<a href="https://frankierose.bandcamp.com/album/hila">HILA by Frankie Rose</a> Frankie Rose - Can't Be Wrong (Bandcamp) I was sort of mislead regarding the new Frankie Rose album, _HILA_. A review stated that there were more hooks than is typical for Rose on this long player. That's not the case, with one major exception — the second track on the record, "Can't Be Wrong." Most of the album is abstract and filled with dark undertones. This is definitely the same Frankie Rose who lovingly covered The Cure's _Seventeen Seconds_. As critic Fred Thomas writes, there are nods to the "doomy baselines of early Cure material." There's an eerie atmosphere that hangs over the whole affair. "Can't Be Wrong" stands out, though, for its accessibility. > The gorgeous "Can't Be Wrong" layers synth melodies over a steady pulse, with thick, strutting bass and Rose's vaporous vocals recalling both the earliest Nite Jewel recordings and the mysterious essence of the Cocteau Twins. Nite Jewel and Cocteau Twins are both references that cause me to sit up and listen. Writer Alan Jacobs recently lamented the hyper-referential style that describes every piece of culture by comparing it to other pieces of culture, but that seems to be the lingua franca of music reviews. While Jacobs thinks it isn't helpful, I would disagree. Everything we hear is has a relationship to other things we've heard. If that serves to help us frame the work, pique our interest and pull us in, then the review has served its purpose.

Bill Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins opens up about his Christian faith in a recent podcast episode. Ian M. Giatti covers the subject for _The Christian Post_. > “If you talk about God, you know, you might as well throw your career down the hole,” he said. “And I made the decision that I was going to talk about God honestly, at least God in my life or believing in Jesus as my Lord and Savior. And if it was going to hurt me, I didn’t care. Because if you don’t really understand me … if I can’t be willing to be honest with who I am, well, what am I asking a fan to believe in?” Corgan often pitches himself as a misunderstood misfit and an outsider, despite being the mastermind behind one of the biggest rock acts of the last few decades and selling a massive amount of records commensurate with that designation. He isn’t, however, wrong about the commercial implications of admitting Christian faith in rock music. We live in a negative world, and that’s especially true in most of the mainstream entertainment industries.1 In the negative world, broadcasting that you are a Christian has mostly detrimental effects on your career. I’ve been reading _Jane Eyre_ and the difference in that world and the one I live in with regards to the pervasiveness of religion is striking. In the novel, religious waters are the ones everyone swims in. The implications of this are taken for granted. In contemporary America, the same beliefs and behaviors that are common in 19th century England may seem eccentric or unusual. * * * 1. With some notable exceptions, such as country music. ↩︎

I have been marveling at the new Wishy song "Mona Lisa" and the band's ability to fit musical references to both the Velvet Underground and a Sunday School staple in a single tune. I knew that the VU reference (to the song "Femme Fatale") was intentional, but I wasn't totally sure about the music from "I've Got the Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy (Down In My Heart)" Could it have just been a coincidence? Well, I'm kind of a dummy, and of course it wasn't a coincidence, as Hayden Merrick points out in a review of the new Wishy album _Nature's Pill_. > It’s not a coincidence that Wishy interpolate both “Femme Fatale” by the Velvet Underground and a Bible class singalong within the same track. They never sing the actual words to “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, down in my heart”—that Sunday school staple you may know from The Simpsons—but the sentiment is heavily implied when the melody tumbles over the outro of “Mona Lisa.” _Nature’s Pill_ , Wishy’s second album, is all about love’s dangerous intoxication (_fatale_ of course meaning deadly) and how, when it goes south, you’ve got everything you need within yourself. The track’s final lyric: “Still life so incomplete now / I’m filling it out myself.” Another case in point, from the record’s closing moments: “Heaven is a state of mind.” I feel I need to point out that I wasn't familiar with the Bible class standard from _The Simpsons_. I was familiar with it from, you know, going to church. I guess that's not a reference point most of the heathen readers would get. <a href="https://wishy.bandcamp.com/album/natures-pill">Nature's Pill by Wishy</a>

When I wrote that I had never heard the Ella Langley song "Choosin' Texas," I meant, very simply, that I had never heard the song. Marissa Moss from _Rolling Stone_ isn't buying it. > At this point, though, if someone contends they’ve never even heard of “Choosin’ Texas” or Langley, it may say more about the listener than the song. Or, for that matter, what they want to project to the world. With incessant news coverage alongside chart and playlist presence, it’s pretty difficult to still claim total ignorance on this one. Perhaps there is a deeper reason why people say they haven’t heard the song and feel the need to make it known: cultural cachet. I assure you, cultural cachet was the farthest thing from my mind when I posted the latest entry in my Saturday Night Video series. Though the song and video are outside my usual fare, I thought the phenomenon was interesting enough to post about it. Unfortunately, so much of what people do on the internet is performative, it's hard for some to even take a statement at face value. > Imagine being so wrapped up in your tiny corner of the world that when you learn there are people who don’t live in that corner, your first thought is that they must be posturing. > > — Brian Goetz (@briangoetz.bsky.social) September 27, 2026 at 8:14 AM Yet... David Marx thinks the shoe is on the other foot. > The loudest cultural critics are most energized when bragging about their love of Top 40, contemporary country music, and reality TV. ("Addison Rae, Paris Hilton, the Real Housewives...my harbingers of a great night!") An exclusive interest in high art is almost taboo: a sure means to be called pretentious, if not, sinister. It seems to Marx (and honestly, to me) that the greater cultural cachet is to be gained by falling in love with pop culture and decrying anyone who doesn't as an elitist. He further describes the wave of poptimism in sociological power dynamic terms. > To disparage the immediate pleasures available in industrially-manufactured pop is an immoral act denying the tastes of marginalized groups. It does feel like that's what Moss and others are trying to sell. A vision of low culture as some sort of great equalizer.

