belladonna - Mary Halvorson feat. The Mivos Quartet [jazz] (2022 lists)
A Southern Code - Eros [electronic] (2022 lists)
Ghosted - Oren Ambarchi, Johan Bertling & Andreas Werliin [alternative] (2022 lists)
Immigrés - Youssou N’Dour [world/mbalax] (1001 Albums list)

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******Notes on this week:

• Skipped for recency:
  Diamond Life - Sade (1001 Albums list)
  Let It Be - The Replacements (1001 Albums list) ♥


• Not a big week for albums already in my library or albums getting added to my library. Instrumental, jazz, electronic and experimental together made up a good percentage of my listens and maybe account for that. I listened to Entroducing.... again because it's supposed to be such a landmark album and I didn't feel like I really got it the first time. It's almost entirely made up of samples, which is a feat. I liked it better this time through, and then someone recommended that I listen to a mix made by DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist (here on YouTube), and that was pretty good too.


• The brand new DIIV album was good. I feel like it always takes me a few listens to really connect with their music, and really most shoegaze music. But I did have 4 songs on the album I starred immediately, so that's a good omen. We saw them in 2022 in Istanbul, and it was a good show. They're on tour again but their only dates in Germany are in Berlin and Bonn, so pretty far from us unfortunately.
  
  It was interesting to listen to the full a-ha album because I'm sure I never had. I really only ever knew Take on Me, although I think The Sun Always Shines on TV was also a minor hit? I don't think I'd heard that song until decades later. Anyway, it was a pretty good album, of the time but that's not always the worst thing.


• The worst thing I put in my ear holes this week was One More Grain, tied with The Style Council.

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

>124 kjuliff: Moby Dick was assigned in 10th grade and our teacher told us to skip the whaling chapters. I of course thought I knew better and would be fine reading those too. The end result was that I got bogged down somewhere in one of those and never finished the book. I haven't gone back to it either.

>120 ursula: I'd never heard the term "jangle pop" before and yet it is my preferred genre.

>125 ursula: The a-ha album came out when I was in high school and I listened to it on repeat. I am now tempted to go give it a listen now and see what I think of it now.

>127 RidgewayGirl: Sometimes slicing and dicing genres is pointless, but every once in a while I find one that is really useful. Jangle pop is one of those (for me, blackgaze is too - a combo/crossover of black metal and shoegaze/post-rock).

A-ha was released when I was in high school too, but it was never something I considered getting as an album I guess. I'm curious what you think on a re-listen, if you do. It's one of the things that has been intriguing about listening to things that I'm already somewhat familiar with - what I think about them now when I listen with fresh ears.

The Archive of Feelings by Peter Stamm

First line: There was a bit of rain earlier, now the sky's just half-clouded-over with tough little cloud whose rims are picked out in the sunlight."

This book by an Austrian author is about a guy who gets laid off from his job at a newspaper archive because they no longer need anyone to cut and glue physical articles and put them into folders. Since it's obsolete anyway, he gets permission to take the archive home. And there he withdraws, with his cross-referenced files. One of the files is about a girl he was in love with when they were teenageers/young adults. Her name is Franziska, but she is better known to the world as the singer Fabienne. He spends a lot of time talking to her in his mind, and eventually they make contact in the real world.

This is a bit of one of those "old white guy" novels, but I enjoyed the way reality and fantasy were woven together and how unreliable his memory and his narration were. Overall a middling-to-better read.