Transient Peak:

I Saw The TV Glow review: “The movie is best described as a surreal, tense psychological coming of age drama, one that gradually tricks an unsuspecting audience into watching a trans narrative. Beyond that, it’s a gorgeous character study of two lonely people finding themselves and possibly losing themselves in the art they consume. There’s a maturity I’m not used to seeing with art about young queer people, as Schoenbrun empathetically deals with big teen emotions without getting absorbed into them.”

Nothing Deep To Say #6: Maria BC And Engineer ODAE Break Down Their Intimate, Intense, Romantic Album Spike Field: “Made after BC’s move from Brooklyn to San Francisco, it’s this expansive, almost sweeping thing with lush instrumentation. There were Grouper comparisons, but Maria BC’s mezzo-soprano is proudly front-and-center in the mixes, and that voice is epicene in a way that reminded another music writer of 2000s indie rock band Copeland. Every time I was lulled into complacency, a new detail would shock me back. The first time I listened to the album, I was on the way back from a part-time job and literally jumped out of my bus seat when the live drums kicked in, to the chagrin of the passengers next to me.”

Pitchfork:

Coldplay — Moon Music: “Even ‘Man in the Moon,’ from the deluxe version, gets away with its tinny Buggles rip by unashamedly doubling down on youth-group call-and-response silliness. That silliness puts Coldplay out of touch with a pop zeitgeist enamored by wit; it’s also made them bigger than almost any artist in the world.”

ANOHNI and the Johnsons — My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross: “It’s post-protest music, made stronger for refusing to endorse personal solutions to systemic problems.”

Alex Warren — You’ll be Alright Kid: “From his interviews, Warren clearly thinks deeply about algorithms and audiences but also wants to express himself, and on You’ll Be Alright, Kid, these impulses hamstring each other completely.”

Stereogum:

Band To Watch: Fashion Club: “A Love You Cannot Shake, the sophomore album from Fashion Club, starts with a lumbering, stuttering synth impossible to place. Pascal Stevenson tells me the synth is a vocoded, time-stretched kick drum, manipulated and looped in Ableton. That’s just one of many instances I could ask about. Not a moment goes by without something distorted and alien; even the quieter songs feature mangled vocals, pitch shifted in the margins of the mix.”

Transgender Dysphoria Blues Turns 10: “Few of those figures were famous enough for media coverage (The only one I knew was Dee Palmer, which I learned from a Music Choice factoid.) Few outlets knew how to deal with something that, culturally, was a punchline. Gradually, the pieces clicked: Laura Jane Grace was always writing about her identity, from the earliest EPs to the song that closed out White Crosses, ‘Bamboo Bones.’ Making art and transition are both inevitable — if you feel the urge to create or the urge to explore your identity, it will come out whether you want it to or not. Look at New Wave’s ‘The Ocean,’ where the second verse starts with ‘If I would have chosen, I would have been born a woman/ My mother once told me she would have named me Laura.’ All those weird digressions and cryptic phrases in her writing suddenly made a lot more sense, and in those cases were as literal as her political songs ever were.”

Xtra:

Eccentric folkies the Ophelias are poised to break big: “Opener ‘Black Ribbon’ starts off typical enough for an Ophelias song, with lightly processed hi-hats, strummed electric guitar and Spencer Peppet’s traditionally stoic delivery. As Gutmann Fuentes’s violins creep in, Peppet’s detached facade starts to slip, revealing an uncertainty toward her new feelings. Her delivery doesn’t fully lose its cool until the song’s fiery climax, where she plainly states ‘I want you now,’ as the band sprawls out, her anxiety transmuted into desire. That vocal performance is a result of Lauber choosing the rawest, most expressive takes when editing, surprising Peppet: ‘I was like … is that weird? Are we keeping this? And [the band] went, ‘No, I love it!’ Anyone checking in from Almost will be startled; anyone who’s seen the band’s live show already knows how loud they can get.”

The new Lucy Dacus album is just fine. Where does Sapphic folk go from here?: The genre of “Sapphic folk” now signifies something specific. You can probably hear it in your head right now: hyper-detailed, occasionally affecting lyrics with deadpan delivery; earthy imagery and playful innuendos; intimate double-tracked vocals, murky rubber bridge guitars and light electronics.

On her new album, Orla Gartland is her own hero: “Many writers tackle the topics of dysfunctional relationships, but few write about the more specific emotions of long-term partnership — and fewer still approach the subject with the same loopy glee as Gartland. On ‘Backseat Driver,’ she struggles with expressing her emotions to her partner, but it’s punctuated with bratty ‘la-la-las’ and neurotic silliness like ‘Guilt is like a bad apple, rotten to the core/ I couldn’t even tell you what the hell I even said that for.’

Billboard:

Not Just ‘Luck’: Why Queer Pop Star Chappell Roan Broke Through to the Hot 100, And Why It Matters: “The bridge depicts her ex in a loveless, empty marriage to a man, “nothing more than his wife.” At the end of the bridge, Roan roars “I told you so,” and it’s the rawest moment in anything she’s released so far. “Babe” comes into the world in the midst of both increasing acceptance of LGBTQ people and a severe anti-LGBTQ backlash; it’s hard to blame someone for being too scared to come out, and behind the lyrics about this “sexually explicit love affair,” Roan clearly knows it. She’s not gloating at that ex, she’s angry at the ex not taking the leap with her, while understanding how it feels to hide in the closet. After a series of frothy pop songs, embracing more complex emotions might have been the push she needed all along. She wouldn’t be the first person in recent years to hit it big by getting messy — there’s a reason she’s opening for Olivia Rodrigo, after all.”

The Singles Jukebox:

Camila Cabello ft. Playboi Carti — I LUV IT: “I Luv It” is a perfect example of once avant-garde sounds being absorbed into the mainstream — which is why people hate it — but the way all involved fail makes it much better than it otherwise would be. Everyone involved doesn’t know how to work outside the lines of pure pop, and it shows. We have a IV-I-V-ii chord progression, normally too melancholic for upbeat electronica, and we have a classic AABB chorus, only the AAs are iluvitiluvitiluvitiluvit and the BBs are Gucci Mane samples. Cabello is much more fun in this mode than crooning nicotine-Halloween-morphine “Never Be The Same” mode, and if she still comes across as try-hard, that adds to the song’s bizarre alchemy.

Ariana Grande — We Can’t Be Friends (Wait For Your Love): This is “Dancing On My Own (Ariana’s Version),” so the floor is pretty high. It’s honestly so close to being a masterpiece on the level of “Into You” but it’s undone by the Robyn-shaped elephant in the room and some truly bizarre chorus phrasing. “Pre-e-e-tend” is not that many syllables! The original isn’t perfect; the chorus has little to no impact because it’s nearly the same arrangement as the verse. And yet, this remake has its own issues: the backing vocals are so absurdly loud they overwhelm the synths and the actual lead vox (maybe an attempt at Dolby Atmos-style depth), and when the Aris disappear we’re just left with empty space — not negative space, empty space.

Transient Peak:

I Saw The TV Glow review: “The movie is best described as a surreal, tense psychological coming of age drama, one that gradually tricks an unsuspecting audience into watching a trans narrative. Beyond that, it’s a gorgeous character study of two lonely people finding themselves and possibly losing themselves in the art they consume. There’s a maturity I’m not used to seeing with art about young queer people, as Schoenbrun empathetically deals with big teen emotions without getting absorbed into them.”

Nothing Deep To Say #6: Maria BC And Engineer ODAE Break Down Their Intimate, Intense, Romantic Album Spike Field: “Made after BC’s move from Brooklyn to San Francisco, it’s this expansive, almost sweeping thing with lush instrumentation. There were Grouper comparisons, but Maria BC’s mezzo-soprano is proudly front-and-center in the mixes, and that voice is epicene in a way that reminded another music writer of 2000s indie rock band Copeland. Every time I was lulled into complacency, a new detail would shock me back. The first time I listened to the album, I was on the way back from a part-time job and literally jumped out of my bus seat when the live drums kicked in, to the chagrin of the passengers next to me.”

Pitchfork:

Coldplay — Moon Music: “Even ‘Man in the Moon,’ from the deluxe version, gets away with its tinny Buggles rip by unashamedly doubling down on youth-group call-and-response silliness. That silliness puts Coldplay out of touch with a pop zeitgeist enamored by wit; it’s also made them bigger than almost any artist in the world.”

ANOHNI and the Johnsons — My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross: “It’s post-protest music, made stronger for refusing to endorse personal solutions to systemic problems.”

Lucy Rose — This Ain’t The Way You Go Out: “On ‘Whatever You Want,’ Rose’s willingness to be awkwardly direct (“a miracle, a disaster, all in one foul swoop”) powers the song’s central question: What do idealistic phrases like ‘You can be whatever you want’ mean to someone struggling to move? Beneath the instrumental experimentation, there’s both grief and a sense of hope inspired by raising her child and by Rose’s own recovery. As she sings on the title track: “I blame myself for being so weak/But this brave body is still carrying me.”

Billie Eilish — Hit Me Hard and Soft: “HMHAS is just another good record from Billie and Finneas — certainly tasteful, and arresting sometimes, but all the session musicians in the world can’t make it a masterpiece.”

Stereogum:

Band To Watch: Fashion Club: “A Love You Cannot Shake, the sophomore album from Fashion Club, starts with a lumbering, stuttering synth impossible to place. Pascal Stevenson tells me the synth is a vocoded, time-stretched kick drum, manipulated and looped in Ableton. That’s just one of many instances I could ask about. Not a moment goes by without something distorted and alien; even the quieter songs feature mangled vocals, pitch shifted in the margins of the mix.”

Transgender Dysphoria Blues Turns 10: “Few of those figures were famous enough for media coverage (The only one I knew was Dee Palmer, which I learned from a Music Choice factoid.) Few outlets knew how to deal with something that, culturally, was a punchline. Gradually, the pieces clicked: Laura Jane Grace was always writing about her identity, from the earliest EPs to the song that closed out White Crosses, ‘Bamboo Bones.’ Making art and transition are both inevitable — if you feel the urge to create or the urge to explore your identity, it will come out whether you want it to or not. Look at New Wave’s ‘The Ocean,’ where the second verse starts with ‘If I would have chosen, I would have been born a woman/ My mother once told me she would have named me Laura.’ All those weird digressions and cryptic phrases in her writing suddenly made a lot more sense, and in those cases were as literal as her political songs ever were.”

