Because this was the first song I listened to when I woke up this morning, and because it's such an awesome example of the marrying of Rock and Pop that was so flawless in the early 80s.
Watch:
Kind of stumbled into watching the first season of Evil on Netflix this weekend. I'd seen the minimalist billboards for this around town last year and was intrigued, but being that it's on CBS I dismissed it as network. However, this one's pretty cool for network (and it's not actually on regular, network CBS, but their All Access). There's some really interesting camera work and a decidedly bigger budget - or at least a bigger 'approach' - than a network show would take. And there are some genuinely scary moments so far, so I'm in.
Playlist:
Ministry - Houses of the Mole
Ministry - Amerikkkant
Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction
ISIS - In the Absence of Truth
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
ZZ Top - Rio Grande Mud
Ministry - The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste
Ministry - The Last Sucker
The Bangles - All Over the Place
Deth Crux - Mutant Flesh
Etta James - Third Album
Etta James - Second Time Around
Card:
Financial breakthrough, which I will gladly take on with a smile.
I finally picked The Lost Gospels According to Al Jourgensen back up earlier this week, and this time, I find I can't put it down. More about that below. For right now, reading the Biafra interview in the book and hearing Al talk about the origin of the band Lard, I felt motivated to dig out 1997's Pure Chewing Satisfaction. This is one of those records I had on cassette back in the day, and because I still have the actual cassette, I always put off listening to it on Apple Music under the guise that I should dig out that tape. Well, that never happens, so I haven't heard Pure Chewing in a loooong time. Guess what? I gave up on the tape and started playing it the other day, only to find out I miss the hell out of this record!
The Last Temptation of Reid has always been the go-to masterpiece in the Lard catalog as far as I was concerned; however, now I find Pure Chewing Satisfaction is every bit as awesome, starting with this, the opening song, which I could listen to over and over again ad nauseam.
Watch:
Watching the first two episodes of Marvel's Wandavision last night was quite the experience. I now very much understand what Elizabeth Olsen meant in the interviews she did during the run-up to this show when she repeatedly said, "I just can't believe they let us actually do this show."
This is the evolution of Marvel's style.
I'm speechless. Wandavision isn't the best thing I've ever seen or even my favorite of the Marvel stuff, but being that it breaks their fight-on-catwalk-stop-him-before-he-ends-the-world-and/or-destroys-the-entire-city mold and shows that they will begin to take chances, I'm excited. And as fans, that's all we can ask for. That's how the comics gave us things like Matt Faction's Hawkeye series, or Rick Remender's Uncanny Avengers, or any of the mold-breaking stuff Marvel occasionally does to draw in new readers who don't necessarily jive with fight-fight-fight and crossover-crossover-crossover paradigm they seem to still be stuck in.
I'm totally fine having (mostly) given up reading Marvel Comics if I can get stories like this from their MCU.
Read:
Last year when Mr. Brown sent me his copy of Al Jourgensen's autobiography, I read about a fourth of it and had to walk away. This happens a lot with musician autobiographies. Soul Coughing's Mike Doughty's book really started to affect how I felt about one of my favorite bands of all time, so I stopped reading that, too. I thought that would be the case here, but when I picked Gospels up again recently to give it one more chance, I found I couldn't put the fucking thing down.
Al still comes off like a complete douche, which I guess really shouldn't be a surprise. However, the book is also laugh-out-loud hysterical at times. Really, once I got past the utter nonsense of him bragging about how many chicks he nailed as a teenager and moved into the origins of Ministry, well, the douchery didn't stop, but it became mixed with a lot of great information about a band I've loved for most of my life (thanks also to Brown, who lent me his copy of The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste when we were Juniors in High School).
Anyway, if you can get past those initial chapters, and deal with him being one of those "Been there, done that, did that first, fuck those guys I used to work with" tirades, and the endless drug stories that make him really look like an ass - the River Phoenix one is especially awful - then this is a pretty good read.
Playlist:
Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction
Lard - The Last Temptation of Reid
The Veils - Total Depravity
The Replacements - Tim
Deafheaven - 10 Years Gone
Ministry - Dark Side of the Spoon
Card:
This morning I thought I'd pull from the Raven Deck. Every time I bring these cards out, I marvel at the work and detail my good friend Missi put into them. The cards literally hum with the energy she put into them, and so they make reading an incredibly unique experience.
Change. From Peter J. Carroll's Liber Null: "The only clear view is from atop a mountain of your dead selves."
I have 100% agreed with this statement since I first began reading Carroll in the early 00s. And I find it funny that I pull this card now, as I try to understand how I've suddenly become able to reintegrate The Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream back into my life.
Tangent? No. Hear me out.