Reviews of Dinosaur Jr.'s _Green Mind_ don't always focus on what a shift it was for the band. For the first time, it was J. Mascis' unadulterated vision, updated to fit perfectly with the alternative scene that was strengthening in the early nineties. However, nothing about it presaged the success of Nirvana's _Nevermind,_ bringing sludge rock to the mainstream. It was at once denser than anything the band had done, but also more pastoral. On the lead single, "The Wagon," The meandering guitar lines on the verses hint at straying through open fields on some rural route somewhere. It was no doubt this turn that helped Mascis get the role of soundtracking and appearing in 1992's coming of age drama _Gas Food Lodging_. "The Wagon" was my favorite video as a teenager. I had a copy of the video taped from MTV's _120 Minutes_ on a beat-up VHS tape that my sister deliberately recorded over. I loved the claymation, the affection for aliens and the mother and baby being united by the cow and the ape's heroism. The mother alien's eye stalks sagging at the thought of losing her progeny, then doing a happy loop at his return, made it for me. Dinosaur Jr. - The Wagon (YouTube)

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Dave Kendall, creator and host of MTV’s _120 Minutes_ , has passed away. > The British-born Kendall conceived 120 Minutes after joining MTV as a producer, pitching the network a dedicated program for the punk, post-punk, goth, synth-pop, ska, and other underground sounds largely ignored by corporate rock radio. 120 Minutes debuted on March 10th, 1986, and Kendall later served as its host from 1989 through 1992. “By far the most important thing about 120 Minutes was that it acted as a distribution channel for organic musical produce, if you will,” Kendall told CONSEQUENCE in a 2016 interview. “The only other outlet for non-mainstream music at the time was a few local college radio stations.” Apparently, Kendall was the force behind getting the show greenlit. You know he must have had to push just to get a terrible time slot like 12am on a Sunday night. I think I learned how to program my VCR just so I could record _120 Minutes_. It was a school night, after all. Matt Pinfield, the last to host the show, offered a tribute on Instagram.

<a href="https://gorankajfes.bandcamp.com/album/goran-kajfe-subtropic-arkestra-avin-omar">Goran Kajfeš Subtropic Arkestra &amp; Avin Omar by Goran Kajfeš Subtropic Arkestra</a> One problem with posting your listening habits on a periodically updated Now page is that those habits can literally change overnight. A couple of days ago, I updated my /now page, only to get deeply into a Swedish jazz EP very shortly after. Though this new 3-song Bandcamp-only EP is from Western Europe, it couldn't sound more Eastern. The time signatures borrow heavily from Eastern musical traditions. By far the biggest Eastern sounding element, though, are the vocals from Kurdish-Swedish singer Avin Omar, which are absolutely gorgeous. Heavily textured and rich with emotion, Omar's voice adds authenticity and weight to the recording. From the Bandcamp description: > The set of three tracks features the original compositions "Desmala Min" and "Monsoon", latter with lyrics penned by the Iraqi Kurdish poet, Şêrko Bêkes (1940-2013). Additionally, the band & Omar tackle the re-arranged traditional composition "Sulemani" to epic effect. Avin Omar shines all the way through as the brilliant soloist of this set, leaving the listener to long for more. As the text continues, you can always hit "play" again. I have been doing just that.

Freddie deBoer writes about how poptimism has achieved so much success because of the cultural context in which it was born. A culture that considers it wrong to have standards that can identify one thing as better than another is fertile ground for the elevation of terrible art. That’s why we have record reviews that treat pay-for-play pabulum like Rebecca Black songs as if they were written by Neil Young. It’s a culture that feeds our desire for comfort rather than challenge. > The studios and record labels and platforms figured out that comfort sells and risk doesn’t, and simply gave us what the spreadsheets demanded – and what the spreadsheets demanded was familiar, free of ambiguity, and made for children. It’s surprising how well these three adjectives work across mediums and genres, by the way. Star Wars movies are familiar, free of ambiguity, and made for children. Zombie TV shows are familiar, free of ambiguity, and made for children. Modern pop music, adolescent and thudding and written by Swedish 40-year-olds with a taste for literalism, is familiar, free of ambiguity, and made for children. deBoer has made the infantilization of our culture a frequent topic in his writing. We are steeping in it, and this century, the trends have only gotten worse. Via Alan Jacobs

A new blog/newsletter to me as of today is Ghost Drive America, which belongs to Edwin Robinson.1 Robinson writes about burnout six years after becoming Orthodox as part of a ROCOR church. I haven’t been Orthodox quite as long as Robinson, but nevertheless, I identified with almost all his points. One in particular was his belief that his conversion would eventually draw in his family. > I thought Orthodoxy would lead to some dramatic transformation in my environment, that those around me would be drawn to it. That didn’t happen. Now, some of that is certainly a failure on my part to actually live up to the ideals of it, which is pretty normal. But in five years, I’ve made absolutely no progress in getting my wife, children, or other family members to care at all or give it even the most cursory consideration. I have noticed that this is extremely common - for married couples with children, it’s almost always the husband who expresses interest in Orthodoxy, and the rest of the family either immediately converts with him, or simply does not care. This often leads to tension, and eventually, family breakup or divorce. I’ve known only one or two cases out of many where the wife who didn’t convert with her husband/kids, later converted. I know more cases which ended in divorce. My wife grew up Catholic, and doesn’t have particularly warm feelings about many of the aspects of her experience. For that reason, the difficulty of getting into the liturgy until you are experienced in it and some sensory issues around the incense, she has never expressed much interest in Eastern Orthodoxy. I’ve frankly been surprised at how little importance the Orthodox people I know place on my wife and I being united in our faith practices. Of course, almost all the people who told me that my wife and family joining me in worship was not that important were people whose whole families are Orthodox. When I spoke with an Anglican priest about this, he too was surprised. He had just finished reading St. John Chrysostoam’s writings on the importance of marriage and given the honor the Orthodox Church gives to this saint, it seems inconsistent. * * * 1. I refuse to use the phrase “a Substack.” That’s only the platform that hosts the blog. No one says “so and so started a Ghost” just because someone chooses that service. ↩︎