Xtra:

Eccentric folkies the Ophelias are poised to break big: “Opener ‘Black Ribbon’ starts off typical enough for an Ophelias song, with lightly processed hi-hats, strummed electric guitar and Spencer Peppet’s traditionally stoic delivery. As Gutmann Fuentes’s violins creep in, Peppet’s detached facade starts to slip, revealing an uncertainty toward her new feelings. Her delivery doesn’t fully lose its cool until the song’s fiery climax, where she plainly states ‘I want you now,’ as the band sprawls out, her anxiety transmuted into desire. That vocal performance is a result of Lauber choosing the rawest, most expressive takes when editing, surprising Peppet: ‘I was like … is that weird? Are we keeping this? And [the band] went, ‘No, I love it!’ Anyone checking in from Almost will be startled; anyone who’s seen the band’s live show already knows how loud they can get.”

On her new album, Orla Gartland is her own hero: “Many writers tackle the topics of dysfunctional relationships, but few write about the more specific emotions of long-term partnership — and fewer still approach the subject with the same loopy glee as Gartland. On ‘Backseat Driver,’ she struggles with expressing her emotions to her partner, but it’s punctuated with bratty ‘la-la-las’ and neurotic silliness like ‘Guilt is like a bad apple, rotten to the core/ I couldn’t even tell you what the hell I even said that for.’

Medium:

The End of Gaylor: “Yet for Gaylors, it doesn’t matter that MUNA exists, or Girl in Red, or Renee Rapp (or Tracy Chapman, or Norma Tanega, or…). It doesn’t matter that Boygenius is selling out Madison Square Garden. Most Gaylors have a working knowledge of queer musicians, but their first love was Taylor, and we can only hope Taylor has the capacity to love us back, platonically or otherwise.”

Billboard:

Not Just ‘Luck’: Why Queer Pop Star Chappell Roan Broke Through to the Hot 100, And Why It Matters: “The bridge depicts her ex in a loveless, empty marriage to a man, “nothing more than his wife.” At the end of the bridge, Roan roars “I told you so,” and it’s the rawest moment in anything she’s released so far. “Babe” comes into the world in the midst of both increasing acceptance of LGBTQ people and a severe anti-LGBTQ backlash; it’s hard to blame someone for being too scared to come out, and behind the lyrics about this “sexually explicit love affair,” Roan clearly knows it. She’s not gloating at that ex, she’s angry at the ex not taking the leap with her, while understanding how it feels to hide in the closet. After a series of frothy pop songs, embracing more complex emotions might have been the push she needed all along. She wouldn’t be the first person in recent years to hit it big by getting messy — there’s a reason she’s opening for Olivia Rodrigo, after all.”

The Singles Jukebox:

Camila Cabello ft. Playboi Carti — I LUV IT: “I Luv It” is a perfect example of once avant-garde sounds being absorbed into the mainstream — which is why people hate it — but the way all involved fail makes it much better than it otherwise would be. Everyone involved doesn’t know how to work outside the lines of pure pop, and it shows. We have a IV-I-V-ii chord progression, normally too melancholic for upbeat electronica, and we have a classic AABB chorus, only the AAs are iluvitiluvitiluvitiluvit and the BBs are Gucci Mane samples. Cabello is much more fun in this mode than crooning nicotine-Halloween-morphine “Never Be The Same” mode, and if she still comes across as try-hard, that adds to the song’s bizarre alchemy.

Ariana Grande — We Can’t Be Friends (Wait For Your Love): This is “Dancing On My Own (Ariana’s Version),” so the floor is pretty high. It’s honestly so close to being a masterpiece on the level of “Into You” but it’s undone by the Robyn-shaped elephant in the room and some truly bizarre chorus phrasing. “Pre-e-e-tend” is not that many syllables! The original isn’t perfect; the chorus has little to no impact because it’s nearly the same arrangement as the verse. And yet, this remake has its own issues: the backing vocals are so absurdly loud they overwhelm the synths and the actual lead vox (maybe an attempt at Dolby Atmos-style depth), and when the Aris disappear we’re just left with empty space — not negative space, empty space.

Why some Taylor Swift fans got so invested in her identity — and why it’s hard to move on.

Taylor Swift is your best friend, and my best friend, and millions of other fans’ best friends. She’s created a cult following of millions of people, harnessing the power of parasociality to sell countless records and tickets. Anyone that writes about Taylor includes several references to her lyrics, and probably some allusions to her personal life too, leaving easter eggs mirroring Taylor’s own love of callbacks. Her music is modern folklore, not just for her way with storytelling, but for its ubiquity, permeating every facet of pop culture.

Last October, Taylor Swift released her re-recorded version of 1989, still her most popular album to date. It’s still a great, if exceptionally frontloaded album, but one nearly impossible to recreate. 1989 superproducer Max Martin isn’t on board, so it’s up to her long-time engineer Christopher Rowe to craft soundalikes. Like the other pop-era re-records, it’s fascinating, but ultimately diminishing returns; they often sound like cheap karaoke recreations.

But I’m not interested in talking about the technicalities of the re-records. Here, I’m interested in what happened when the new 1989 “prologue” leaked. Before every Taylor’s Version album, she reflects on her life at the time of release. This prologue denigrated anyone speculating about her relationships (a frequent theme), but she saved specific cynicism for those speculating about her relationships with other women:

Being a consummate optimist, I assumed I could fix [their speculation] if I simply changed my behavior. I swore off dating and decided to focus only on myself, my music, my growth, and my female friendships. If I only hung out with my female friends, people couldn’t sensationalize or sexualize that — right? I would learn later on that people could and people would.

It was uncharacteristically bitter, righteous toward paparazzi but implicitly condemning anyone who thought she might be queer Later, she talks about the “seeds of her allyship” being planted with the clumsy “boys-and-boys-and-girls-and-girls” line in “Welcome To New York.” In a sense, this is her reacting to her own fame as much as it is directed at any specific person, looking upon her parasocial empire and fearing what it’s become. But for anyone who thought she was like them, this was devastating.

I don’t know if there’s a way she could have done this nicely, other than going to every Swiftie individually, caressing their face, and saying “I’m straight, but I still love and care about you.” For years, there’s been an ongoing movement of Gaylors, people who think Taylor Swift is either closeted or has already come out through her music. Sometimes, these are straight fans, sometimes these are queer fans sharing their interpretations of songs, and sometimes, it’s people who wonder what really happened with her and certain other female celebrities. There’s a reason for that investment: to Gaylors, Taylor being queer could potentially change the world, ushering in greater LGBTQ acceptance, confirming that gay stories are being told on the biggest stages possible.

After the prologue leaked, I was going to leave it alone. Then The New York Times article happened. “Look What We Made Taylor Swift Do” is a 5,000 word Hail Mary for Gaylors, one I commend for not mentioning her love interests (or ‘muses’, as the subreddit calls them) by name, but one that, in its willful misinterpretation of lyrics, mistakes speculation for fact. According to CNN, Taylor Swift’s team was furious at the transgressed boundaries. And in a lot of ways, it is indeed difficult — look at Billie Eilish, who had to confirm her queerness because accusations of ‘queerbaiting’ were getting too intense.

With that report, an unsettling number of people were celebrating the impending death of Gaylorism — she was straight the whole time, those gays can stop being so nosy! People who can’t express their identity often did through talking about and participating in Gaylor conversation — and they’re watching their lifeline slip away. Sure, there’s other other queer art, but in the mainstream, it’s often too tasteful to resonate like Taylor’s messiness.

For many queer Gaylors, the palpably angry rejection of Taylor Swift and her team likely brings up painful memories of unrequited crushes, of being deeply in love with your best friend and realizing they don’t and won’t feel the same. The delusion shatters, as it finally registers they never cared about you like you did about them. It was the song and dance every queer woman plays on a massive, conspiratorial scale. It hits different because it’s her.

The Gaylor trajectory parallels the trajectory of any other online phenomenon. Things started out reasonably enough; Jennifer Lawrence’s offhand jokes about Taylor Swift and her bestie doppelgänger Karlie Kloss, or listeners noticing the theme of forbidden relationships in songs like “I Know Places.” (To say nothing of “Dress”, where the chorus goes “I only bought this dress so you could take it off.”) Coupled with Swift’s constant shoutouts to queer musicians — Girl in Red on her Instagram story, Hayley Kiyoko at her live shows — fans started to think they were on to something big. Folklore added fuel to that fire, with the introduction of Taylor’s “male perspective”, a young boy named James caught in a love triangle.

Around the time Midnights was announced with the track title “Lavender Haze”, things flew off the rails: Taylor is secretly a lesbian, Taylor isn’t actually dating anyone she’s dating, Joe Alwyn is A.I. (that last part was a joke, but I wouldn’t put it past the subreddit.) It went from harmless, thoughtful queer readings with the occasional ‘hey, this is an interesting coincidence!’ to fans playing detective, to fans obsessing over Taylor’s personal life in a way that doesn’t discourage her comparison to tabloids and paparazzi. Nobody invites parasociality quite like her, and nobody hates it like her either.

I’m not going to act above this. In my teens and early 20s, I was deeply invested in Kaylor — the speculated relationship between Karlie and Taylor — to cope with gender dysphoria. And in some ways, referencing Gaylor is as effective a tell as the classic queer question “do you listen to Girl in Red?” At my Swiftie-heavy part time job, I’d make a joke about Kloss on the bleachers of the Eras Tour, and the Gaylors in my vicinity would laugh in recognition. I even used to joke that Taylor IS bi, but she just never figured it out — which is horribly intrusive and weird to say about anyone, especially someone I don’t know. People need space to explore their identity, whether they’re friends or superstars (again, Billie Eilish), and I can’t imagine figuring it out with the whole world watching.

Everyone knows it’s not okay to speculate, but everyone does it — think of anyone that’s ever set off anyone else’s gaydar. We can’t claim to understand people through their art, yet artists can’t control people thinking they understand them through their art.

In hindsight, Gaylor theories would often cover up quirks in Taylor’s songwriting. Fans considered “you could hear a hairpin drop” from “Right Where You Left Me” to be subtle queercoding; maybe Taylor just needed the extra syllable! I considered the sensitive James (of “Betty”) as a closeted trans girl; maybe Taylor just struggled at writing from a male perspective! Every weird thing Taylor did was just weird, down to the out-of-context quote in her documentary Miss Americana when she declares, “Gay Pride… makes me, me!” while brainstorming the critically reviled video for “ME!”