I loved this record upon its release the summer before my Senior Year in high school began, but I have been mostly unable to feel passionately about it since about two or three years later. Everything about this album and that band that I loved was, in my opinion, flipped on its head beginning with the release of the follow-up, and The Smashing Pumpkins became kind of an antithesis to me. However, for every reason I feel justified in distancing myself from their music and personas, I realize too, I was distancing myself from who I was when this album meant so much to me. Which is fine. That's the mountain of dead selves at work right there, and that's important. And there's a vulnerability to reconnecting with something that was so integral and intertwined with who you were when you were a teenager, and I began to make it a point to execute and deny most previous versions of myself somewhere about the time I graduated college and became a bartender (ha! what a sentence).
Anyway, I guess the poignant part of all this is that while Siamese Dream was executed and thrown on the pile with that old version of Shawn, along with records by bands like Pantera, Sublime and the like, it's a new one for me that I can dig this one out of that mountain of corpses, dust it off, and reconnect with it in such a strong way.
Will it last? It feels like it will, however, I should probably avoid hearing anything billy corgan says in the media if I want that to last.
New Mogwai! From the forthcoming album As The Love Continues, out February 13th. Pre-order HERE.
Watch:
Last night, K and I finished watching the Night Stalker documentary that dropped this week on Netflix. Serial killer stuff is normally outside of my comfort zone, however, after moving to LA in 2006 and hearing a good friend talk about what it was like to grow up here as Richard Ramirez held the city hostage for the better part of a year has proved motivation for a fascination that overcomes my squeamish nature when it comes to this type of thing. That, combined with the fact that once you start watching this series and see that director Tiller Russell places the two Police Detectives who hunted Ramirez as the main characters, this was a great documentary that didn't leave me feeling dirty.
As much as I love AHS 1984, I still have issues with the fact that they made Ramirez a character I ended up rooting for (to a degree).
While flipping around Bloody Disgusting earlier I saw they finally released a trailer for Christopher Smith's The Banishing. I'm very much looking forward to seeing this one on Shudder in March, just a couple of days after my forty-fifth birthday no less.
Playlist:
The Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
Michael Kiwanuka - KIWANUKA
David Bowie - Reality
Mogwai - As the Love Continues (pre-release singles)
Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will
Loathe - I Let It In and It Took Everything
Card:
Another signifier for the end of my current project, which will lead to the publication of my next book.
I received the cover art this week from Jonathan Grimm - it's BAD ASS! I can't wait to share it.
Sacred Bones is releasing a new DJ Muggs record of dark, Occult-inspired music? Sign me up! Pre-order this one HERE now, because the $30 Deluxe edition of Dies Occidendum with the illustrated book is limited to 500 copies and will most likely disappear.
NCBD:
Quite a bit coming out today.
Loving this series. Vault does horror comics the right way, 100%.
End of the arc. Jason Howard's Big Girls has been a great stand-in for Trees, his book with Warren Ellis (who I miss SO much).
I picked up the first issue of Homesick Pilots on a whim last month and loved it. A Grunge-era ghost story that has me baffled at some of the mechanics of the haunting and where, exactly, it's going.
The final issue of one of the most horrific books I've read in quite some time.
Playlist:
Howard Jones - Things Can Only Get Better (single)
Sleaford Mods - Spare Ribs (pre-released singles)
Sleaford Mods - Austerity Dogs
Alice in Chains - Facelift
Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf
Thou - Rhea Sylvia
Peter Gabriel - Us
Drab Majesty - Careless
Card:
The Beginning of the End.
I'm reading this as two things. First, I'm back on the book and will finish it within the next week. WILL. Second, watching the House vote on impeachment - which personally I feel is a great big waste of time because, well, let him become a private citizen and THEN arrest his ass - I'm realizing that something is ending. Whether or not this is for the better or worse when our country is concerned, I can't really say. However, I'm inclined to think it will not ultimately be for the best. Have I made my prediction on this page yet that within five years time the US will no longer be 50 states? Standing by it, regardless.
This is shaping up to be an early contender for album of the year just based on the strength of the three songs to drop so far! Pre-order HERE.
Watch:
Currently watching a Scandanavian show on Netflix called Equinox, another of what I've seen referred to as an 'Into the Woods' subgenre that originates with Twin Peaks and was perhaps defined/popularized most recently by Netflix's Dark. So far, Equinox is derivative, although it would appear to owe more to Black Spot than any other show. Maybe this genre is simply comfort food to me at this point, but K and I are hooked. Here's a trailer:
Playlist:
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Faith No More - The Real Thing
Sleaford Mods - Spare Ribs (the pre-released stuff)
One of my favorite current bands covering one of my all-time favorite band's best songs. Magic. After this and that Flaming Lips cover on last year's Medium Rarities record, Mastodon is one of the few bands I like hearing do covers, basically because I can't wait to see what they'll pick to do next.