Last year, I bought _TNT_ by Tortoise on CD from a Discogs seller.1 I should tell you, this sort of activity is as sure a sign of my devotion to a particular album as any. After all, I’ve got access to high-quality digital copies of albums like this through streaming. I don’t need to seek them out on an online marketplace, where, let’s face it, you don’t always know the quality of the merchandise.2 I like to have physical copies of my favorite albums, though, for multiple reasons. _TNT_ fits in that category. My wife asked what kind of music Tortoise was, and well, that’s a good question. The most common answer would be post-rock, but that seems a bit limiting. On “I Set My Face to the Hillside,” from _TNT_ , the band adds a bit of Western influence to their spare jazz. The negative space in the song emphasizes the quiet and reflective instrumentation. Guitar lines have plenty of room to breathe like every expression has been carefully contemplated. This live video, while giving the viewer some strange angles, emphasizes the intricate dynamic between the members of the band. It’s a dynamic that underscores the cohesion that makes such music possible. Via Opus * * * 1. I also own a copy on snow white vinyl. ↩︎ 2. I bought a Pizzicato Five CD a couple of years ago that was listed as very good condition but looked like it had bong water spilled on it, which I doubt happened in transit. ↩︎

Naz Hamid has redone his website. The impetus seems to have been changing from a color palette that has been adopted as the de facto standard among LLMs. He worried that his visitors would think it was something coded on vibes. So he switched to blues. > I paused to think about what I found inspiring at this time, and what feels fundamentally me. The answer lay in a mix of blueprints, indigo dyes, and selvedge denim. Add in some mid-century Americana via compartmentalized typography, and here we are. In hindsight, I’ve used shades of blue a number of times with Weightshift, but had left it behind. The blues are back. The site looks good and, even though I have played around with the Claude color palette myself and find it quite pleasing, it’s nice to see something different.

Terry Godier might be something of a genius, as evidenced by his masterfully crafted RSS reader, Current, and the ideas behind it. So when I saw he had created a short documentary about musical formats, one of my favorite subjects, I had high expectations. Godier hits upon a lot of the problems intrinsic to streaming media in the video. When he discusses the limitations of physical media, he’s able to make them sound like desirable features. > A record has a stopping point. It sounds like a flaw until you spend 15 years inside things that never stop. It has come to the point where we are able to see the downsides of progress in music distribution. We have lost some valuable elements in pursuit of convenience. A Room You Can’t See - a documentary (YouTube)

<a href="https://velocitygirl.bandcamp.com/album/1989-1992">1989-1992 by Velocity Girl</a> Some good news came this week in the form of more Velocity Girl remastering. This time it's a compilation of non-album tracks from various places being released by Slumberland Records. The collection is called _1989-1992_ and the contents are precisely what it says on the tin. The first available track from the release is my favorite song by the band, "Forgotten Favorite." Even after the remaster, it's still a bit muddy, but I'm not sure if there is anything more the band could do apart from rerecord the track completely. It's still a stellar song through, with a shoegaze-worthy crush of guitars that's as propulsive as anything put out by UK pedal hoppers. Despite some muck still on the recording, the vocals are pristine, and Sarah Shannon sounds heavenly.

The NYT got together a panel of experts to explain how jobseekers should prepare for the future of work. It’s a fascinating discussion, and the panelists aren't homogeneous in their opinions on the subject. They sometimes contradict each other. It sheds light on how little even those regarded as experts know about how things will turn out. The lack of consensus is troubling, but more so is the attitude of some of those consulted about efforts to ensure humans thrive in the new landscape. ### This post is for subscribers only Become a member to get access to all content Subscribe now

The last few days have brought with them some serious nineties nostalgia. So it's fitting that Weezer released a video for their new single, "We Might As Well Be Strangers." The song represents a return to the form for the prolific but not always consistent band. Perhaps the best part of the song and the video is the inclusion of guest Karly Hartzman of Wednesday. Hartzman brings her best punk rock sneer and pout to the breakup song. As Grace Robins-Somerville notes for Paste Magazine, Hartzman perhaps even outshines Weezer's frontman. > If a countrygaze queen like Hartzman has proven herself the rightful heir to the feedback-stacked angst-jangle that skyrocketed Weezer to stardom in the mid-Nineties, then Cuomo sounds as though he’s outgrown it. I'm not sure I completely agree with the sentiment that a collaboration is some sort of contest. It's more about chemistry and here Cuomo and Hartzman work well together. * * * See a post about Wednesday's single Elderberry Wine here.