I still think plenty of Taylor songs have valid queer readings, regardless of her intention — to me, “Wonderland” still sounds like the dissolution of a homoerotic friendship. Straight women have those close friendships all the time, and as writer Sadie Graham says in her all-time great article about female friendships, the eroticism is never lost on anyone: “They do realize [it’s homoerotic], and that’s what gives it that sweet thrill of nearness: near forbidden, nearly true.” Taylor calls her friends “hot girls” right after she condemns speculation on her sexuality, and accidentally sums up the reason so many believed in Gaylor — straight women can proclaim their love for other women, and the queer ones are left to wonder whether it means something more.

As Dave Moore writes in his exemplary “How You Get The World” series, Taylor Swift has remade pop music in her image. Every life is folklore. To quote her sworn enemy, every album is the Album of the Life. With Taylor, there can be no Death of the Author, because the music depends on your metatextual knowledge of the very-much-alive author. It’s the more cynical side of parasociality — more relatability means you’re supporting your fave by giving them money.

That’s why it’s spread everywhere. Now we have chaotic lesbian Fletcher, who openly obsesses over her ex’s new girlfriend using her actual name on “Becky’s So Hot,” or viral star Katie Gregson MacLeod, whose EP was titled Big Red after a bar she used to frequent with her ex, even filming a video there. You need to make your own life content, and that’s always been true for any celebrity, but thanks to Taylor, it’s even more true now. My friend Rose Mournighan, who inspired a bunch of this essay, said: “you aren’t just sharing the emotions, you are sharing the memories, which creates so much projection.”

Some musicians are more playful around their relationship with women. I love how Olivia Rodrigo approaches it, making a whole persona-swap music video with director Allie Avital about mutual female obsession and writing a song like the gloriously unhinged “Lacy.” Whether they’re specifically queer doesn’t matter; they’re unambiguously about admiring women in a way that’s more matter-of-fact than suggestive. Sadie Graham’s article on the insufficiency of heterosexuality once again comes into play; sometimes those things exist outside of any labels or easy explanations.

Yet for Gaylors, it doesn’t matter that MUNA exists, or Girl in Red, or Renee Rapp (or Tracy Chapman, or Norma Tanega, or…). It doesn’t matter that Boygenius is selling out Madison Square Garden. Most Gaylors have a working knowledge of queer musicians, but their first love was Taylor, and we can only hope Taylor has the capacity to love us back, platonically or otherwise.

Is the only destination of fandom “too far”?

I don’t know what the answer is, or how to move forward. Ethel Cain’s “fans” make Hayden Anhedonia uncomfortable by joking about everything but her music, all the Boygenius members have spoken about creeps on their trail, someone threw their mom’s ashes at P!nk on stage (?!). Taylor herself can’t go to a wedding without fans swarming the house.

Despite that, I think there’s some good to come from the theorizing. Taylor Swift may not be gay, but someone figured out they were because they related to the yearning in her music. Someone felt validated by “You Need To Calm Down,” as corny as that song is, someone had an awakening hearing “Dress”, even if the song’s double entendre wasn’t intended. It doesn’t change the turn toward hostility, but that hostility doesn’t change the inclusion of a trans man in her “Lavender Haze” music video. Through Gaylor, I’ve been able to find other queer people, and it’s a gateway to deeper conversations about identity, music, and gender.

Maybe there are other queer artists to listen to, or straight artists that don’t care what people think of them. Sometimes, straight art does capture messy queer feelings better than finely manicured “representation.” It’s ultimately not a famous person’s orientation we’re looking for, but understanding and validation.

So we get over our heartbreak, find other ways to connect with queer people that have nothing to do with the biggest pop star in the world, and life goes on, never worse, but never better.

A special thanks to Elliot Klug, Dave Moore, Holly Boson, and everyone else who read this before publication and offered feedback. If you like this, please subscribe to my newsletter Transient Peak, launching February 1st on Ghost.

By the way, counting the title and subtitle (and not counting this epilogue), the essay is exactly 1,989 words. One last easter egg for the road ;-)

The flagship series of this newsletter is called Nothing Deep To Say, named after a Pictoria Vark song, where I interview queer musicians purely about their music; I’m less interested in talking about their queerness than nerding out about production, finding emotional truths via dissecting the songwriting process. I’m so incredibly excited to share that with the world. I even talk with several of the people on this list!

There’s also some other fun stuff coming around January that’s so exciting.

In the meantime, here’s a Spotify playlist below, with some bonus songs I like + some friends whose music I admire :)

Until then, here’s some writing about some songs I like:

1. Shit Talk — Sufjan Stevens

I’m not a Sufjan Stevens obsessive; a lot of his music is either too morose or too whimsically maximalist for me. This song is both, but in perfect amounts; while it’s not as insane as the 20-minute “Impossible Soul” or as obviously devastating as “Fourth of July”, that’s exactly why it works like it does. Much has been said about the context of Javelin, the mostly enigmatic Sufjan going public about his struggle with Guillain Barre Syndrome and the death of his partner, Evans Richardson III. It’s important to note, as any context is, but it’s not necessary to feel the power of the song. Just as much power comes from following his musical arc: “Shit Talk” takes elements from several mainline Sufjan records — electronica from Age of Adz, accessible pop melodies from The Ascension, maniacal whimsy from Illinoise, suffocating ambient outros from Carrie and Lowell — and distills them into one eight minute mini-epic (and I say ‘mini’ because, again, “Impossible Soul”.) It’s about as accessible as a song like this in 5/4 can be. “Shit Talk” is both a perfect entry point and a culmination, undeniable no matter your familiarity with the man’s work.

2. Anohni — Rest

I didn’t write about “Rest” in my Pitchfork review for My Back Was a Bridge For You to Cross — I’ve been called out multiple times for how serious that review was compared to the album’s accessibility, so let it be known that if I could, I would say the following about “Rest”: “HOLY FUCK THIS KICKS ASS.” Between two self-loathing, sparse songs on the record, she drops one of the most confident departures in a career full of them: A colossal, cryptic prog-rocker about loss, more abstract than the rest of the record’s direct proclamations. When I listen to “Rest”, I think of early-10s rock bands like emo-folkies Dry The River as much as I do 70s psychedelia, as if Anohni heard two decades of epicene indie vocalists following in her footsteps and decided to outclass them all. Entire journal articles have been written analyzing Anohni’s voice and the way people write about it; this changes everything once again.

3. Piglet — Building Site Outside

I wrote about this all the way back when I first heard it from a publicist email invoking Nilufer Yanya (note to publicists: always compare your artists to Nilufer Yanya) and it still holds up at the end of the year. What I wrote then:

Getting hormones should be joyous; for Charlie Loane, a transphobic microaggression ruins the moment, underlining the risk he’s about to take by starting testosterone. As rendered by Loane and Harvey Grant of Puma Blue, and mixed by Depeche Mode/Black Midi engineer Marta Salogni, “Building” is a piercing, anguished cry, the harsh synths and thudding percussion conveying the anger Loane initially directs inward. In the unexpectedly heartwarming final verse, a call to a supportive father makes everything feel a little less painful. I hear a lot of touchstones (Andy Hull, Scott Hutchison, fellow Irish musician SOAK, even early Animal Collective), but the synthesis of those influences is entirely new.

4. The National — Space Invader

Here’s a deep cut joke for Nationalheads — “Eucalyptus” now feels like the Tarquin Roughs version of “Space Invader.” The aimless cultural references and deliberately whiny lyrics are traded for more fearful, higher-stakes “what if” thoughts about how close a couple came to falling apart, against a more fluid, dramatic arrangement. But it’s not here because of the first half, it’s here because of the extended ending. Even if it’s not as chaotic as “I’ll Still Destroy You” (or the original “Terrible Love”, one of my favorite moment’s in the band’s discography) there’s this sense of joy and discovery I haven’t heard from a National song in years. Listen closely during the fade out, and there’s a dramatic string arrangement that only appears in the mix for its final moments: wouldn’t be the first time the National had a whole orchestra and basically scrapped it. Even in a three-minute bombastic outro, the band shows its characteristic restraint.

5. Young Fathers — Be Your Lady

When I interviewed the band, Kayus Bankole argued for the song’s placement as the closer — at the end of a joyful, accessible record, a bizarrely structured song with glitching drum machines clashing against thoughtful crooning. I first heard the middle-8 (“what might have been what might have been…”) on an Instagram story, and could not have guessed it belonged to something so disjointed. That’s why it rules! What also rules is the ridiculous outro, where the band takes turns shouting: “Can I take ten pounds worth of loving out of the bank, please?” It sounds campy, but Young Fathers are both intensely sincere and a merry band of pranksters. The shenanigans and thematic weight are on equal ground, making for a song both baffling and just about perfect.

6. TWST- Off-World

I’m particularly excited to talk with TWST and Lauren Aquilina (who made one of my favorite indie pop songs in recent memory with “Empathy”). Co-produced by several people including Aquilina, Mike Spencer, and Clarence Clarity, it’s a maximalist EDM anthem that calls back to Spencer’s productions with Rudimental and Ellie Goulding with an added dose of Yeule’s preoccupations with the online world. There’s a breathlessly romantic urgency — a desperation to escape the limits of human bodies via the internet, until they fully see one another away from any corporeal forms. That’s not a new topic by any means, and one of my personal pet topics, but it’s rarely this direct.

7. Ashnikko ft. Ethel Cain — Dying Star

Much to the shock of everyone that knows me, Ashnikko is on my top 10 list. But if you make a power ballad that kind of sounds like Linkin Park’s “Waiting For The End”, and you include Ethel Cain, your spot is guaranteed. And it’s about breaking free of compulsory heterosexuality for “something soft”! What makes Hayden so special is that she can make long ambient tracks, but has an innate grasp of pop melodies; I frequently think of her millennial whoop tucked into the post-rock ballad “Strangers”. “Dying Star” sounds like a 90s-alt-pop album closer (Shirley Manson would be proud), but the subject matter and singers ensure this could only be made now.

8. Sampha — Spirit 2.0

Over Thanksgiving, I went back in the water for the first time in several years, and most pertinently, for the first time since I started HRT. The ocean, specifically— I loved the waves hitting my body the way I felt like they should. In the water you don’t have to think of your form. Waves will catch you, Sampha promises. Love will catch you. A musician I once knew wondered why so many of us use water imagery, and I think it’s what people who feel deeply want from life — to fall into something completely with the knowledge they’re in no danger of drowning. (Unless drowning in someone is the point, of course, but that’s Not Good.) Sampha doesn’t sound bothered, but he still switches flows at least once every 30 seconds across the five minutes. He just swims through, feeling safe and content. And he’s right about his friends catching him; an insane array of players like Owen Pallett, Yaeji, and Yussef Dayes are all holding him up.