Watch:
I recently found this super cool, animated reading of H.P. Lovecraft's Dagon that Patronoid Magazine published recently. Lost of cool stuff from these folks, check out their site HERE.
I've had Stuart Gordon's Dagon in mind of late, and not being able to find my old DVD copy (I had two at some point, I love this one so much), is the perfect excuse to buy that gorgeous Blu Ray copy that the resurrected Vestron Video put out a few years back. Here's the trailer:
Playlist:
ISIS - In the Absence of Truth
Alice in Chains - Rainier Fog
Yellow Magic Orchestra - Solid State Survivor
Giraffe Tongue Orchestra - Broken Lines
The Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
YOB - Our Raw Heart
Emma Ruth Rundle - Marked for Death
Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland
Low Cut Connie - Hi Honey
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
The Beatles - The White Album
David Bowie - Heroes
Card:
Back to the wonderful Raven Deck my good friend Missi made for me:
Whereas this would normally read Completion, and despite the fact that I don't normally recognize ill-dignified (read: upside down), I can't help that dopple-definition fits, because it tends to hinge on 'interruptions' or 'hesitating.' I'm stalled again at the moment, and need to push myself back into 'On' mode.
New video for John Carpenter's Alive After Death, from the forthcoming album Lost Themes III: Alive After Death, out February 5th on Sacred Bones Records. You can pre-order the record from Sacred Bones HERE, or, do what I did and pre-order the Wax Work/Sacred Bones collab like I did HERE, although, without checking, there's probably a pretty good chance this one is long since sold out.
Watch:
K and I finished the new and apparently final "season" of Netflix's Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Hot damn I love this show! Here's a cool little bloopers reel Netflix dropped on youtube a bit ago. It's cool to see everyone having fun between takes.
Playlist:
Drab Majesty - The Demonstration
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf
Queens of the Stone Age - Villains
Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun
Ravenous Wolves - Stories and Pictures
Ravenous Wolves - A Horror of Shades Demo EP
Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full
I'm way late to post a tribute to MF Doom. I love this guy, but honestly, haven't listened to him on a regular basis if at all in quite some time. One of the 'methods' to my creative process is curating (read: micromanaging) the media I consume, and just like I haven't read any of the novels Irvine Welsh has released since Skag Boys - and he's one of my favorite authors ever - I very rarely listen to Hip Hop. RTJ4 broke that mold a bit this year, and if there was ever a time I felt like I needed to step out of my own headspace and try and reconnect with the world around me, it was the summer of 2020, hence I dialed back in a lot more Public Enemy, Kendrick, etc. But a lot like Guru and his Gang Starr and Jazzmatazz, MF Doom, or perhaps more accurately, Doom and Madlib's 2004, one-time collaboration Madvillainy, I just haven't gone back there in quite some time. Doom's recent death made me revisit the record, and move beyond it to some of the stuff I missed.
READ:
I finally finished my re-read of the entire Gideon Falls series by Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino. I will say, great book, great ending, but the abstract, Twin Peaks-meets-Grant-Morrison-like premise and evolution of the book left for a slightly frustrating aftertaste. Still, really cool series and, reading it in a binge is a totally different experience than reading it monthly/yearly, as you really see how much heavy lifting Andrea Sorrentino's art does. The issues fly by at about five minutes a piece, so there's a cumulative frenzy effect after you pass the half-way point.
The art in this book really blows me away. I don't normally bond this strongly with the art in the stuff I read, but this... this really transcends a lot of what people are doing to push the medium. And while some of it is obviously influenced by and predicated on books that Grant Morrison and various artists conceived over the last 25-30 years, Mr. Sorrentino really stands on his own.
Playlist:
Steve Moore - Bliss OST
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta: Saturnarian Poetry
The Used - Vulnerable
Turquoise Moon - The Sunset City
Cocksure - TVMALSV
Drab Majesty - The Demonstration
Card:
Illumination.
This really feels like where I'm at in this particular moment. The best thing I've done in a while was take yesterday off work. I filed the Copyright for Murder Virus, got Jonathan Grimm the specs to do the art (and he already sent me a mock-up that far surpassed what I had in mind), and my mind and body feel rested. It's been a few weeks since I could say that.
From the forthcoming album Spare Ribs, out January 15th on Rough Trade. Pre-order HERE. Thanks to Mr. Brown for reminding me about this, as the Mods are always one of those bands that slide right off my radar when I'm not actively listening to them.
'Cast
My perpetual co-host Chris Saunders and I recently started an all Horror comics and literature spin-off show under The Horror Vision umbrella. The first episode of A Most Horrible Library went up early Monday morning, with more to follow on a somewhat regular basis.