With _Life in Small Spaces_ , the upcoming album from Black Marble, the project's creator, Chris Stewart, taps into one of my semi-obsessions. The album's description on its Bandcamp page has further details on the clue we are given with the album title. > It is an invitation to accept and consciously agree to a more minimal lifestyle for the sake of creative expression and freedom, and to never need to compromise your values for the tempting illusion of success. I periodically look at Tiny Houses on the internet, compelled by the idea that life can become more expansive by scaling back. My youngest son's favorite show for a while was _Tiny House Nation_ , and we used to speculate on what life would be like with some bespoke small dwelling. "Jim Carol New Year" is the first track available from the album, and it's not a giant departure from Stewart's previous work as Black Marble. The album is described as having more guitar replacing the ever present synths, but evidence of that is scant on this song. Black Marble - Jim Carol New Year (YouTube)

<a href="https://shop.hammockmusic.com/album/the-second-coming-was-a-moonrise">The Second Coming Was a Moonrise by Hammock</a> When I read that Hammock had collaborated with The Flaming Lips on their song “Chemicals Make You Small,” I was a bit shocked. Wayne Coyne and The Lips are brash, experimentally noisy, irreverent, sometimes goofy and often oversaturated. They seem to have almost the opposite of Hammock’s ethereal, slow, quiet and completive approach. _Echoes and Dust_ features an interview with the lads from Hammock in which they discuss the influences for their new album, _The Second Coming Was A Moonrise_. In it, they explain being inspired by _American Head_ by The Flaming Lips. > We just really connected with how _American Head_ delved into the way drug use can back fire and destroy… not only for the individual using drugs, but also the devastation it has on the rest of the family and/or friends. Like Wayne, I very briefly sold a little weed, I worked at a chain restaurant, I had friends who were on drugs and decided to turn their headlights off while they were driving at night and ended up wrapping their car around a tree and dying. The Lips are from Oklahoma City, we’re from Arkansas and Tennessee. All of these similarities led to us reaching out to the Lips and asking if they wanted to collaborate on our song, ‘Chemicals Make You Small’. That particular lyric captured a real moment when a friend of mine was in the back seat thinking he was gonna die because of the drugs he was on. We had some correspondence with Wayne through Instagram, so we thought we’d just ask if they wanted to collaborate. They did way more than we asked them to do. We’re so grateful. We wish both of them nothing but love and light. _The Second Coming Was A Moonrise_ features more songs with vocals than most Hammock releases and “Chemicals Make You Small” fits in line with their usual vocal style, despite the presence of special guests. The tones are hushed, prolonged, emotive and fit with the instrumentation, especially the lush strings.

Kevin D. Williamson writes for _The Dispatch_ about the spectacle of setting up a UFC match on the White House lawn. > It does not matter whether you live in a trailer park or a brick ranch house or something more grand and getting grander, it is all the same: Tornado bait is tornado bait. When the Trump administration announced that it was staging a UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House, I knew what I was seeing. It is as familiar to me as the taste of canned Ranch Style Beans on cornbread or the smell of cigarette smoke soaking into Dacron-upholstered office furniture and slick tallowy well-yellowed linoleum in the grim waiting rooms outside those weepy Al-Anon meetings my mother dragged me to for a while because she couldn’t afford a babysitter. I know my people. My people know what they like. And they will have what they like even if it harelips the pope—especially if it harelips the pope. My son is graduating from middle school next week. He tells me about the kids who get in trouble at school for bullying other kids and using racial epithets. Those kids are loud and proud supporters of the president and they emulate his style. Like our president, they are pugilists and punching people, or the verbal equivalent, is what they love. Perhaps that's why the UFC thing is so fitting for the White House lawn. It's shameful that these are the examples we have of leadership for our children. This is what we traded for when we decided character no longer mattered. Now kids who imitate the leaders of our country have behavioral problems.

Buddy cop movie, _The Mandolorian and Grogu_ hit theaters this weekend. The film is expected to gross about $102 million dollars over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Nothing to sneeze at. It's probably fair to say those box office receipts, more than any other factor, drive the direction of the series. Lest we ever forget that Star Wars is a product promotion vehicle as much as it is a film franchise, there's Mel Brooks' _Spaceballs_ character Yogurt reminding us with his phrase, "merchandising, merchandising, merchandising," as he hawks various Spaceballs products like breakfast cereals. It's probably near incalculable how many units of toys the Star Wars franchise has moved over the years. So it's interesting that so many think Star Wars really owes nothing to its fans. > Rian Johnson already made one of the best SW movies. If they brought him back to make a whodunit where all the characters are Old Republic Jedi, it would (A) make a bazillion dollars and (B) kill off all the chuds in the SW fanbase by giving them all rage-induced heart attacks. Everyone wins! > > [image or embed] > > — Kevin McLenithan (@mclengthyname.bsky.social) May 22, 2026 at 8:08 PM I still see comments like that one above about Rian Johnson's entry in the Star Wars universe, _The Last Jedi_. The theory being that most male fans of the series couldn't handle a film where all the women were perfect and all the men were deeply flawed. I guess those guys are called chuds. They are also in large part responsible for the historic and ongoing success of the franchise. It's said that no one hates Star Wars like Star Wars fans. While that may be true, it can also be said that, at least at certain times, few fan-driven properties have creators that seem to care less what the fans think. I often see comments from critics who enjoyed the lowest rated Star Wars episodic TV series — _The Acolyte —_ blaming the fans for its lack of success. One article I read claimed what Star Wars needed was to be sexier and this was a step in the right direction. Was that what the majority of devotees have been asking of the new spin offs? That they sex it up? ### What you should like I bring up the angle of Star Wars as product because, in producing consumer entertainment, just as in producing consumer goods, one has to keep the audience in mind. I develop software, and in that business, we have to anticipate the customers wants and needs. We can't be didactic about it, either. We don't _instruct them_ in what they should want and then blame them when they don't like what we offer them. The attitude of these creators seems to me to be a bit like post-journalists, where the journalist offers up a guiding narrative of how the consumer should feel about the facts they are providing. The creators of certain Star Wars properties want to offer the fans what they believe the fans should want, if they are to be enlightened. It comes off as patronizing, and, unsurprisingly, turns the fans off. I respect the creators for wanting to take risks. It's nice to think of Star Wars as art sometimes, that even through the sci-fi necessities of laser swords and planet destroying disco balls, it can offer stories that speak to our human condition. One can never get too far from the commercial aspects, though.