9. Boygenius — Not Strong Enough

I wrote about this on the briefly revived Singles Jukebox! What I wrote there:

For the most part, The Record is an unapologetic major-label victory lap, where the three musketeers indulge in mushy love songs for one another and celebrate their bond. It’s impossible to tell who wrote what, as the trio peacefully melt into one another until they’re a massive sapphic hydra. “Not Strong Enough” soars above all this, Sheryl Crow allusion and all, because it’s just a good pop song. It doesn’t have the wit or emotional resonance of their best individual material, but it does have a hook worthy of Crow and some great ear candy (the pumping sweep effect at 2:07, Lucy Dacus’ echoing ad-lib of “go home alone”). Also, Julien Baker name-drops “Boys Don’t Cry” over the chords of “Just Like Heaven.” Nice!

9. (Tie) Gracie Abrams — Amelie

This immediately became so ingrained into my life and the way I view female friendships that I almost took it for granted. Yes, it’s by a nepotism baby; yes, it’s Aaron Dessner on autopilot. But it also freezes me in place whenever I hear it. In a recent podcast appearance, the musician Maria BC (more on them later!) spoke about the virtues of “intimate, intense, romantic time with friends.” This song depicts the inevitable breakdown: an isolating heartbreak, at odds in a culture that prioritizes relationships above all else. I think of all my Amelies, all the close friendships I’ve had with other women, fraught with (usually one-sided) tension. At best, they’re genuinely meaningful, but at worst, they feel like outright emotional affairs. In their aftermath, I look for some sort of proof I actually mattered to the other person. Abrams doesn’t give specifics, but captures this raw aftershock anyway.

10. Searows — Older

This seven-minute song is a goldmine for devastating one-liners: the heartwarming reassurance of “You think that you look older/I think you look alive,” the gutting coming-of-age angst of “You were mad at the whole world/you were angry it didn’t stop when you did.” Alec Duckart is painfully sincere, without his influences’ self-conscious backtracking or his contemporaries’ lore. You’re just getting him, and the mileage he gets out of a C major chord (sure, G and F, too, but especially a C chord). The trembling cello is the heart of the song, not needing more than four notes to emotionally wound. I feel like a character in a young-adult book when I put this on, all BIG EMOTIONS and LONGING. I want to tell someone how important they are to me while this song plays in the background; maybe we kiss, but we probably don’t, which is why I put “Amelie” above this.

11. Drug Church — Myopic

Lyrically, “Myopic” discusses the way capitalism trickles down into how humans interact — “most love, many friendships” wind up as transactional, if not outright scams. Despite the enshittification of everything, there are moments of genuine connection, and the song earnestly celebrates those. But if earnestness was enough, I’d still like Idles. Instead, this song is full of post-grunge details grafted onto post-hardcore: the distant harmony and synthetic violins on the bridge, the radio-rock vocal filters on the chorus. The apotheosis is when the scream of “don’t make me remember IF I DON’T HAVE TO!” gets a reverberating echo moments later. It’s a subtle but brilliant studio-wiz moment from Jon Markson, someone who saw a melodic side to this band and created something oddly magical.

12. Art School Girlfriend — Heaven Hanging Low

“I pray and I pray, I pray and I pray,” Polly Mackey sings in a song about carnal, cosmic queer desire. One of the most euphoric songs Mackey’s made up to this point, particularly when live drums come in and send the whole thing careening. Flipping from “I pray and I pray” to “I got you on your knees” is subtle, brilliant, and (it must be said!) pretty hot. While the album as a whole underwhelmed me, songs like this one and the phenomenal “The Weeks” keep me on board for whatever Mackey does next.

13. Pool Kids — No Stranger

Pool Kids’ sense of humor is my favorite thing about them — Christine Goodwyne deadpanning “sometimes it’s nice to be left on read, wait no it’s not” like a hypercaffeinated Sidney Gish comes to mind. (To say nothing of their raucous music videos.) This time, the laugh comes not from the lyrics but from juxtaposition; the band has released a split EP with gentler reworkings of Pool Kids songs and a few from their hardcore alter ego POOL. Ever the softie, I prefer “No Stranger,” the most atmospheric song they’ve made that still manages to fit in weird time signatures and hooky melodies. The “ooohs” after every line in the chorus are the kind of details that made producers like John Shanks legends of 2000s pop, and there’s the formal command to match (“carpet apartment/when we first got high” is reprised as “before the rent got high” later in the song).

14. Ruston Kelly — Breakdown

Wrote about this album already elsewhere on Medium:

“Breakdown” sounds like Natalie Imbrugila’s classic “Torn,” but within that Lilith Fair-adjacent framework depicts the masculine urge to hide your feelings and keep everything together even when you’re on “overdriiiiiiive.” All the reference points come together to make a basically perfect pop song — even the double tracked vocals feel like endearing pastiche, and the driving beat complements the fear of burning out instead of disguising the pain.

15. milksugar — Crushed

This song never fails to make me swoon. Much of the current 90s revival (thinking of James Ivy’s “L-Trip”) captures the initial feeling of breathlessly falling for someone; this a safer, gentler variant, when the initial bliss of reciprocation fades and you discover you still adore the other person. Part of it is the delivery of Bre Morrell, just cool enough to land would-be cloying lines like “I could spend forever/curled up inside, your words so tender” and “When you look at me/I am home again.” There’s no desperation, just honest expression. When I listen, I get lost in the languid, chorused guitars and reverberating vocals; my heart beats faster, as if I really am in love.

16. S. Carey, John Raymond, and Gordi: Steadfast

A close friend teased me when I queued this song up in a car ride; “this is the most Hannahcore song of all time.” Polyrhythms from Sean Carey, soothing multitracked vocals from longtime Hannahfave Gordi, even Aaron Parks’ piano filigree peacefully coalesce into something basically made for the gentle side of my music taste. “New Morning” is a formidable companion, but it’s “Steadfast” I returned to often as I needed it.

17. Milk. — I Think I Lost My Number, Can I Have Yours?

If Scrubs were on today, J.D. would be summing up the episode’s themes to this Irish band’s ballad. “I Lost My Number…” is Lazlo Bane-style folk rock given an atmospheric 2023 makeover, courtesy of engineer Oli Jacobs. The lyrics set this apart, dealing with a lack of identity in a surprisingly honest, melancholic way. But this is here for the singalong refrain: “Can someone with an opinion give it to me/and dictate what I say/I’m made up, I’m pastiche!”, the corny pickup line of the title barely masking an existential crisis. The way the guitar mimics the chorus melody at the end… to quote a fellow lover of 2000s adult alternative, “SUBLIME!”

18. Maria BC — Mercury

Late into the murkiness of Spike Field, Maria BC drops an honest-to-God power ballad out of nowhere. There are poppy elements to several songs (why I love the album!), but what’s always fascinating is that every time things get too close, there’s some abrasive sound design to unsettle the atmosphere. It makes me think of other imagery involving spikes: Schopenhauer’s porcupine dilemma, where the animals huddle together for warmth until the quills prick each other. If Maria BC wanted to, they could pull an Ethel Cain and make an outright uplifting pop song; the album is better that they don’t, but the glimpse of pure beauty is all the more tantalizing.

19. Sydney Sprague — God, Damn It Jane

This Sydney Sprague cut is just one of many phenomenal songs on her sophomore record, which is nonstop pop-punk hooks with almost no moments to breathe. Borne of an overheard fight between a couple, Contains my other favorite piece of writing symmetry this year: “How you gonna Cha Cha Slide” and “How the fuck you gonna Mambo [no.]5” in different choruses. (Sprague confirmed live that it was about someone who wanted to slow-dance with their wife at a bar, but Jane was already too drunk to go out.) Her voice is easy to underestimate, always on the edge of sounding too brittle before belting near the top of her range in the final chorus.

20. PinkPantheress — Capable of Love

Originally a quiet laid-back demo from 2021, well before Coldplay covers and “Boy’s a Liar”, this winds up massive and polished with live cymbal rolls and even fuzzed-out electric guitars. Some of the original lyrics (including a bit about writing the other person’s name fifty times) are missed, but the final version focuses in on the online-relationship aspect only alluded to in earlier drafts. I’ve written about mine a lot — and this validates that if I was crazy, I wasn’t alone. (“There’s no other place I’d want to be/Than sat here replyin’ to someone on a screen” doesn’t sound ironic when you’re in it.) The best line wasn’t in any of the other versions, but pristinely captures the devastation of teenage Internet love: “Don’t you feel everything you’re supposed to”? You think you’re hitting the typical teenage romantic benchmarks, until you log off to learn you missed them all.

BONUS: IRL friends that did great work this year.

Dolly — Process

A lot of contemporary post-punk is brutal for the sake of brutal, but the bands that resonate the most with me (Ought, Protomartyr) remember to write songs and not mood pieces or… whatever Black Country New Road is up to these days. Dolly’s most popular song to date, released under the name Dolly Spartansl is the straightforward Strokes-esque rocker “I Hear The Dead” — remarkably catchy garage rock that doesn’t necessarily predict where they go here. That sense of melody does carry through the layers of atmospheric guitar arpeggios, even as the song charges to its shouty, distorted conclusion. The mix (which, per the band, took two years and three people to get right!) is piercing, but allows space for the beauty and the chaos to co-exist. May the post-punk-revival-revival-revival commence!

Partygirl — Fine, Fine, Fine (Tiny Desk version)

I frequently mention Partygirl to people looking for new bands because I love how shifty and imaginative their arrangements are. Their EP is great, but for their upcoming record they’ve leveled up in a very post-Black Midi way with the furious vocals of Pagona Kytzidis, where Robert Plant and Fiona Apple co-exist as influences. It’s a band where every member has its own set of influences, with a restless, amorphous quality that grows until songs sprawl out for several minutes. Then, there’s “Fine Fine Fine” which is their version of a straightforward pop song. It takes them from Speedy Wunderground to Lilith Fair, yet Pagona’s voice keeps things endearingly weird.

On earnestness, neurodivergence, the multiverse, and Lanterns on the Lake

My favorite film and record last year, Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans and Gang of Youths’ Angel in Realtime, were colossal, painfully earnest statements on grief and family that largely had mainstream American audiences shrugging their shoulders. But I admire anyone tackling those emotions through art — even if outsiders view it as indulgent, it’s at least not cynical or pandering.