This show is kind of our way of going back to substituting a new show for where Drinking with Comics left off; I'm still hoping to resurrect that after things go "back to normal," as it is primarily a live show, however, I'm not really one who believes things will go back to normal anytime soon, so in the interim, we have this as an outlet to talk about all the great Horror-centric reading out there. A Most Horrible Library will release under the same stream as the regular Horror Vision show, so no need for a new subscription.
Watch:
After working our way a little over halfway through the fourth, apparently final "part" of Netflix's The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina over the last two nights, K and I rounded out our Monday night with the first of two episodes HBO dropped yesterday of Alex de la Inglesia's 30 Coins.
Holy smokes - this episode had the best monster I've seen since The Ritual a few years back. Mind-boggling and totally terrifying. I'm really looking forward to watching this one weekly.
Currently watching 1993's Body Melt on Amazon Prime. I've been feeling run down and a back-ache/stomach pain combination's reduced my sleep to less than I need to function, so I took a re-set day from work and plan on doing pretty much nothing. I actually started trying to rewatch Adam Simon's Brain Dead, which is also on Prime, however,the transfer to digital looks like it came off a deteriorated, second-hand VHS, with that dreary old 4:3 aspect ratio that doesn't work on anything not filmed to specifically have that effect. In looking it up, I see that Shout/Scream Factory transferred Brain Dead a few years back, so I'm hoping that pops up somewhere; I've never seen Brain Dead in its entirety, and it's been on my list for a while.
So far, Body Melt's doing the trick, though, and while I'm rarely interested in what Vinegar Syndrome releases, there are exceptions, and this would be one of them, and they did a pretty good job cleaning this one up for the digital age.
Playlist:
Massive Attack - Mezzanine
Orville Peck - Pony
Soundgarden - SOMMS
Them are Us Too - Remain
Thou - Rhea Sylvia
Mrs. Piss - Self Surgery
The Blues Brothers - Briefcase Full of Blues
Muddy Waters - Electric Mud
Turquoise Moon - The Sunset City
Goatsnake - Black Age Blues
Goatsnake - Trampled Under Hoof
MF Doom - Operation: Doomsday
Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full
Queens of the Stone Age - Era Vulgaris
Van Halen - 1984
Iress - Prey
The Plimsouls - Everywhere at Once
Belong - October Language
David Bowie - Scary Monsters (And Super Freaks)
Card:
First spread of 2021:
The Queen of Swords is definitely a defining force in my life, or at least has been over the last year or two. One of the reasons I do all this logging is so I can look back through the blog and track influences and the like, and when I search Queen of Swords, I see it came up five times in 2020. Thus, reading in the conventional Past-Present-Future positions, we see the Queen of Swords or the Airy Part of Intellect, ie sharpened perception as the Present and the Idea as a concise statement fortified by Knowledge (Past; 6 of Cups) and the balancing of the many tiers of that Intellect/Idea as a challenge to be overcome (Future; 10 of Wands) in the near future.
I don't usually make New Year's resolutions, however, this year is different: More Creedence. Simple and easy to do, as every time I fall into a binge with this band - and it's been over a decade at least - I remember just how much I love them, and how much they influenced my early guitar playing. Also, they remind me to no end of my good friend JFK, who I haven't talked to in some time and really need to reach out to.
Watch:
I completed my current re-watch of Cowboy Bebop. Man! For someone who doesn't really get into animation, this has got to come in just under Twin Peaks in my 'Favorite Things Ever' category. I love it so much. The final two episodes - "The Real Folk Blues" parts 1 and 2 always blows me away, and the one major regret/gripe I have about that vinyl edition of the score that came out this year is the song of the same name - which Bebop fans know as the ending credits music - is not on it.
Like Twin Peaks, this is a show where I never skip the intro or outro credits. Ever.
Playlist:
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bayou Country
Thou - Rhea Sylvia
Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color
Alice in Chains - B-Sides and Unreleased Playlist
Allegaeon - Apoptosis
Alabama Shakes - Boys & Girls
Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
Tomahawk - Oddfellows
Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf
Jóhann Jóhannsonn - Mandy OST
Goatsnake - Breakfast with the King b/w Deathwish (single)
More new Besnard that I'm trying really hard not to listen to in anticipation of sitting down with a joint and the entire new album - The Besnard Lakes Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings, out January 19th (digital) and 29th (physical) - and just melting into the fucking music.
Pre-order the record HERE.
Read:
I have read a lot lately. First, at the recommendation of my good friend and Christian Fisting co-founder Joe.Baxter, I fell into Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder novels pretty hard, devouring Books one and two in about a day each. This started as research for a character I'm writing in Shadow Play Book Two, but quickly became the kind of obsessive read that forces me to relegate all Block to weekend reading only, lest I stay up all night on a work night rabidly flipping pages.