Despite seemingly being designed by a corporation to be most inoffensive, sometimes to the point of banality or worse, Coldplay launched into the world consciousness hot, with “Don’t Panic,” the song in the pole position on their debut album _Parachutes_. Though I feel more generosity towards Chris Martin and crew, some believe “Don’t Panic” is the band’s only good song.1 Whatever the case, the track was certainly a winning way for Coldplay to announce their arrival on the scene. Across the pond, the members of the Bloomington, IN band Hoops were listening. Though the band started when the members were juniors in high school, within a few years, they had established themselves as indie darlings, releasing their first LP on Fat Possum Records and reaching #21 on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart. Their reworking of “Don’t Panic” strays from the original mostly in that they bring a trip-hop beat that ushers the song along a sprightly pace. Still, Hoops manages to retain the world-weary melancholy at the heart of the Coldplay version. <a href="https://hoops.bandcamp.com/album/english-breakfast">English Breakfast by Hoops</a> • • • • • Unfortunately, Hoops dissolved just before the release of their album _Halo_ in 2020 after allegations of sexual assault. * * * 1. I once had a philosophy professor with whom I could score points on my test essays by throwing shade at Coldplay. ↩︎

I’ve been on a post-punk x new wave kind of kick the last several days, after I learned Black Marble (who I blogged about last year) are going to be playing nearby in September. The algorithmn overlords recommended Castlebeat to me after the end of a listening sesh of “Bigger Than Life.” I hadn’t listened to Castlebeat in a few years, but remembered them from this fan video using footage from the best movie ever to take place in a Target big box store — _Career Opportunities_. The video for “Heart Still Beats” is filled with the 80s-era skateboardings of Jaya Bonderov, shredding up the streets and occasionally being accosted by the more responsible adults from the area. The film reminds me of how fun skateboarding was in that decade. The casual tick-tacking, the tweaked out grabs, wall rides, the freedom to take your feet off the board, the low-stakes curb grinds and graphics with fancy monsters are all things I miss. Castlebeat - Heart Still Beats (YouTube)

I recently hit my 20th anniversary (!!!) at the company where I'm employed. Instead of a gold watch, I got what amounts to about $400 in a foreign currency they call “Spotlight points.” Thought I didn’t pull the trigger right away, my immediate thought was to blow the lot on a pair of Sennheiser HD 650 headphones. I’ve been researching these cans for some time now, but even at a consistent 38% off, a price point of nearly 400 bones meant I wouldn’t just impulse buy these things. It may be the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, but I feel like I’m constantly seeing references to this particular model of headphones. Just this week, there was a thread on the Qobuz Club forum about albums to listen to with the Sennheiser’s. If I read reviews of a new DAP or DAC, it seems they often test with these headphones. While writing this post, I looked for a portable DAC with a 4.4mm headphone jack, and guess what headphones the first one I came across were connected to in the supporting image? My impressions so far are commensurate with my expectations. These things are buttery smooth and rich with detail. High points: * **Comfort** : This was a key selling point for me. I had two sets of headphones. The Sony WH-1000XM5’s, a closed-back noise-cancelling set that is plenty comfortable. I use those primarily for work calls. The other pair, my primary music listening set, was a pair of the Grado SR80x’s. These are open-back and sound immediate and spacious. However, they get uncomfortable after about 15 minutes. All the reviews I read mentioned the Sennheisers as the most comfortable headphones the reviewers have ever worn. This is a big incentive to someone like me who sometimes listens to music hours on end. * **Build Quality** : Solid, stocky, without being too heavy, and well-padded, the Sennheier’s are the nice blend of durability and ergonomics. I do wish they were made with aluminum like the Apple AirPods Max, though. * **Sound** : The open-back design gives you a great soundstage, with music sounding like it fills up the space. I love my Sony’s, but the closed-back architecture adds a bit of a claustrophobic feeling to the experience. The Sennheisers have even more precision without sacrificing warmth. I’m very pleased with the purchase. One of the most exciting things about getting new audio hardware is being able to listen to our collection of music in a brand-new light. It will take me a while to get through the many listening sessions it will take to get to the end of my stack. I’ve started with my reference album, Mazzy Star’s _So Tonight That I Might See_ , and the results are similarly impressive with other albums that I’ve sampled. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Niko Stratis writes about the comfort of physical media and older technology. > Let us suffer no worries or troubles, we have salvation in our walkmen and their analogue batteries. Never mind the truth of these eras, the 90s and the days before and after are years often cast in imperfect light as moments in time when we were a proper society. That’s not true for all, and you only need to engage with the culture of the time with eyes open enough to see the hardships and downfalls for many. But still, I understand the desire to glamorize it, and hold the past as indelible proof of a better time. > > Pockets have gotten smaller, I’ve noticed, and I imagine that’s because of the shrinking of technology. We don’t have to carry Walkmans and CD Walkmans anymore, and so the pocket industrial complex has responded in kind. Who needs all this space when we no longer own anything we’re able to hold. After looking at many single-purpose portable music devices (DAPs to the geeks), I’m finally getting over searching for a separate device for music. I can use my DAC3 Mobile Headphone Amplifier & DAC with my iPhone or iPad and some over-the-ear headphones and get crisp, detailed, nuanced sound. I’m already carrying those devices, so getting another one for music, going through all the work to transfer local files onto a device, arrange my library and separate playlists, etc. doesn’t feel particularly efficient. As they say about cameras, “the best one is the one you have with you.” Perhaps the same can be said of portable music players. via Opus