Enter Lanterns on the Lake, a shoegaze band from Tyneside. I knew Lanterns on the Lake at all because their guitarist Paul Gregory mixed the lone album from Mastersystem, Scott Hutchison from Frightened Rabbit’s final project. His mixing work takes inspiration from 90s alternative rock, specifically the wide sound of Siamese Dream-era Smashing Pumpkins with some roomy In Utero snares and Sonic Youth cacophony mixed in: listen to Mastersystem’s “Bird is Bored Of Flying” and Minor Victories’ superlative noise-pop ballad “Scattered Ashes (Song For Richard)”. Lanterns, over a decade on the label Bella Union, became something of a cult UK band, culminating in a Mercury Prize nomination for 2020's Spook The Herd. Their most streamed song, “Through the Cellar Door,” is characteristic of their sound up to this point; Hazel Wilde cryptically whispers over a very National drum beat that periodically explodes into the kind of tones no Dessner brother would ever touch. Later releases would further double down on the post-rock until Spook The Herd brought them back to Earth.

Their new record, Versions of Us, drastically shifts from all that for a remarkably clean, alt-radio ready sound, mixed in Gregory’s bedroom. The album was made multiple times, first with the band’s old drummer Ol Ketteringham, second with Phillip Selway of Radiohead. It has the immediacy of a quick recording with the meticulous arrangement of someone that’s spent a long time with this set of songs. The band stretches in different directions here, jazz on “Vatican”, power pop on “Real Life”, and even trip-hop on “Rich Girls.” Wilde now belts on top of the mix instead of sinking in to the background, with hopeful lyrics inspired by her newfound motherhood. Her new musical persona is more flamboyant, charismatic enough to pull off lines like the borderline-campy “I’m gonna ride like a knight in the saddle of life/no more watching from the cheap seats.”

Not that Version of Us cares about how it’s perceived. There is none of the cautious self-consciousness that gave Fabelmans and Angel in Realtime their edge; there’s no Sammy-imagining-himself-filming-his-own-parent’s-divorce equivalent or candid admission that your motto on tour is “fuck you and pay me.” Yet, it’s that same purity of feeling that draws me in on Versions. Many of the lyrics are even about feeling deeply: “all those cynics and nihilists/Couldn’t stop me from feeling this”, “I’m feeling too much and I swear that I’m cursed/writing these songs is just making it worse” — there’s an intensity in Wilde’s delivery that makes even the lines that don’t land feel visceral. Resistance is futile; you are going to feel with her.

Hazel Wilde’s insistence on constantly gliding her notes might get to some over roughly 40 minutes, but I find that endearing, the sound of someone unapologetically going for it. Angela Chan‘s strings gracefully accentuate the newfound swagger, particularly on “The Likes of Us”, where she slides in as Wilde sings “I won’t let this spark die in me.” What ultimately wins me over is the work of Paul Gregory himself. Wide bursts of fuzz lend genuine weight to Wilde’s musings about love, this “strange old rock we’re spinning on”, and on one pivotal track, the ubiquitous multiverse.

Everything (everywhere, etc.) is about the multiverse right now; it’s the thought there must be more than this thing we’re stuck in, there must have been another way to avoid this impending civilization collapse. Lately, the concept is an excuse to jam in as many IP and as much fanservice as possible, in a way only magical to a studio executive. If Across the Spider-Verse couldn’t shake my fatigue, nothing will — even that one addresses the difficulty of actual imagination within the constraints of expected ‘beats’, or ‘canon events’ as the film puts it. “String Theory” didn’t hit me until recently, until it suddenly did; a big-hearted, wide-eyed song that I can’t listen to without tearing up a bit. The vocal samples and insistent bassline convey a feeling of actually traveling through space in a way that a million movies in The Volume cannot. “Theory” feels like discovering the concept of multiverse for the first time; there’s a deliberate, defiant naïveté to it that breaks down any defenses I could possibly have.

I can’t help but love Versions of Us unconditionally. It reminds me of a lot of things and a lot of people, but it reminds me of myself. I joked recently that autism, OCD, and ADHD (I’m diagnosed with all three) should be consolidated into Everybody Thinks You’re Weird Disorder, and it’s partly because full expression of feelings is often too much for neurotypicals. Okay, it’s also because of the obsessiveness and difficulty with boundaries people with those things largely face, but that’s for some other Medium post. I just feel safest in environments where self-expression, no matter how intense, is encouraged. And if they wear their sensitivity as a badge of honor? That’s even better.

I’m reminded of another friend, someone very openly, proudly neurodivergent. I was scared to be that. Around the time I saw the first Spider-Verse, and got swept up in the film’s sincere embrace of the superheroes he adored, I understood that it wasn’t a bad thing to be the thing I can’t help but being. Embracing this kind of overly earnest, heartfelt music is embracing a part of myself I’m supposed to not like, but a part I can’t erase, so I might as well accept it. In a world designed to kill your spark at every turn, there’s value in proclaiming, without any detatchment or distance: “I won’t let this spark die in me.”

I can’t say anything’s blown me away as an album just yet, but there are diamonds in the rough, and I’m about to spend 2000 words talking about ‘em! I already wrote about two of my favorite songs of the year so far here (“Boyhood” by the Japanese House, and “Breakdown” by Ruston Kelly), so go read that.

Here are some overlooked songs, in order of least to most Spotify plays, along with some other songs I love. You can read my writing about bands like Daughter and Young Fathers here.

And here’s the Spotify playlist of all the songs + some others!

Piglet — Building Site Outside

SOUNDS LIKE: Owl John, SOAK, Black Country, New Road, trans resilience

This came out of nowhere for me (well, out of a publicist email comparing him to Nilufer Yanya), even as Piglet released an early version three years ago. The original is resigned and quiet, with some scattered noise — the new version is a blast of righteous fury. Getting hormones should be joyous; for Charlie Loane, a transphobic microaggression ruins the moment, underlining the risk he’s about to take by starting testosterone. As rendered by Loane and Harvey Grant of Puma Blue, and mixed by Depeche Mode/Black Midi engineer Marta Salogni, “Building” is a piercing, anguished cry, the harsh synths and thudding percussion conveying the anger Loane initially directs inward. In the unexpectedly heartwarming final verse, a call to a supportive father makes everything feel a little less painful. I hear a lot of touchstones (Andy Hull, Scott Hutchison, fellow Irish musician SOAK, even early Animal Collective), but the synthesis of those influences is entirely new.

Foyer Red — Unwaxed Flavored Floss

Sounds Like: Palm, Deerhoof, whimsical shenangians

Wonderfully unpredictable math-rock, first recommended by a friend whose taste mostly skews towards hyperpop. “Hyper-mathrock” is the best way to describe this group’s sense of playfulness, with group members alternating lines word by word and songs changing entirely on a whim. (There is no way this group is not a hivemind masquerading as five separate people.) But it’s all with a gentle, warm spirit; this is mathy goodness you can take home to your mom, provided your mom is sufficiently open-minded.

Stolen Jars — Reality TV

SOUNDS LIKE: Sidney Gish, Wallows, long car rides soundtracked by SiriusXM Alt Nation.

A band like Stolen Jars immediately endears itself to me because they’re such a classic indie rock group. Take “Reality TV”: guitar riff is American Football + New Order (who aren’t indie but inspired a whole lot of it), vocal arrangement is Broken Social Scene + Local Natives layers, even an LCD Soundsystem namedrop in the lyrics. This isn’t a knock against Stolen Jars — they have their own laid-back, slightly anxious personality, the references just part of the charm. Immaculately produced by the band and Joe Reinhart, the song is gourmet comfort food for fans of this kind of polished, no-bullshit pop-rock.

Lanterns on the Lake — The Likes of Us

Sounds like: Florence Welch, Chrissie Hyde, a motivational quote that hits at just the right moment

Mercury Prize-nominated Scottish shoegaze band makes a Florence + The Machine-meets-Chrissie-Hyde song with Radiohead’s drummer Phillip Selway , and the mishmash of styles works. Guitarist Paul Gregory previously mixed projects from Mastersystem and Minor Victories, two projects that successfully balance searing noise and soaring hooks — on “The Likes of Us”, a full on pop ballad still roars like shoegaze. “I won’t let this spark die in me” reads as cheesy on paper, but with the strings and guitar feedback propelling her, Hazel Wilde wills meaning back into those aphorisms. There’s a depth of feeling and optimism here that I don’t always see in contemporary rock, and I’ve missed that earnestness. Line delivery of the year so far is “am I a wreeeck?, you bet/I learned from the beeeest, you should know that.”

KNOWER — I’m the President

Sounds Like: Vulfpeck, Jacob Collier, a jam session with your best friends

I was in my high school’s jazz band program, and I never truly fit in. I was too quirky, too flighty, too non-masculine to hold my own with the other kids; “jazz bros” were a thing way before Jacob Collier and Adam Neely (all love to Neely though). I also just plain wasn’t good enough and didn’t practice enough — I was already getting into writing and production at that time, and practicing piano just didn’t feel as rewarding. When I hear Louis Cole and Genevieve Artradi creating this brand of joyful chaos, it makes me want to get better again. There’s an unexpected bite to the playfulness; the entire chorus is braggadocio (“who’s the president? Me!/that’s that fucking Genevieve”) , then “I love you” is almost an afterthought. The narcissism comes to a head in the second verse: “I heard you’ve been talking shit/we’ll see where that airstrike hits,” the funniest thing I’ve heard all year.

Kill For You — Gigi Perez

Sounds like: Samia, Jeff Buckley, a deep voiced sapphic songwriter of your choice

Gigi Perez is one of the most intriguing musicians to come out of TikTok — her deep, throaty bellow owes more to Jeff Buckley than Phoebe Bridgers. Perez’ background is further unexpected; she’s signed to Interscope imprint Mogul Vision (home of *checks notes* Smokepurpp) and touring with Noah Cyrus. What’s actually on record is a more traditional kind of big star power with flamboyant 90s-rock hooks and soft/loud dynamics. I love the twist on the phrase “I would kill for you”, literally killing a part of yourself to be with someone. (“I will never be the one that got away” is another anxiously-attached highlight.)