Next, I finally picked up Stephen Graham Jones' The Only Good Indians. After reading Jones's Night of the Mannequin a few months ago, I've been eager to get to this one. Halfway through in two days, it is not disappointing at all, so there will be more SGJ in my future.
Also, thanks to Jonathan Grimm, who tipped me off that Kindle was having a Marvel Masterworks sale on the entire original Chris Claremont run of Uncanny X-Men. I picked up the first five volumes, which fills in most of the gaps of what pre-dated the issues I have in physical form, including the classic Giant Size X-Men, which introduced Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Banshee, Sunspot (fuck him, he stayed for one mission and left), and Thunderbird to the team.
Playlist:
Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf
Bell Witch - Four Phantoms
Four Stroke Baron - Planet Silver Screen
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Eponymous
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Green River
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bayou Country
Card:
Not about me at all, I think, but a confirmation K will be getting her promotion.
New Crosses! No word that I see of a release date yet, but what a way to round out the year!
Favorite Horror Films of 2020
Over on The Horror Vision, we did our "Favorite Horror of 2020" episode this weekend, and as I type this the episode should be hitting all major streaming platforms. Here's an embed of the youtube, although this and the IGTV version are considerably truncated for time compared to what you can stream from Spotify and the like. Either way, here are our picks:
Watch:
This was one I had not even heard of until I watched it on Christmas Eve. HOLY cow. This one would make a fantastic double feature with Jeremy Saulnier's Hold the Dark (time for a rewatch!), there's such a stoic reverence for violence. Easily slid into my top ten of the year, as evidenced by the episode of The Horror Vision above. This is director Shawn Linden's third feature, and you can bet I'll be seeking out his first two films - The Good Lie, and Nobody - in short order.
Playlist:
Howard Shore - Crash OST
Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me
Vince Guaraldi Trio - A Charlie Brown Christmas
Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - Hollywood (pre-release single)
Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full
Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf
Electric Wizard - Dopethrone
Doves - The Universal Want
Nat "King" Cole - The Christmas Song
The Blueflowers - Relapse EP
✝︎✝︎✝︎ - The Beginning of The End (pre-release single)
Calexico - Seasonal Shift
Jóhann Jóhannsson - Mandy OST
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
The Blueflowers - Relapse EP
Card:
Being that the standard reading of this card is the beginning of a new project, and I'm in the midst of wrapping one and finishing another, I'm not quite sure how to take this. There's also the "Big influences" reading, and although I'm not sure how to interpret that on a surface level, I suppose I should be on the lookout for inspiration.
Possibly my favorite track from an outstanding album, Dance With the Dead's 2016 The Shape.
Watch:
Last night, K and I watched Brian Duffield's Spontaneous. Wow. Just wow. Duffield - a writer on a bunch of stuff I love, like Underwater, The Babysitter, The Babysitter: Killer Queen (which, admittedly I haven't watched yet, but it's on the list and when the gang's back together, you can't go wrong, right???) - makes his directorial debut here and he KILLS IT. I mean, seriously kills. The Terminator shooting Linda Hamilton's roommate kills, if you know what I mean. Here's the trailer, but my suggestion is, just go pay $2.99 to rent it on Amazon. Best three bucks you're gonna spend all year.
I really can't say enough about Michael Kiwanuka's KIWANUKA album, except that it's made me a fan of his for life. The entire album is immaculate. This person song, though? This is the gateway drug that will lead to the rest. I'm so happy real Soul music appears to be back on the rise and striving.
NCBD:
I had my dates wrong last time. Today, it's here, the end of one of the staples of my comics reading for the past few years, Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino's Gideon Falls:
My re-read on the entire series as a run-up to this stalled out before I even hit the first issue, so it'll be a bit before I actually read this one. That said, just to have it in my possession will feel like a pay-off. And that cover - good god. So ominous!
Also out this week:
I skipped the first issue of Sea of Sorrows but doubled back when Indie Comics Jones gave it high marks, and as usual, Mr. Jones was not wrong. The first issue set up some creepy AF Underwater Horror, and if this awesome cover art is any indication, we're about to get into it. Can't wait. Underwater Horror is a great subgenre that seems poised for a resurgence. This would make me insanely happy.
And this... well, a sequel/continuation of The Picture of Dorian Gray? I don't really know much about this book, but Vault has become my go-to company for new books, so I'm excited. And this cover art? Boy Howdy, that's just freakin' gorgeous in a very creepy way.
