I had kind of tuned Radiohead out by the time In Rainbows landed, but I'm not really sure why. My good friend Chester recently brought up In Rainbows being what he considered the end of the band's Golden Age, so I went back and gave it a couple of pretty deep listens. I definitely agree with Chester; In Rainbows, while nowhere near Kid A, OK Computer, or even Hail to the Thief, definitely feels more in line with those albums. I suppose at some point I need to test my prejudices against Radiohead's later output, which seems like it became interchangeable with York's solo career at some point and started sounding a bit like self-indulgent electronic noodling.
I am super excited about all three books in this week's Pull:
Really digging Dust to Dust from Giant Generator and Image Comics, a kind of Dustbowl Horror Thriller from JG Jones and Phil Bram. This is apparently the penultimate issue; not sure if this will continue beyond issue #5, but it seems like it's a safe bet.
With the first issue of Into the Unbeing Part Two, this book became even weirder than it already was. That's not nothing. I'm definitely recommending this book to anyone who enjoyed Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach series as much as I did.
I mentioned this a week or two ago, and my excitement has only grown. All hail Giallo-inspired everything!
Playlist:
The Kills - Live at Third Man Records
Blind Willie McTell - Complete Recorded Works In Chronological Order (Vol. 1)
For reasons that will be obvious to anyone who watched the Yellowjackets season two finale this past Friday. I've already posted The Horror Vision's discussion on youtube and all streaming platforms. Crazy good and this song was a perfect choice to end the episode and season.
Watch:
I finally watched Huesera: The Bone Woman the other day. Pretty solid flick. I ended up wanting a bit more in the story department, however, filmmakers rarely go wrong giving us less instead of more. This is the slowest of the slow burns but is peppered with some genuinely freaky moments and images, chief among them the giant Mary statue at the start of the film (you see a bit of it in the teaser below, but that doesn't quite do the scene justice).
Directed by Michelle Garza Cervera, Huesera: The Bone Woman is streaming on Shudder and well worth your time, when you're in the mood for a film that settles in and slowly turns up the heat.
Read:
Last week, I finished Chuck Palahniuk's The Invention of Sound. I would recommend this one to any old-school Palahniuk fan or new reader interested in his work. This is classic form Palahniuk - The Invention of Sound reads exactly the way I remember Choke, Lullaby, Diary reading when I first started seeking the author's work out in the late 90s/early 00s. That might be a bad thing if you've just recently read a bunch of his work, however, if you're like me and haven't read anything he's written in a while, this will remind you of what you loved about his older books.
I've always thought the key to Palahniuk is not reading a bunch of his books in a row. Not an easy thing to do when they move so quick and have such propulsive style and ideas. However, there seems to be a law of diminishing returns if you binge his stuff, or at least there is for me and quite a few other fans I've spoken to about this over the years. Anyway, none of that should be taken as criticism; I love the man's work and I love this book.
After finishing that, I was set to go into a re-read of Stephen Graham Jones's My Heart is a Chainsaw as prep to then read the recently released sequel, Don't Fear the Reaper, however, something drew me to a novel my good friend Jesus had sent me quite some time ago, Ivy Tholen's Tastes Like Candy.
This book is fantastic! A slasher novel that revolves around a group of incoming Senior girls at a Texas High School who get picked off one-by-one in an closed carnival. I blew through Tastes Like Candy in four days, and it really only took me that long because I had friends in from out of town for the holiday weekend. My Goodreads review is HERE, however, suffice it to say here that this fit right in with all the other well-known authors I've been reading this year. Great stuff! The author's website is HERE if you want to check out her work.
Playlist:
The Hives - Tyrannosaurus Hives
Dir En Grey - The Marrow of a Bone
Queens of the Stone Age - Emotion Sickness (pre-release single)
Queens of the Stone Age - Era Vulgaris
The Effigies - Remains Unknowable
David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Freaks)
Ozzy Osbourne - Patient No. 9
X - Los Angeles
Blut Aud Nord - Disharmonium: Undreamable Abysses
Druids - Shadow Work
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta I: Fathers of the Icy Age
Trombone Shorty - For True
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Bound Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Knight of Cups - Controlling Emotion with Will
• Two of Pentacles - Earthly Partnership
• Three of Swords - Growth of conflict or complex relationship
As always, keep in mind the interpretations I lay down for individual cards are a combination of grimoire research strained through personal circumstance. That said, I'm fairly certain this is reminding me of my current project (again), which has been on the backburner over the long weekend while friends were in. I have a fairly complex legal/business relationship in the novel, and I really need to work that out before proceeding.
I had an unplanned Massive Attack day yesterday and it felt great! For a band - and in the case of Mezzanine specifically - an album that was long-time daily obsessions, it'd been a while since I dove into their murky sonic depths. Felt amazing to return to it and have it feel exactly the same.
Then, later yesterday (I typed this Friday during work), K and I sat down to Yellowjackets and lo and behold - "Inertia Creeps"! This and the use of Radiohead's "Climbing the Walls" - easily my favorite track from OK Computer - more than made up for having to hear papa couch in Season 2 Episode 1.
Watch:
A new Season of Slasher??? Oh wow - check this out:
I ADORE the 2021 Flesh & Blood season that Shudder picked up, and now the same creative team is turning their creative energies to Victorian England and what looks like a Jack The Ripper copycat? Sign me up!
Slasher: Ripper starts with two episodes next Thursday, so that means the back half of my week is a Slasher/Yellowjackets combo!
Holy cow, new music avalanche (more likely I've just had a moment to actually pay attention): Thom Yorke put a track from his new record on Bandcamp. and it's a "name your price" for download folks.