Fake Smiles — Jim Legxcy

Sounds like: Brakence, J Hus, puttIng SoundCloud on shuffle

I asked my musically omniscient writing colleague Joshua Minsoo Kim (of Tone Glow) if anyone else sounded like Jim Legxcy, and he responded “nope.” The closest comparison I have is an Afrobeats version of the Brakence record from last year, with lyrics that don’t sound penned by an angsty 13-year-old. Brakence’s music is made for reaction channels to gawk at the tempo changes and glitchy mixing board pyrotechnics, which is of course a noble goal. There’s no extrinsic reason for Legxcy’s inspired combination, everything is on the track seemingly just because Legxcy feels like it. Take this song: the lead riff sounds like a midwest emo band covering “Am I Wrong,” the drums are a mix of 808s and hand percussion, and there’s a sample from rapper J Hus as background texture as Legxcy croons. It never sounds messy or superfluous, but naturally balanced.

Hamish Hawk — Think of Us Kissing

Sounds like: Orville Peck, Gang of Youths, heartland britpop

This is very much in the line of self-aware but ultimately heartfelt new-wavers. Somewhere in between David Le’aupepe, Orville Peck and John Grant, with a luxurious production from Rod Jones of Idlewild, “Think Of Us Kissing” aims high. Hamish Hawk pretty much gets there! The pointed lyrics here remind me of Fashion Club’s similarly agitated record from last year, as queerness and self-expression are sucked into capitalism’s black hole: “The future is a factory/And I foresee it hating me.” If that’s the future, I am glad we have Hamish Hawk in the present. Hawk and Angel Numbers are the exact sort of gems I made this list to highlight.

FAMOUS SONGS

Gracie Abrams — Amelie

Sounds Like: Phoebe Bridgers, every other Aaron Dessner collab post-Folklore, that weirdly intense former friendship you still think about

Brandon Flowers once asked; “are we human, or are we Dessner?” He has a point; despite Aaron’s soft, increasingly autopilot production, Grace Abrams’ vulnerable humanity peeks through on “Amelie.” The nondescript acoustic soundbed only adds mystique to the tale of this brief, intense encounter. She just remembers this stranger deeply connecting with her, then never meeting her again. She does not know what Amelie really is to her, or what she wanted; she just knows the things that Amelie never told anyone else. And she’s heartbroken, deploying her vocal fry at the right times for maximum aching. The bridge reveals the true depths of her longing: “Tell me more, I would give all of my time… I’m comfortable handing you my whole life.” On yet another whispery folk record, “Amelie” is a minor miracle that resonates as deeply as any confessional songwriting. I hope Amelie heard it.

Boygenius — Not Strong Enough

Sounds Like: What you think it sounds like

Boygenius; you have thoughts, I have thoughts, your grandmother who just finished Season 1 of Shrinking has thoughts. The Record is a major-label victory lap for the trio of Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, and Phoebe Bridgers, with a handful of transcendent standouts amidst sappy love songs and playful Leonard Cohen jabs. This one boasts funny, subversive lyrics, beautiful harmonies, and the poppiest melody anyone in the trio has written. Bonus points for namedropping “Boys Don’t Cry” over the chords of “Just Like Heaven.”

The National — New Order T-Shirt

Surprisingly Doesn’t Sound Like: New Order

More Dessner! This is the band’s take on 90s college rock, specifically making me think of “These Are Days” by 10,000 Maniacs. That’s appropriately nostalgic for a song where Matt Berninger runs through his memories, amidst a debilitating depression. There’s a lot I don’t like about this album; repetitive arrangements, run-on melodies, and clunky lines about “your hilarious sister” but a single line here justifies the more sentimental approach: “I keep what I can of you.” If you’re going to be plainspoken, you better have something new to say, and Berninger threads that needle with lines about witnessing his wife “talking to a shark in the corner”. It’s heartwarming, heartbreaking, a whole mess of emotions that post-Sleep Well Beast Berninger aims for but doesn’t grasp. There are other songs on First Two Pages of Frankenstein that capture the band at their best, but none that hit as deeply to me. Even on a record clearly borne of stasis and writer’s block, there’s still something worth keeping.

OTHER SONGS I LOVE, IN NO ORDER

Anohni and the Johnsons — It Must Change

Anohni’s voice sounds like staring into the sun, if it was healthy to do so. She summons a whole song in one take, out of thin air. Cherish her.

Asher White — Mare

Asher White takes after mid-2000s acts like Sea Wolf and the Microphones as well as contemporaries like Feeble Little Horse; it’s a quirky, promising sound. I love how imagistic her lyrics are (“I walked you home, a swollen passage/of sunsoaked older stones and foggy glass”); so many of White’s peers are praised for their directness but I find the abstract approach here just as compelling.

Anna B Savage — Pavlov’s Dog

Playful 5/4 guitar pop about intermittent reinforcement, produced by Mike Lindsay of Laura Marling’s side project LUMP. If any of those words mean something to you, you’ll love this.

Patrick Wolf — Nowhere Game

Chamber-pop breakbeat with enough spring reverb to make a surf rock guitarist blush, and lyrics referencing Fleischer Brothers cartoons. If any of those words mean something to you, you’ll love this.

Em Beihold — Roller Coasters Make Me Sad

Beihold’s Numb Little Bug was a tightly produced adult contemporary hit recalling Ingrid Michaelson and other quirky alt-pop darlings; this follow-up is gloriously unhinged, with glissandoing strings and a bridge that repeats “I should be having fun” as the roller coaster explodes behind her, Hoodwinked! style.

Leith Ross — You (On My Arm)

Here’s one for Andrew Unterberger’s Best Choruses of 2023 list. Ross is another TikTok-bred musician, but that hook is timeless adult alternative.

Art School Girlfriend — Heaven Hanging Low

The first two singles from Soft Landing scaled up but lost some of the intimacy I admired about Mackey’s electronic pop music. Then this came on, a quietly breakneck D’n’B rager about the sacredness of queer love that puts Mackey’s voice front and center.

Gordi — Broke Scene

Produced with king of electronic burbles Ethan Gruska, it’s less a Reservoir than a murky swamp of rubber-bridge guitars and twinkly pianos. That murkiness winds up a good fit for the genuinely unsettling imagery (“can’t you see you’re burning your house down?”, “gasoline dripping from your mouth”)

Jessie Ware — Shake The Bottle

Stuart Price and Dan Grech should just produce and engineer my life. Jessie Ware bristled at the thought of a Countess LuAnn comparison, but that’s because Ware has all the class money can’t buy. Elegance is learned, my friends, and she’s elegant — yet knowing — enough to land the campiness.

PITCHFORK:

Ezra Furman — All Of Us Flames: The bluesy chord progression of opener “Train Comes Through” enters into folk’s long tradition of train songs, but Furman’s lyrics advocate for those written out of history: “It’s not written in your Bibles/It’s a verse behind the verse/Only visible to an obsessive detail-oriented heathen Jew.” In the absence of a sacred text, she resolves to write her own in “Book of Our Names,” continuing a parallel from her past music between trans oppression and Jewish Exodus.

Daughter — Stereo Mind Game: For a microgeneration of angsty teens, the music of London indie folk trio Daughter was a formative soundtrack to aimless Tumblr scrolling and late nights aching for connection. In particular, the band’s 2011 breakout “Youth” provided solace to struggling adolescents with its trembly vocals and tormented lyrics comparing romantic disappointment to “heaving through corrupted lungs.”

Isomonstrosity — Isomonstrosity: On this record, though, the incorporation of different elements feels surface-level; tinny, hyperpop-inspired percussion and tense string swells are signifiers lacking the substance of the trio’s individual work… “I’m just staring at my breakfast all day/Listening to Brahms and Beyoncé,” Johan Lenox laments on “Careful What You Wish For,” but neither influence is particularly audible.

GRAMMY.COM

Everything Everything’s AI-Derived ‘Raw Data Feel’ Tackles Mental Health, Conspiracy Theories: GRAMMY.com unpacks Everything Everything’s extensive lore, their shift towards poppier music, and the way Higgs addresses mental health. When asked about the origins of EE’s fascination with conspiracies and hate groups, the Zoom video started glitching out, and the error somehow felt on-brand.

BILLBOARD:

Must-Hear Indie Artist of the Month: Young Fathers: It feels organic while listening, but try describing their sound and it gets a lot more complicated: it’s too intricate to be lo-fi, too raw to be hi-fi, too poppy to be “alternative hip-hop,” too harsh for easy listening. The most frequent comparison is TV on the Radio, but that doesn’t quite work, because Young Fathers aren’t really a rock band, either.

MEDIUM:

Hannah Versus: The Japanese House’s “Boyhood” and Ruston Kelly’s The Weakness: Sonically, The Weakness is an album that feels trapped in a computer, aching for connection but unable to reach out. The multitracked vocals give even the more acoustic songs a metallic sheen, like he’s singing in time-stretched slow-motion. This leads to some awkward moments: For whatever strengths “St. Jupiter” and John Feldmann co-write “Holy Shit” have, they still sound like Blues Traveler lead by a text-to-speech program.

Contact me at hannahjocelync@gmail.com if you want to work together!

The Japanese House’s “Boyhood” and Ruston Kelly’s The Weakness made me think a lot about my relationship with gender and with music, to the point where I wrote about both artists and I liked it enough to post it here.

I might make this a series of “Hannah Versus” whenever I feel like writing about something, and I’m calling it that because I’m amused that it sounds like I’m gearing up to personally fight whoever I feel like writing about that day. And because “Hannah Versus Boyhood” is inherently a funny title.

Without any further ado, here are my thoughts on “Boyhood” by the Japanese House and The Weakness by Ruston Kelly.

HANNAH VERSUS: EVERY “BOYHOOD”, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE

Ethel Cain told me, as lots of transgender people say, that gender is the least interesting thing about her. But when you’re first questioning, or if you’re stuck “living the question”, it becomes the only thing about you, it’s all you can think about, so you infodump about it to everyone in sight. I love conversations about gender with confidently queer friends and open-minded straight friends, I even love explaining to my cishet brother what he/him lesbians are. It’s the grey area that’s hard for me, following the person in circles as they try to intellectually justify something that can’t be intellectualized. I’m sympathetic and I don’t blame anyone: I cannot imagine figuring shit out in this horrible climate for queer people. (Though I do recommend at least asking yourself at all; even if you decide you’re cis or straight, you get to know yourself better.)