Playlist:
Deftones - Ohms
My Morning Jacket - Z
Spoon - Gimmie Fiction
Blut Aus Nord - The Work Which Transforms God
Dante Tomaselli - Out of Body Experience
Card:
Act fast - action is Futility's nemesis! Pretty relevant as I sit down and try to shift gears for the third time this year. I have today off and will be attempting to get back into a full re-read/final pass edit on Murder Virus. I have all my Beta Reader's notes, so between that and a fresh take after not looking at the manuscript since August, I'm hoping this last go-through further sharpens what I'm already feeling is my best novel to date (granted, it will only be my second published novel, but I have a few in various states of undress that are complete and will eventually see the light of day, just like this one, which I originally finished in 2008.)
Just from the opening strains of the keyboard, I want to listen to this song SO BAD. I mean - new Besnard Lakes! However, I already try to adhere to very limited ingestion of advance tracks from my favorite bands' records before I can hear the track in the context of the entire album, but with this new Lakes record that's dropping on The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings - which according to the write-up on the band's Bandcamp is designed as one continuous cycle of songs - it's really hard. Because I want this one to wash over me as an entire expression.
From the Bandcamp:
"The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings honors the very essence of punk rock: the notion that a band needs only be relevant to itself. At last, the Besnard Lakes have crafted a continuous long-form suite: nine tracks that could be listened together as one, like Spiritualized's Lazer Guided Melodies or even Dark Side of the Moon, overflowing with melody and harmony, drone and dazzle, the group's own unique weather."
The digital is out out January 19th, and pre-order for the GORGEOUS physical album is at the Lake's Bandcamp HERE.
Also, I'm very pleased to see the return to form on the album's title. I know the band had previously expressed concern people would get sick of the format, but I for one, love it. However, it also makes me wonder if this is the final album from the Lakes. Let's hope not.
Watch:
I watched Bea Grant's 12 Hour Shift last night. WOW! Fantastic dark comedy. Go HERE for a short, spoiler-free Letterboxd review and the trailer. This is currently a $6.99 rental on Prime and absolutely worth your hard-earned money.
In the quiet moments of my day - which admittedly are fleeting - I am still entirely under the spell of Fleet Foxes' newest record Shore. While I've heard this band before - specifically, in 2009 my cousin Charles came out for a visit and introduced them to me with the previous year's Eponymous debut - I've never really listened to them in anything but a passive capacity. Why then, do I feel as though Robin Pecknold's voice hits me like that of an old friend? Someone I've really spent some time listening to, reflecting on, and being moved by? While my memory has absolutely proven to be complete shite the older I've got (who knew all those fears about constant and gratuitous pot use would actually yield these results?), and it's possible I spent more time in the late 00s listening to this band than I remember, it seems more likely that first trip Charles and I took around San Pedro's Portuguese Bend on a ridiculously peaceful and serene July day where he first played the band for me really cemented itself in my emotional epicentre. Although I'd moved from Chicago to LALALand three years prior at that point, when you consider how the momentum of daily life makes it pass in a blur, I remember I still felt like a relatively new transplant at that point, and the first visit from one of my favorite people on Earth no doubt combined with the music to make a photographic impression that is retriggered by the sound of Pecknold's voice here, over a decade down the road.
Pretty cool.
Watch:
I finally got around to watching Antonio Campos's cinematic adaptation of Donald Ray Pollock's novel The Devil All the Time. I really liked it. Instead of attempting to stuff Pollock's novel into a conventional three-act movie, Campos and his brother Paul, who wrote the screenplay, really allowed the film to go on a more literary journey.
The Devil All the Time sprawls over the course of two generations, weaving together multiple people's stories and how they all coalesce around the death and depravity of the twisted impulses of humanity as reflected through the misleading light of religion when not tempered with intelligence and common decency.
Yeah. The more things change...
Playlist:
Code Orange - Underneath
Willie Nelson and Leon Russell - One for the Road
Mr. Bungle - The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny
Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit Vol. 1
The Doves - The Universal Want
Anthrax - Spreading The Disease
Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars
Jehnny Beth - To Love is to Live
Michael Kiwanuka - KIWANUKA
Fleet Floxes - Shore
Card:
In a fairly superficial way, I find it interesting that the card I draw for this post is the 8 of Wands Swiftness when I post Fleet Foxes as the music and the first words of the second song on that album are "For Richard Swift."
As if I'm not completely overtaken by my love of Greg Puciato's debut solo album Child Soldier: Creator of God, the former lead singer of Dillinger Escape Plan has put out a new, multi-media package. Available from his own Federal Prisoner label HERE, Fuck Content is a video/audio release featuring a ten-song live set and five new studio tracks. I love Puciato's music, but I've also become quite a fan of his aesthetic. All the glitchy, seizuring graphics, the black and white digital abstractions that almost resemble some cyberpunk version of newsprint. It's all very fitting for the noisy/melodic mash-up that defines this first album's sound, so the idea that his follow-up release is an audio/visual thing really just makes sense. Also, not nearly enough musicians do this.
