Urge Overkill - Follow My Shadow

 

Among the many albums that dropped last week, Chicago's Urge Overkill released a new record. Oui is 12 tracks of classic Urge. Order HERE.

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NCBD:

Big week this week for NCBD:

I'm about due for a full read-through on Home Sick Pilots, which is just a crazy fucking book that I love in pretty much the same way I love Saga. Both books are so original, so unique, they just blow me away.

I am SO into this new Hulk book. 

Joe Hill. 'Nuff said.

The conclusion of our Lemire and Sorrentino's weird AF cold war animal astronaut epic. 

If I was into tattoos, I would get the image of the Silver Coin on my bicep.  

I didn't love the previous issue of TMNT, but they never stray for long.

What's the closest thing to the Furthest Place from here.

Modok? Okay, I'll allow it for now. However, I'm really only interested in him when he's voiced by Patton Oswalt.

Now that our move is 'in the books' so to speak, I'm seriously considering dropping all Marvel titles and just going with a subscription to Marvel Unlimited. I'm not sure how much time I'll have to read, and I'm not sure how close I'll be to a Comic Shop, but at least with a sub, I'll have access to literally thousands of titles to read whenever I want.

Now I just have to pull the trigger on buying a good tablet.

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Read:

When I finished reading Phillip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass over the weekend, I was extremely tempted to immediately jump into Pullman's La Belle Sauvage, the first volume his new HDM sequel series, The Book of Dust. However, I have a stack of other books and authors I've desperately wanted to crack into, so instead, I finally started:

Max Booth III has been on my 'want-to-read' list for some time, especially  Carnivorous Lunar Activities, which, along with Preston Fassel's Our Lady of the Inferno, kicked off Fangoria's fiction imprint that coincided with their brand relaunch in 2019. I loved Our Lady of the Inferno, and I mean, like, really loved, and about a quarter of the way through, I'm loving this one as well.

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Playlist:

Urge Overkill - Oui

Orville Peck - Bronco (pre-release singles)

Boards of Canada - In A Beautiful Place Out in the Country (EP)

Urge Overkill - Saturation

Liz Phair - Never Said (single)

CCR - Eponymous

Cyndi Lauper - She's So Unusual

Deafheaven - Infinite Granite

Mastodon - Hushed and Grim

Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery

Beach House - Once Twice Melody

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Card:

I'm sure I've said this here before, but I always look at this one as a reminder to roll with the punches. Dogma is bad, and it's not just a staunch adherence to religious or political ideologies. It's thinking there's one way and only one way for anything. There's not. This is especially poignant as we are informed by our realtor in Nashville today that, in the market of the moment, if we're coming in looking to buy a house with a bank loan instead of cash, we will be asked to waive all inspections. Anything that's not "here's the money now," and we won't be able to compete. Long and the short of that is, we're no longer looking in Nashville and its immediate suburbs, but moving a bit more outside those areas. Not far, just far enough to make sane decisions. 

Valkyrie - Afraid to Live

Easily now my favorite of the records I received from Relapse Records by way of randomly getting their 20th Anniversary's Golden Ticket back in 2020, Valkyrie's Fear is a work of art, and definitely shares more in common with the work of bands like Led Zeppelin than a lot of modern bands do. That doesn't make them better, it just makes them unique. At the moment, this is my favorite song on an album of favorite songs.

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Read:

I finally went back and read Rick Remender and André Lima Araújo's A Righteous Thirst For Vengeance 1-4 in one sitting. I'd read issues one and two as they came out, then forgot about the book, picked up three and four and have basically had them sitting on my reading pile for a few weeks. 

This book is fantastic; it's lean and has a velocity that pulls you page after page in short order, with a bunch of, "wait, did I miss something" moments that are all leading up to revelations that will no doubt draw the story into a cataclysmic conclusion. I can't wait to read more.

I also finished Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy by finally closing out volume three, The Amber Spyglass. Being that the HBO/BBC show's third and final season is soon to be upon us, and being that said show is such a spot-on adaptation of the books, I am very curious how this third installment will look. There are several very strange facets to this third chapter, including but not limited to the Mulefa and Gallivespians, and I can't wait to see how the show approaches them. 

It's insane to think it's been nearly twenty years since the last time I read these books, and I was supremely baffled by how little I remembered of this one. If not for so vividly remember the scene where Lyra and Will release the aging god from his protective litter and watch him dissipate, I would be tempted to think after seeing the second half of the trilogy performed as theatre-in-the-round at the Royal National Theatre's Oliver Theatre in London back in 2003, I neglected to finish this third volume. That doesn't seem to be the case, though, so it's been good re-reading these, especially at a time when ignorance is so plentiful, it gives hope to remember there are intelligent forces at work in the world.

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Playlist:

Steve Moore - VFW OST

The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust

Valkyrie - Fear

Odonis Odonis - Spectrums

Fleet Foxes - Shore

Cocksure - TVMALSV

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Card:

I could not have drawn a more perfect card, as only moments before executing this pull, K and I booked 73 nights in Tennessee for Mid-April. This will be the hardest and yet most rewarding journey of my life, and we have just taken the first step on its path! 

Trackademicks

A track I heard last week at my Horror Vision cohost Ray L's first Cineray of the pre-COVID era. This is a very '2000s' track for me, however, it's been cool to reintegrate some of that vibe over the last few years, kicking off with my rewatch of Veronica Mars, a show I first watched and fell in love with back during my first year or two after moving to California, when the 2000-ness of everything was at full height.

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READ:

I finished re-reading Phillip Pullman's The Subtle Knife this past Sunday, and I have to say, reading these first two books in the His Dark Materials series I originally read in the early 2000s has highlighted just what a faithful adaptation of the BBC ONE/HBO's series is. 

Whatever I imagined the characters to look like previously is gone, and the cast of the show has now fully inhabited the imaginary world I'm experiencing as I read. These are tomes, and I've been pretty slow in re-reading, however, only one book left before I can begin the newest entry in the saga, 2017's The Book of Dust, which my A Most Horrible Library cohost Chris Saunders gifted me a few months back.

Most interesting to me is how, whoever my favorite character may have been during my first read, it is now Lee Scoresby by a longshot, all because of actor Lin-Manual Miranda's portrayal of the aeronaut. Interesting, because during the first season, he was the one casting choice I felt did not fit the character. Now, as I read, I see Mr. Miranda, and it's very cool.

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Playlist:

Trackademicks - 7th Heaven EP

ACDC - Highway to Hell

Perturbator - Lustful Sacraments

Dance With the Dead - B-Sides: Vol. 1

The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia

 

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Card:

 

There is a common goal I share right now with my better half. It's a huge idea that will ultimately change our lives forever. More later.