The opinions on AI that you find on the internet tend to fall in the extremes of the other side. Either AI is the downfall of humanity or its savior. My thoughts on the subject, as on many others, ride in the middle of the road. In my professional life, AI has been a great equalizer. If you know the problems you are trying to solve, absent the knowledge of how to actually go about doing that, AI can be the bridge between concept and reality. It would take me many hours to probe the depths of the Azure cloud through labyrinthine Log Analytics workspaces to find the causes of a spike in ingestion costs. With the Azure MCP and Claude Cowork/Code, it’s done in minutes. I’m not blind to the problems with AI, though. As a simple illustration, when I’m using Claude in my personal life, it can almost never remember what day it is, even when I explicitly tell it.1 Aren’t calculations like that one of the easiest things for computers to do? It seems to defy logic. A couple of thoughts reached my Matter inbox in the past few weeks about the Achilles’ heels of AI. One was from David French, who brings up legal culpability for problems caused by AI. > The nature of A.I. puts its creators in a bind. The point of the technology is that it will do things — at least to some degree — on its own. But under common law, humans will be liable for what A.I. does. This means the A.I. companies (and perhaps individual executives) can be legally responsible for actions they didn’t commit and for effects they did not intend. Someone has to be held accountable for mistakes by AI models, some of which have been egregious. We can’t apply punitive judgments to a non-human entity, regardless of how human it may seem. Jacob Noti-Victor writes for The Atlantic about another secret weapon against AI dominance: copyright law. > But the future of creative labor will more likely be decided through a different question within copyright law, one that has received far less attention: To what extent should AI-generated works receive copyright protection at all? In a 2024 case, Thaler v. Perlmutter, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that a work generated autonomously by an AI system cannot be protected by copyright, because copyright requires a human “author.” The Supreme Court declined to review that decision in March. With the lower-court decision left in place, the question now becomes how much AI content can be incorporated into a work before it becomes mostly or totally uncopyrightable; courts have not yet weighed in on this but may soon. Works generated by AI cannot, at least at this point, be legally copyrighted. Mickey Mouse may be in the public domain now, but how would Disney have built their brand if he had not been protected by intellectual property laws early on? Many times, AI triumphalism is taken for granted. History is not written in stone, though, and there are still some weighty considerations that could disrupt the inevitability of AI dominance. * * * 1. Claude, with its vast capabilities and empathetic tone, can be ideal for managing chronic illness. ↩︎

_404 Media_ cites a study claiming a third of new websites are IA-Generated. The study is measuring sites created since 2022. This is one of those findings that strikes me as hard to believe at first, and then pretty plausible. What does one do to ensure that visitors know your personal site is powered by a human? Jason Morehead is using a human.json file. The file is added to your website’s head. The file can also vouch for the humanity of other sites, and I’m proud to say that his includes _Canned Dragons_. Chrome and Firefox have extensions that validate if your site has a human.json file. As Morehead points out, it’s not foolproof and any site could add the file, AI-powered or not. At least it is a statement, though, that in such a case would be making a false claim.

<a href="https://airmiami.bandcamp.com/album/airplane-rider-stop-sign">Airplane Rider / Stop Sign by Air Miami</a> A few weeks ago, I saw Mark Robinson from Unrest/Air Miami/Flin Flon open for the Wedding Present at the Motorco Music Hall in Durham. Although the bill clearly stated that Robinson would be playing Unrest songs, imagining him doing those songs without the two other band members, Phil Krauth and Bridget Cross was challenging. Whatever images I could conjure didn’t match the actual show. Robinson brought a lot of punch alone with his guitar, and was able to do the songs justice, but with a catch. He played only about a verse and the chorus of each song. He breezed through some truncated Air Miami tunes first, and by the time he addressed the audience, he had already fit in 11 songs. When he announced he was going to be playing 50 songs total, I wasn’t sure what to believe. At the pace he was going, it was possible, but it had to be a joke, right? Wrong. I wasn’t counting, but he was, in-between batches of songs that would make Bob Pollard sound long-winded. After the show, I commended Robinson on his ability to figure out a way to make sure almost no one missed hearing their favorite song. “Exactly,” he enthused. One of the songs I was most glad to hear was Air Miami’s “Airplane Rider,” a 7” single released shortly after Unrest broke up. The single, which could very well be the perfect indie pop song, showed the band’s promise.1 Because they were unhappy with the first pressing of the single, the 7” had to be remastered and repressed, leaving the band without any music to take on their first nationwide tour. The final product, though, shows the instincts must have been correct, as it has a pristine jangle pop sound. * * * 1. Alas, they only released one full-length album, _Me. Me. Me._ , in 1995. ↩︎