Read:
I finished my re-read of Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn. It'd been over ten years since I read this the first time and inspired by the film, I decided to revisit, not remembering a lot of specifics, except that the movie is very different. Still, I really enjoyed both.
After that, I picked up that new Brubaker/Phillips Hardcover Graphic Novel Reckless, expecting to read it in several sittings. Nope. I blew through Reckless non-stop, and even though I just got done telling everyone Pulp is their best, Reckless comes in ahead of that one by about 100 miles.
This book is the perfect iteration of these gentlemen's ongoing collaboration, and if this is the case, we have nowhere to go but up. Hot damn, go buy this and read it now; Reckless is FANTASTIC!
Watch:
The Mandalorian's second season ended last night and I am going to feel every day between now and season three. I am absolutely floored, not only at how fantastic this show is, but how John Favreau has completely undone my hatred of star wars - a hatred rooted in a betrayal, the complete undermining and convolution of something that should have been so simple, namely, making new star wars movies. This veritable disgust that I feel for the franchise began to sink deep into my blood three years ago, when I sat in a movie theatre in LaGrange, Illinois and watched the trainwreck that is The Last Jedi.
Disney + has really been a gamechanger for the fan-driven content previously only associated at such a high level with movies released in megaplexes. If you watch The Mando show, you're missing something great if you skip the end credits (especially on this last episode. Whewww! and on that, I will say no more). When you watch all those names and roles scroll up your screen and realize that these television shows Disney is producing are every bit as accomplished as major motion pictures. That in itself just blows me away, the fact that Disney is so big they can change the game this much (also, I secretly hope all the Marvel/Star Wars stuff will go this route and we can go back to having non-blockbuster movies in theatres in a year or four).
Anyway, Favreau really should be crowned king Geek for what he did for starting the MCU with Iron Man and now reinventing and, frankly, saving Star Wars from itself by taking it back to its roots. This final episode brought me to tears. Not just because of the story, but because finally, after twenty years of new star wars material, SOMEBODY GOT IT FUCKING RIGHT.
Playlist:
Four Stroke Baron - Planet Silver Screen
Opeth - Deliverance
Allegaeon - Apoptosis
The Plimsouls - Everywhere At Once
Preoccupations - Eponymous
XTC - Drums and Wires
Kevin Morby - Singing Saw
Calexico - Seasonal Shift
Squeeze - Argybargy
Slayer - Live Undead
Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery
Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun
Devo - Going Down (single)
Fleet Foxes - Shore
Greg Puciato - Child Soldier: Creator of God
Various Artists - Joe Begos's Bliss Spotify Playlist
Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full
Loathe - I Let It In and It Took Everything
Code Orange - Beneath
Card:
A solid foundation for a solid trilogy. That's what I've been thinking about as I approach a stopping point in Shadow Play Book Two. I have to wind this plot down just right by the end of this section of three sections, so after I do one last post-Beta Reader edit on Murder Virus and release it, I can hop back into Shadow Play and really make that third act SPRING.
My god, these guys are like the Bloc Party of Post Metal. This is, of course, one of the albums I discovered directly after putting up my 'best of 2020' list last week. The way Loathe move between noise, atmosphere, super intense metal, and melodic vocals is seamless and an absolute joy to listen to, especially on headphones.
Watch:
Alex De La Iglesia is a filmmaker who I've known about for nearly 20 years now but never seen any of his movies. And there's a lot of them.
To go back to the early 21st century, when I still lived in Chicago, my good friend and brain trust behind Darkness Brings the Cold Dennis is one of two friends who really stoked my love of Horror movies. Dennis had an enormous collection of DVDs and a wealth of knowledge for the genre at large, and one of the films he always touted as a favorite was one he couldn't update from his old VHS copy, for which he did not have a player. This was Iglesias's 1995 Day of the Beast. Without even knowing anything about this one, I was intrigued based on the name and cover image, which Dennis had on a badass shirt:
After a recent conversation with Dennis, I finally sought out some of Iglesias's films and added them to my Amazon Watch List. Just in time, because the other day the trailer for his new HBO series made its rounds in our Horror Vision text thread, and I was BLOWN AWAY. Whatever that is at 1:19 will be in my nightmares for years to come. It reminds me a bit of that thing at 21 seconds into the American Horror Story: Coven opening credits sequence.
Either way, January 4th can NOT come fast enough.
NCBD:
Holy cow, there were A LOT of new comics for me yesterday. I divide this between the two shops, so I'm spreading my support around, but here's a combined total of what I picked up:
This series continues to be one of the funniest things I've read in a while. Super light, super creative, each issue reads like a chapter in a big-budget action film.