The UK artist Amber Bain has made that grey area her comfort zone. Her band name The Japanese House originated from a childhood experience where she passed as a boy to a girl she liked, which the girl reciprocated until she found out. The music reflects this androgyny in a more vulnerable way than, say, the Boygenius trio calling each other dudes as a knowing subversion, though both are valid methods of expression. Amusingly, people initially thought Bain was actually Matt Healy, then assumed she was trans due to her own androgynous appearance, which is more to unpack than I feel like doing here but only adds further mystique to Bain’s music. Even now, she calls herself “gay and gender-obsessed” on BBC (BBC!) Radio 1, and she did so while premiering her song “Boyhood.”

“Boyhood” is an upbeat little romp, a brief country daydream with violins and whirring synth leads. Yet lyrically, the scale is multiversal, looking at all her alternate selves and trying to reconcile them with the person she became. She sings: “I used to be somebody else/and I’m still out looking for me,” ironically enough in a falsetto. There are “yous” in the song (“I could have been somebody who/you wanted to have around to hold”), and the subject seems to be fluid as well. Is it the girl that thought Bain was a boy? Is it herself from another timeline? Is it someone else altogether? No answer. Just more questions. Just that constant feeling something’s inherently ‘wrong’, like a splinter in your mind, that won’t go away— “I wanna change, but it’s nothing new.”

I’m lucky in that I never felt like I had a boyhood or girlhood. For better or worse, I grew up with neutrality; If you’re seen as a cis straight (white) male in a world where being a cis straight white male is default, you can get away with fading into the background, if you want. And I still try to conduct myself invisibly, mostly appearing in “boymode” for safety reasons. I’m not concerned with passing, but only because passing takes too much damn work. Cis women don’t exactly have boymode, and at least one friend has expressed jealousy, like I’ve “won womanhood” by not being perceived or treated as a woman except by those who know me, thus avoiding misogyny. I’m not sure being invisible is better than being a woman, though — unless, like Bain, you didn’t feel connected in the first place.

Listening to “Boyhood” reminds me of the deeper feelings that come with a gender-centered connection; intense over-‘empathy’, fascination on the edge of limerence, in some pre egg-crack cases, the irrational desire to figure out meiosis until me and that person both had the bodies and lives we want. That’s not physically possible, so I’d get close by making myself a doormat.

I admire how Bain seemingly finds strength in uncertainty; the prospect of diving into that uncertainty terrifies me. I’d be terrified of speaking with her or even writing about her outside of this post. But if I changed my mind, I’m sure there would be a lot to talk about.

HANNAH VERSUS: THE MULTIPLICITY OF RUSTON KELLY

“We are all dually feminine and masculine. To give in to both of those things would strengthen us as human beings and there is such a drastic difference between men, and men who are terrified of their own femininity.” — Ruston Kelly

There’s a reason I didn’t write about this album professionally; I’m not familiar with Kelly’s music beyond a guest spot on Charli Adams’ underrated gem Bullseye. But I did hear this record and find it fascinating.

I don’t know how Ruston Kelly identifies, but he’s someone that proudly embraces femininity, whatever that word means, as thoroughly as his masculinity, whatever that word means. Songwriter Ruston Kelly intones like Jason Isbell, doubles his vocals like Chris Cornell, then drops melancholic non-sequiturs like Phoebe Bridgers and draws out words like the high horse in the room. It’s a divorce album, but one that isn’t angry; even after he screams “fuck that guy he’s just a piece of shit” on the title track, he reminds himself not to give into that anger. The track sounds like it’s going to explode, but it steadfastly refuses. Maybe that’s a representation of masculine repression; more likely, it’s a byproduct of an overly processed, flat production from Shawn Mendes collaborator Nate Mercereau.

Sonically, The Weakness is an album that feels trapped in a computer, aching for connection but unable to reach out. The multitracked vocals give even the more acoustic songs a metallic sheen, like he’s singing in time-stretched slow-motion. This leads to some awkward moments: For whatever strengths “St. Jupiter” and John Feldmann co-write “Holy Shit” have, they sound like Blues Traveler lead by a text-to-speech program. The drum programming from Mercereau is stiff throughout, clashing with the real instrumentation at every turn. Any time the album deviates from this weird electroacoustic hodgepodge, the record is at its best: the real drums on “Wicked Hands” give that song the power it needs, while “Dive” and “Mending Song” keeps things stripped back so the crescendos actually mean something.

I can’t stop thinking about three songs from this record: the title track, “Breakdown”, and “Michael Keaton”. Those songs, about mental health to varying degrees, tackle the subject in a more immediate, internal way than other folk-rockers like the comforting Bear’s Den or righteously angry Sam Fender. I’m instead reminded of last year’s The Banshees of Inisherin, a movie that explores male friendships in a specifically emotional way usually, wrongly, only limited to women. Embracing those influences leads to some stellar moments like album highlight “Breakdown.” It sounds like Natalie Imbrugila’s classic “Torn,” but within that Lilith Fair-adjacent framework depicts the masculine urge to hide your feelings and keep everything together even when you’re on “overdriiiiiiive.” (I will concede that the falsetto jump directly recalls Stephen Jenkins, noted male.) All the reference points make it it’s basically a perfect pop song — even the double tracked vocals feel like endearing pastiche, and the driving beat complements the fear of burning out instead of contrasting like most other happy-music-sad-lyrics songs do.

Pop culture references, as used by Boygenius — hi again! — and Wet Leg, often feel like commentary on finding your way in a world not built for you to reach the same status. It’s fascinating to hear Kelly use those references in the same way, though in the case of “Wicked Hands”, the Sufjan Stevens namedrop is an earnest tribute and not a playful jab. “Michael Keaton” goes in an entirely different direction with its reference. The chorus hinges on a question Kelly’s narrator poses while stoned on CBD: “If Michael Keaton killed himself in Multiplicity, would that be genocide”? It’s an amusing idea, the kind of one-liner that probably lines the notes apps of Demetri Martin and, well, Phoebe Bridgers, but it feels perfunctory; the line might as well ask about Birdman and avicide. I guess that’s the point, he is stoned after all, but then why not swap that chorus out and escalate it? Make it somehow meaningful? The gut-punch alternate chorus toward the end is too little, too late, because at this point, I’m more glad he finally got off the Michael Keaton thing.

I don’t know if this is all bullshit projection. There’s a rule among trans people that you can’t write about gender for at least two years after you come out, for Dunning-Kruger reasons, and I just passed that mark while still living 75% in boymode. I will say, as I transition, I feel increasingly outside the world of men even when people think I’m one. I don’t think I’m crazy to suggest everyone finds gender roles and expectations limiting to some degree; one of the biggest hits of last year was a decades-old song about wanting to cross that divide, or in Kate Bush’s words, exchange the experience. The Weakness sounds like someone banging on the walls, trying to reconcile his messy emotions and inhabit all sides of himself. I almost wonder how deliberate it is that Mercereau’s production won’t set him free.

Consider this the Matrix Resurrections of this series in that it’s a legacy sequel that ends the franchise for good. Also, both Lana Wachowski and I came out as trans in between the sequels, yes, this is the same author as the others. Feel free to come up with your own Weyes Blood blurb, I couldn’t think of anything.

Mitski — Laurel Hell: You really want Mitski to love you back. You’re convinced shouting “MOMMY!” at every show will do the trick.

MUNA — MUNA: MUNA does love you back, in a passionate but healthy way that respects both parties’ autonomy and personal boundaries 💖 (also in a gay way 😉)

Charli XCX — CRASH: Charli hates you back. You put your avoidant attachment style in your Tinder bio.

Kim Petras — Slut Pop: You put “Submissive and Breedable” in your Tinder bio. You used to date this skeevy older guy all your friends hated, but you finally broke things off this year. (You still defend him, though.)

Kendrick Lamar — Mr Morale and the Big Steppers: You were permanently exiled from controlling the music after queuing up “We Cry Together” at a house party (you just thought it was a song everyone needed to hear, you even pulled up the clean version!)

J.I.D — The Forever Story: You don’t know how to feel about “Enemy,” but your older brother’s favorite also did an Imagine Dragons remix back in the day and you respect the hustle. You have conflicted, impeccably rendered emotions about bologna sandwiches.

Bartees Strange — Farm To Table: You secretly want a feature on an Imagine Dragons song, but you will never admit it.

Alex G — God Save The Animals: You like the Red Hot Chili Peppers most when they’re in their feelings. One day you’ll share your By The Way hyperpop remix project with the world and it‘s going to blow everyone’s minds.

Red Hot Chili Peppers — Unlimited Love: You haven’t had feelings since 2002, maybe 2006 because there are some moody gems on Stadium Arcadium. Fine, “Dark Necessities” is cool for the first ten seconds or so.

Red Hot Chili Peppers — Return of the Dream Canteen: That “Abracadabralifornia” prank got you good.

Florence + the Machine — Dance Fever: You got really into witchcraft and dancing over the lockdown. The only drawback is that Jack Antonoff now co-produces your soul, meaning your dancing is polished and occasionally inspired but it never quite hits as hard as it could and everyone’s really weird about you.

Kehlani — Blue Water Road: You’re in a spiritually fulfilling relationship, the kind you’d call a twin flame if you didn’t know by now how toxic that concept was. You told your Scorpio Venus partner you want to ‘live in their skin’ and they found it romantic instead of creepy.

Ethel Cain — preacher’s daughter: You actually live in your partner’s skin — it makes a good weighted blanket for keeping warm during the chilly Tallahassee nights.

Maggie Rogers — Surrender: You’ve put a hex on every Supreme Court justice that voted to overturn Roe V Wade. You believe in the power of rock to save the world, and particularly in the power of adult alternative that sounds like Sarah McLaughlin got really into Sky Ferreira (complimentary).

Madison Cunningham — Revealer: You believe in the power of adult alternative that sounds like Sheryl Crow got really into Weyes Blood (complimentary)

Rina Sawayama — Hold The Girl: Your inner child work helped you embody your loud, brash younger self, and it’s healing you! It’s just that your friends are fed up with you saying things like “IF YOU ARE BRAVE IT’S BECAUSE YOU CAN SLAY” at the top of your lungs.

Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn — Pigments: As soon as you first heard Dawn Richard in Danity Kane, you immediately predicted she would go on to a critically acclaimed electronica-R&B career and make a gorgeous experimental ambient album, but nobody believed you. Well, you proved them wrong!

Big Thief — Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You: You spent a lot of time wandering around Stew Leonard’s as a child. Fixating on the cow animatronics in the dairy aisle did weird things to your brain.