Shelly Ridenour penned an article for _Qobuz_ on the stellar alternative albums from 1991. One observation that I found particularly poignant from having grown up during this period was around the change that Nirvana’s _Nevermind_ brought to mainstream music with regard to gender dynamics. > Within a couple of months, the album was a hit, people were dressing in “grunge” flannel and, soon, hair metal was dropping off the charts. (The band’s feminist attitude was also a welcome change from the blatant sexism of hair metal.) Cobain’s aesthetic was very much a Gen X product of what was then known as college rock and would soon be categorized as alt rock, with an entire radio station format dedicated to the movement that Nirvana pushed into the mainstream. It seems perverse now to lump Nirvana with, say, the metal and classic rock leanings of other bands that were considered grunge—Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden. The rapid embrace of Nirvana certainly had a lot to do with their rebuke of the excesses of hair metal, including the rampant sexism and misogyny. By that time, the shock value had worn off, and those excesses were more sad than exciting.1 There is evidence, though, that this shift in attitude didn’t keep itself confined to popular music. My wife and I are constantly amazed at some of the content of mainstream movies and other entertainment from the 80s and what the makers of those movies could get away with (on the big screen, at least). It’s even more surprising to my oldest son, who didn’t live through it. _Revenge of the Nerds_ , with its testosterone-driven plot lines, simply couldn’t be made as a mainstream movie today. The change in attitudes seemed to very closely coincide with the public change in musical tastes. Though I would struggle to think of any Nirvana songs that were particularly overtly feminist, Kurt Cobain certainly had the cred from his circle of friends. The title for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” comes from Kathleen Hannah of the riot grrrl band Bikini Kill. How much was Nirvana simply riding a wave of what was mostly known in the early nineties as “political correctness,” and how much did their popularity shape public perception? The significance of _Nevermind_ can sometimes feel overstated by music journalists, but it may have represented a sea change in not just the music industry (who rushed to sign similar bands to lucrative recording contracts) but also broader cultural thinking. Detail of interview with Nirvana rendered as a comic strip, illustrated by Ralph Horsley, from issue 10 of Ablaze!, Leeds, UK • • • • • Unfortunately, the Qobuz article is behind a membership subscription. However, I would strongly recommend the service to anyone interested in hi-res music. * * * 1. See _The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2: The Metal Years_ for solid evidence. ↩︎

Olly, the developer of the Pagecord blogging software, just published a post on something I was thinking about with regards to music. I’m not buying a lot of physical media these days, but when I do, it’s usually CDs. I just went to a new record store called Hunky Dory that just opened downtown near me, but they weren’t celebrating Record Store Day. I wasn’t sure about going because I didn’t think I would buy anything. So I can relate to Olly. > Indie record stores are so great, especially my local, but there’s no reason for me to go in and bother them because I won’t be buying anything. I feel like a fraud! I’d love to be able browse the music physically like everyone else, chatting to the staff, listening to stuff and getting recommendations, but rather than bagging the vinyl I’d like to pay them for a FLAC download that gets delivered to my inbox. To make it more of an event and add a physical dimension, maybe they could offer me a postcard version of the cover art too? That would be a nice keepsake. Olly feels, as I do, that we have enough physical stuff and there isn’t necessarily a need to buy media for music anymore.1 At the same time, it’s a worthy cause to keep the independent record stores afloat. I had the same thoughts when I was in Asheville earlier this year. I bought a book at a cool indie bookstore where I could admire all the amazing covers.2 In all honesty, though, I prefer to purchase e-books for my Kindle. I just could hardly bear the thought of not contributing to the cause of having small bookstores in walkable downtowns. We need a physical digital music experience - OllyI love the idea of Record Store Day but I no longer have a turntable, cassette deck or CD player despite the hundreds of vinyl records going mouldy in my…OllyOlly * * * 1. I ordered Slowdive’s _Everything Is Alive_ on CD last year. Now there is a high-res version that sounds better on Qobuz and that CD is essentially obsolete. ↩︎ 2. Mary Beard’s _Emperor of Rome_ ↩︎

One of my greatest joys in 2026 has been the release of new material by British riot twee band Heavenly. I’ll admit I approached the release of this year’s brilliantly named _Highway to Heavenly_ LP with a certain amount of skepticism. After decades of radio silence, it’s hard to know what to expect from a long-time favorite and easy to be disappointed. Fortunately, disappointment was not what I felt when I listened to the new record. It’s easily on par with any previous Heavenly material and I’ve had it in heavy rotation for the last few weeks. There are quite a few bands making jangly twee indie pop, but Heavenly always stands out. Vocals from Amelia Fletcher are distinct and emotive. You’re along for the ride with her. In the case of the first single from _Highway to Heavenly_ , “Portland Town,” you can relate to Fletcher’s desire to be among her own kind of people. I’m guessing Portland is a place where she feels she blends in with the crowd. Portland, with all its eccentricities worthy of parody, remains one of the first cities in alternative culture. Heavenly - Portland Town (YouTube)

I just signed up for access to Attie, a new AI-based app from Bluesky, which allows you to shape your feed on the social network using plain language. To be honest, I wasn’t that excited about the app when it was first announced. It can be hard these days to sift through the AI hype to locate the value in some of these propositions. Then I came across an old quote I had saved about blogging. Henrik Karlsson wrote in 2022 that a blog post “is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox.” Karlsson was sparked to this realization after writing an essay about Ivan Illich and systems thinking, and being introduced to it by many who wanted to discuss the topic. The conclusion Karlsson eventually came to is that you shouldn’t necessarily write for the masses, but with specificity to people who might find the appeal in your most unique fascinations. He uses an anecdote to illustrate his point. > It is like the time someone told the composer Morton Feldman he should write for “the man in the street”. Feldman went over and looked out the window, and who did he see? Jackson Pollock. > > Write for Jackson Pollock. In this way, you will hopefully connect with people with whom you would want to engage in deep conversation. But the internet is vast. It takes skill or dumb luck to find your people and foster mutual interests. A tool like Attie can potentially help with that search. Despite the current skepticism about the proliferation of AI apps, it seems this one may be valuable in actually fostering human relationships.