A recommendation from my Drinking w/ Comics co-host Mike Wellman, this one takes place in Chicago and totally nails its look at feel. Hell, I've been to the Globe Pub, so that got me right away.
The previous issue of this new Locke and Key mini series nearly made me cry, so I'm looking forward to some closure before we do next year's crossover with Sandman.
Miskatonic #2, wherein we get a ton of new characters from all kinds of H.P. Lovecraft stories involved in what is shaping up to be a really complex, interesting blend of historical fact with Lovecraft's literary legacy.
Eddie at the Bug recommended this very independent book to me, and the moment I saw it, I knew I had to have it. Artist Alex Ziritt - who made a huge impression on me with Space Raiders a few years back - offers some truly unique style when designing his visual worlds, and from the brief flip-through I did upon picking this one up, looks like Night Hunters is no different.
I totally forgot the new Brubaker/Phillis HC was landing this week until I walked into the shop. Perfect timing, as I finally just read their previous one, Pulp, over the weekend. It won't take me nearly that long to dig into this one, that's for sure, as I loved Pulp, and it definitely put me in the mood for more from these guys.
Two issues left after this one, and once again, I have NO idea where this is going. Some definite surprises in this chapter, and more of that gorgeous art and deep character development the Opena/ Remender team seems able to deliver flawlessly.
'
This final one, We Live #3 from Aftershock Comics, just turned this series from an on-the-fence read to something I Love. Definite shades of Day of the Dead and Girl with All the Gifts, this issue supplants the first two chapters' more Fantasy approach with an equal measure of Horror. This book feels like something new, something that blends a lot of different influences and genres for a unique effect. We Live has also proved its ability to continuously surprise me, so from here out, I'll be waiting for each subsequent issue with the kind of excitement few books these days inspire in me.
Playlist:
Swans - The Seer
Howard Shore - Crash OST
Portishead - Third
Richard Einhorn - Shockwaves OST
Amesoeurs - Eponymous
Opeth - Deliverance
Anthrax - State of Euphoria
One Stroke Baron -
Loathe - I Let It In and It Took Everything
Card:
This is certainly how I feel at the moment, having spent nearly $70 on comics today. I'm kind of beating myself up over it. It's such a weird feeling, to balance in your head what you want and what you need. I'd imagine my peers with children have an easier time staying on focus as far as needs/wants. I'm not jealous, but I definitely think that, as I age and find myself pretty much able to buy whatever I want within my realms of interest - none of which is extravagant, mind you, but definitely adds up - I feel occasional pangs of guilt at, well, I guess at not spending the money one something more important? This, however, begs the question who decides what's important.
I was super happy to finally get a copy of Criterion's recently released Blu Ray for David Cronenberg's Crash. Not only has the film become my second favorite Cronenberg just in the two years since I first saw it at 2018's Beyondfest Cronenberg retrospective, but Howard Shore's score is probably my favorite of his music for Cronenberg's films. Here's the title theme, some of the sickest guitar I have ever heard.
Watch:
I guess I won't be getting rid of my Disney + sub any time soon... Wow. Just wow. The mind reels at what we could get from a What If? series down the road. Some of my favorites from the comic series - which I didn't buy regularly but always picked up if one of the 'What If' scenarios spoke to my particular Marvel series proclivities:
We're not really in a position with the MCU to see this kind of stuff happen, but then again, who is to say that the What If? show will only stick to variations of what the MCU has done so far?
Read:
In preparation of the upcoming final issue of Rick Remender and Jerome Opena's Seven to Eternity, I've just completed a re-read of the series to date. Next? The final issue of Gideon Falls lands this Wednesday, and as such, I have begun to work my way back through that series.
Creepy AF, and featuring some of my favorite art EVER, I'm super psyched to be taking this trip again just in time for the end of the story.
Playlist:
Joseph Deluca - Evil Dead 2
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
Michael Kiwanuka - KIWANUKA
Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery
Radiohead - Kid A
Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - May Our Chambers Be Full
Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher
Meg Myers - Sorry
Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou - Hollywood (pre-release single)
La Hell Gang - Thru Me Again
Howard Shore - Crash OST
Cynic - Kindly Bent to Free us
The Plimsouls - Everywhere at Once
Greg Puciato - Child Soldier: Creator of God
Michael Kiwanuka - KIWANUKA
Zeal and Ardor - Wake of a Nation EP
Allegaeon - Apoptosis
Loathe - I Let It in and It Took Everything
Deafheaven - 10 Years Gone
Card:
8 of Wands - Swiftness. Eights always move on from the stoic, sturdy Netzach (7s) to a transient moment of swift action and/or decisiveness.
Time to switch gears again. My beta reader has finished Murder Virus, I have all her suggestions and edits logged and, mostly, completed. Now I need to pursue the cover art I want and get this fucker ready to publish by the end of January.