Sky Ferreira — Masochism: The other albums in your top 5 are Chromatics’ Dear Tommy, Adele: Live From Vegas March 2022, My Bloody Valentine LP4 (prod. Jack Antonoff), and Maroon 5’s soulful, pleading back-to-basics record that’s actually just Robin Thicke’s Paula again.

Nilufer Yanya — PAINLESS: You have restless leg syndrome. You love running errands, harnessing your anxiety by relentlessly speeding around the city and completing the day’s tasks with maximum efficiency and coolness.

The Weeknd — Dawn FM: You died briefly and on your deathbed admitted you prefer The Mask to Eternal Sunshine. Your Letterboxd followers had lots of questions for you when you woke back up. — Blurb courtesy of Nortey Dowuona

The 1975 — Being Funny in a Foreign Language: You also love running errands, but mostly to hear and comment on the music in the pharmacy where you pick up your Lexapro. Hearing “Chocolate” over the PA sent you into an existential crisis.

Alt-J — The Dream: Dude, you have to see this video, these two guys eat rice cakes and imitate Alt-J, funniest shit of 2015. What? You’re saying “Get Better” is genuinely heartbreaking? I don’t believe you.

Fletcher — Girl of My Dreams: Girl, you gotta get over your ex — no, don’t stalk her new girlfriend, wAIT what are you doing oh no you just slid into her DMs again ugh

Pool Kids — Pool Kids: You want to start another fifth wave emo band; you wish that you could be like the Pool Kids, cause all the Pool Kids, they seem to fit in. (But you won’t start a band, because you keep getting distracted by this one group chat you’re in.)

Bjork — Fossora: You consume psilocybin mushrooms like they’re regular mushrooms, but found out that too many regular mushrooms made you hallucinate. To stop tripping, you needed to solve a riddle, conduct a reggaeton woodwind symphony, and sacrifice your most prized audio gear to mastering engineer Heba Kadry. You went through all this before your partner woke up.

Kane Brown — Different Man: You have no idea what the fuck that blurb was talking about. “One Mississippi” goes off though.

The Smile — A Light For Attracting Attention: You’ll Never Get A New Radiohead Album Again, so you’ve spent hours debating on whether this goes above or below Hail To The Thief on your ranking. You’ve decided it’s below, but above King of Limbs.

Alvvays — Blue Rev: You sign off every text with a sparkle emoji and one of those cute iMessage animations. You’re honestly so smart and a delight to be around, I’d love to see you more often! No pressure though ✨🥰😍

Gang of Youths — Angel in Realtime: You tell long, elaborate stories with extended tangents about football and barely relevant analogies to Titus Andronicus albums, but everyone sits enraptured because it’s just that riveting. You’ve said, with total conviction, that if you ever cross paths with Win Butler, he’ll have to change his name to Lose Butler.

Black County New Road — Ants From Up There: A user you follow on RateYourMusic called this Sprechgesang of Youths in the sidebar and stopped there. You were mad, but they pointed out that it’s perfectly in line with Isaac Wood’s pop culture-obsessive lyrics and effusive self-deprecation. You sent a similarly wordy reply about Wood’s departure, then edited it several days later to take out the tangent about Charli XCX. You kept the one about fighting Win Butler, though.

Arcade Fire — WE: You work at Risa Heller Communications LLC. Or you’re Win Butler.

Denzel Curry — Melt My Eyes, See Your Future: You’ve finally been able to explain to your friends your deeply held fears and traumas, and you’ve been graciously accepted. Now you only want to eat kale and speak about how difficult zoning ordinances are for the poor, and now your friends wish you would go back to yelling about learning Kung Fu to impress the ladies. — blurb courtesy of Nortey Dowuona

MJ Lenderman — Boat Songs: You graduated summa cum laude from a small liberal arts university with a world-renowned English program. Your friend made a double entendre involving “summa cum”, and you laughed, because lame double entendres are funny like the Earth is round.

Muse — Will Of The People: You think lame double entendres are funny, but you’re convinced the Earth is flat.

Chainsmokers — So Far So Good: You haven’t worn a mask in months, you go to EDM concerts every weekend, and because you’re so lucky and everything is perfect in your life, you never even got an asymptomatic case of COVID. You’re still bitter because she won’t text you back.

Beyoncé — Renaissance: You’re correct tbh.

Drake — Honestly Nevermind: H̵o̵n̵e̵s̵t̵l̵y̵,̵ ̵n̵e̵v̵e̵r̵m̵i̵n̵d̵ You’re one of the Instagram models Drake married in that video — and even then, you’re lIstening to Renaissance when he looks away.

Meghan Trainor — Takin’ It Back: You might not know what a tradwife is, but that’s what you are, and you’re making it everyone else’s problem again.

Lizzo — Special: You show up to Target wearing disco shorts, glitter makeup, and a T-shirt that says “U GO GIRL!” (and clarify, unprompted, that you mean “girl” in a gender neutral way.) — blurb courtesy of Oliver Maier and Amber Nikolayi

Carly Rae Jepsen — The Loneliest Time: You know the true, unconditional love you’ve been seeking your whole life doesn’t exist, but it’s more fun to daydream of someone sweeping you off your feet — you’re too much of an idealist to settle for less. Btw, don’t text that Chainsmokers fan back, even, nay especially, if he has a beach house in Malibu.

Yard Act — The Overload: You expected a version of Black Midi that was more annoying, and you accidentally got a solid record that sounds like a 90s remix compilation of “Parklife” without the “all the people, so many people” bits.

Black Midi — Hellfire: You expected a version of Black Midi that was more annoying; this exceeded your expectations (affectionate)

Tate McRae — I used to think I could fly: You weren’t the problem in that relationship, and I’m sorry he made you feel like you were. If people can’t get past you sounding like a protagonist on a short-lived Nick Jr. show, that’s on them.

Taylor Swift — Midnights: Hi, it’s you, you were the problem, it’s you. But you got back at your ex in your valedictorian speech, all while subtly promoting your TikTok account #cottagecore #indiesleaze #2014tumblrrevival #formergiftedkidburnout #gaylor #straightlor #solanadelreyvinyl

Wet Leg — Wet Leg: Beneath your aloof, dissociative facade you’re the same quirky RANDOM XD kid you used to be — you’re not fooling anyone, but you’re more fun to be around when you embrace your silliness. Harry Styles singing “Wet Dream” made you question your sexuality and your gender, just a little.

Harry Styles — Harry’s House: You’re quiet and pensive, giving an air of sophistication until you open your mouth. You’re not stupid, but you need to stop acting like you’re above it all. Actually, just stop acting in general.

Dry Cleaning — Stumpwork: Someone should really butter your damn muffin so the YouTube algorithm stops recommending “Chaise Lounge” all the time. But you find algorithms wryly amusing instead of paranoia-inducing these days.

Blackbear — In Loving Memory: You post long rambling Instagram captions about living in the moment, and you’re really committing to it because this trap pop punk stuff is going to age horribly by 2030.

Bo Burnham — Inside Outtakes: You suspect we won’t make it to 2030 anyway. You can’t hang out with your friends because you keep doomscrolling. You can’t even look at your girlfriend without thinking “oh my god she has no bodily autonomy and she was born into a patriarchy that will never value her no matter how much progress we think we make, how does she even live, this is my fault and I need to make it about ME”, spending the next hour wavering between laughing at yourself and earnestly feeling concerned.

Tomberlin — IDKWNTHT…: You’ve tried to do the best you can be given those circumstances. You’re not a touchy person, or even a particularly friendly one, but you’ve been hugging your friends a lot more lately.

Wolf Alice — Blue Lullaby: Once a tattooed, wild-eyed rocker, you now come home from your high powered executive job to put your kid to bed, tucking them in and giving them a kiss goodnight. Long Covid took away your singing voice; that’s why Elie Roswell’s coming over the Sonos instead. When Roswell asks “how can I make it okay,” you look at your child and wonder the same thing.

Marcus Mumford — (Self Titled): You haven’t always been a great person — that Jordan Peterson phase, yikes — and you still pine so much for your ex that even years later, you’re building a life with her closest doppelgänger. Yet you still want to be the person your extraordinarily successful wife sees in you, even when it feels like every conversation you have starts out small and escalates until it’s overblown and overproduced. You’re tired of thinking about all of that, tired of all the discourse and references to things you don’t understand, so you throw Ted Lasso and zone out for a bit.

As an audio engineer, I also mixed records for American Poetry Club, Zophia Dadlez, Cam Dasher, and Apologist.

Contact me at hannahjocelync@gmail.com

• 2020 portfolio.
• 2019 portfolio
• 2018 portfolio.

Pitchfork

Arlo Parks — Collapsed in Sunbeams: There are so many names — Charlie, Caroline, Millie — that it’s hard to keep track, and there are so many references and words of affirmation that it’s hard to remember who said what to whom.

The Staves — Good Woman: Even though the record often sounds like a battle between the musicians and their engineer [John Congleton], the songs on Good Woman are strong enough to overcome any friction.

London Grammar — California Soil: “How Does It Feel,” produced with Steve Mac (best known for Ed Sheeran’s inescapable “Shape of You”) doesn’t smooth out London Grammar’s quirks so much as place them in an entirely inappropriate context. Reid does her best, but her vocals clash against the stiff groove, the “Can’t Feel My Face”-style bassline, the sheer Rita Ora-ness of it all.

THEM.

SOPHIE Showed Us The Way: The words in “Immaterial” almost feel prescient: “Without my genes or my blood/With no name and with no type of story/Where do I live?/Tell me, where do I exist?” SOPHIE faced that question and created a body of work that frantically tore apart sound and gender, where enhancement and exaggeration created the most authentic presentation.

Ethel Cain Is the Gothic Rocker Who Wants to Shock, Terrify, and Love: Ethel Cain, a trapped-woman-turned-cult-leader character that Anhedonia invented in high school, is far from a protective exoskeleton. Cain is instead an extension of Anhedonia that explores human depravity, but also reflects her earnest belief in the power of femininity and womanhood.

The Singles Jukebox

Olivia Rodrigo — “Driver’s License”: How did the franchise of poorly edited water reflections come to include mournful cellos in every other song?

Of Monsters and Men — “Visitor”: They’re still growing into this sound — the triadic harmonies on the line “I was incapable” feel a little too clean for something this genuinely dark — but Of Monsters and Men is a rare post-Mumford band still trying new things and finding hidden depths.

Lil Nas X — Montero: If “Old Town Road” was borne of an unexplainable soft magic system, this is hard pop magic, following every rule to make something massive and discovering a few of its own.