Every time I finish a novel in which I have invested a lot of time and emotion, I feel a bit unmoored. What other worlds are out there now that this one is gone? It’s like the characters in that world died and will be grieved. Some even after entering a new story. After I wrapped up reading _Demon Copperhead_ last weekend, I had these feelings. I almost shed tears at the end of the book. There are no novels piling up in a stack for me to read, so I was bereft. I was almost present in Lee County, that little corner of Appalachia where most of the book takes place, for some period. My own trip to Appalachia recently only reinforced that feeling. I won’t deny that Barbara Kingsolver’s latest was a tough read. When the drug use started getting heavy, I had to put it down for a bit. My mom showed interest in reading it, and I steered her away. The extended time it took me to get through the proceedings somehow only integrated it more into my mind’s eye. I’ve never lived in Appalachia, and certainly never had the foster care experience, but I do know someone in both those categories. My dad grew up in rural Eastern, NC, and would remind me of how he had to pick tobacco or shovel chicken sh*t if he ever thought I was trying to get out of doing work. In my lifetime, I saw a degradation in the neighborhood where my grandparents used to live. The last time we visited the area (after their passing), it was scary to walk down the street. This past week, 3 people were shot on that same street. I’m not entirely unfamiliar with youth drug culture, either. The high school I went to has a crazy story about an LSD ring you can read about on Wikipedia. I talked with the guy who, while high on LSD and dancing naked in a field, shot a police officer with his own gun just a week before the incident while skateboarding at an outdoor mall. Kingsolver was masterful in crafting the voice of the protagonist of _Demon Copperhead_ , Damon. Even if I had no experience with the challenges represented in the book, I still would have felt myself traveling in that world, painted so effortlessly as it was by the narrative voice of Damon. If you can stomach a tough read, I strongly recommend _Demon Copperhead_. What’s next?

With the announcement on the _A New Social_ blog that Bridgy Fed — which has been helpful in syndicating my Fediverse posts from Ghost to Bluesky — was bringing longform to the Atmosphere, I found myself wanting to play with some of the current blogging tools running on AT Proto.1 Unfortunately, even with the aid of a super-smart LLM, I couldn’t get the standard.site integration (which allows longform) working. I was either getting errors that I was missing the domain parameter when using my ActivityPub account or a 404 when I was using my domain account. Damned if you do… My failures to integrate Ghost raised the question of the return on investment I was getting from the exercise. The benefit would have been that my posts would be syndicated to the feed with other standard.site documents. Bluesky itself is not part of that feed. Long-form platforms Leaflet, pckt, and Offprint are, but their reach so far is fairly limited. I was curious, though. I set up an account with pckt, which was exceptionally easy due to the fact that authentication is built from the Atmosphere, and I could just use my Bluesky account (which is also my domain name — neat). The service is well thought out, and I think for a lot of people, it has the right mix of features. I was able to make some quick color scheme/typography customizations, although I’ll always wish there were more options. It’s a very bubbly selection that kind of screams fun. The flip side of that is that it doesn’t seem fit for serious blogging. Perhaps more disappointingly, other than the auth and appearing on the global feed of blogs with standard.site integration, the only sign of Bluesky here is your handle linked in your profile. It would be cool if you could syndicate posts to Bluesky or show comments from that network. Next, I tried the new beta of Offprint. I was immediately struck by how similar the default theme looked to Substack. Offprint is going more for publications than basic blogs. Its options reflect that approach, with a lot more there to customize. Offprint also has better integration with Bluesky, allowing you to syndicate your post upon publish and even tag Bluesky/Atmosphere accounts in your post (that’s a nice touch). Offprint still feels very unfinished, though. Tagging isn’t even there yet, though it is coming. The interface also seems a bit corporate. I haven’t yet dipped into the world of Leaflet, though Jay Graber (CIO of Bluesky) is apparently using that service. It appears to have a bit of the whimsy of pckt with better integration with Bluesky (recommends, mentions, and comments). These are early days, and at the moment, I’m not completely sold on any of these services. The Atmosphere seems to be gaining momentum, though. Bluesky CEO Toni Schneider recently attended the AtmosphereConf 2026 to keep up with what people are doing with AT Proto. This is certainly a space to keep an eye on for anyone interested in online publishing. * * * 1. _AT Proto_ is the protocol that runs Bluesky and a competitor to ActivityPub, which runs Mastodon. _The Atmosphere_ is the AT Proto version of the Fediverse. ↩︎

Charlotte Cornfield is the latest musician to put out something via Durham, NC’s Merge Records. _Hurts Like Hell_ is also the first long player by the Canadian singer/songwriter since becoming a mother. The title track, “Hurts Like Hell,” wallows in a remembered sentimentality with the advantage of looking at difficulty in the rearview mirror. We all know what it’s like to try to gain perspective when in the midst of a tough situation. The video immediately endeared itself to me because its protagonist is wearing a sweater just like one I purchased a couple of weeks ago. The guy looks like he’s kin to Ben Gibbard and plays a sympathetic character who appears to ingest some psychoactive substance along with a confection delivered from an anonymous sender. His enthusiasm for playing the video’s song at high volumes (with bass boost!) outside is a nuisance to his neighbors. Charlotte Cornfield - Hurts Like Hell (YouTube)