#seems like all the boys liked Justin except for Blakes

[beachyserasims]

♡ Episode 9 | GENEVA ISLAND

♡ Autumn woke up and talked with Sean, Judi, and Rowan all morning, enjoying the company of good friends. On her one-on-one with the new islander Justin, her first impression of him is that he is off in dreamland.

♡ Judi spent the morning chatting with Sean, Autumn, and Rowan. When meeting Justin, her first impression is that he is utterly charmless.

♡ Jasmine talked with Blakes and helped him cook all morning. When he asked her to be his girlfriend she accepted without giving much thought, because she wants Blakes to herself after the Sophie incident. When meeting Justin, she accepted his flirting. She became upset to see Blakes upset with her, and she questioned moving too fast. Her head was an a swivel all night between the two boys.

♡ Rowan likes to work out every morning to keep up his physique for not only his job but also his rugged hobby lifestyle. He spent the morning helping cook and chatting with Sean and Judi. When he met the new islander, Justin, his first impression is that he is reasonable.

♡ Sean woke up hungover, which he seems to do often. His looming fear of failure and death catches up to him every morning as he continuously has nightmares of losing what he worked hard for back at home. That, and he is nervous that the experience will be a waste of time. He met Justin and thinks he is reasonable because of how similar they are to each other.

♡ Blakes woke up and talked with Jasmine before making breakfast with hers and Rowans help, and asked Jasmine to be his girlfriend which she accepted. He doesn’t like Justin and thinks he is in dreamland. Later, he caught Justin flirting with Jasmine and it made him very upset.

♡ Justin entered the Villa and had one-on-one time with each girl while they played a game of chess. He met Autumn and had the first impression that she is pretentious, and gave her a suggestive look while they played. When he met Jasmine, his first impression of her is that she is funny, and he thinks she is very charming.  He met Judi last, and thought she is not his type. When meeting Sean, he thinks he is sophisticated and likes his style, and thinks Rowan and Blakes are both imaginative. In the evening, he flirted with Jasmine.

The Start || Episode #1 || Previous || Next

[charlieconwayy]

D3: The Mighty Ducks (1996) is the best Ducks movie and a flawless coming of age movie

It’s no secret that The Mighty Ducks are a beloved trilogy. The three films spawned a professional NHL team named in their honor, 2021 sequel series, as well as many knockoff films released in the 1990s. But with any movie series, fans tend to rank the films and have passionate opinions on which is the best. For most Ducks fans, the answer is simple: D2. It has the Bash Brothers, Team USA dominating, the iconic “Ducks Fly Together” scene and two Queen songs. What’s not to love? But upon a rewatch of the trilogy, I came to realize that it’s not D2, or even the original, that is the best in the series.

It’s the criminally underrated 1996 D3 that for me, is the most mature and has the most heart. Perhaps it’s that the Ducks are now old enough to carry their own weight on screen. Perhaps it’s that the film takes a look at trauma, specifically trauma in teenagers, and how that manifests itself. Perhaps it’s that the film is maybe ahead of its time, in the way it discusses classism, racism and sexism. There is so much about this overly hated film that makes it the best Ducks movie and a perfect coming of age film.

The movie starts presumably a few years following the Ducks’ win against Iceland. They all look noticeably older - definitely older than the middle schoolers we left behind in 1994 - and all of the male Ducks’ voices have dropped a few octaves. Gordon Bombay, played by Emilio Estevez, is presenting the team (except for unfortunately, Jesse Hall, a leader among the Ducks who would’ve made for a strong presence in this mature film, as well as Portman, but we’ll get to him later) with scholarships to his alma mater, Eden Hall, a preparatory high school in Minnesota. Charlie Conway, played by a young, pre-Dawson’s Creek Joshua Jackson, is the Ducks’ captain and unspoken leader. There’s been much debate over the years over whether or not Charlie is the true captain of the Ducks. Adam Banks, played by Vincent Larusso, is far and away better than practically every Duck combined. Fulton Reed, played by Elden Henson, has shown more maturity and leadership at this point. It’s probably true that the Ducks as a team think that Charlie is Captain because of Bombay’s favoritism towards him (and his mother), but I think that this film makes it abundantly clear why Charlie is the captain. 

D3 is Charlie’s story. We see that in the opening scene, when Bombay tells Charlie he will not be following the team to Eden Hall, accepting a job instead in California. We learned in the original Mighty Ducks film, that Charlie and his mother left a bad situation in Charlie’s father when Charlie was very young. We also hear about Charlie’s mother, Casey’s marriage to a new man in the D2, who we can assume from what Jan says, that Charlie doesn’t like. We see in that first film, Charlie’s reaction to Bombay announcing that he is leaving the Ducks after the two of them have formed a bond. It is very clear that Charlie deals with abandonment issues, stemming from trauma in his early childhood. Charlie freaks out when a D3 Bombay announces the same thing, and storms off. 

Change is the biggest theme in D3. We see how change affects each of the Ducks, even those who don’t get many lines. Some, like Russ Tyler, played by SNL’s Kenan Thompson, think it’s a good thing. All of the Ducks don’t come from good neighborhoods and we assume that most of them don’t have the best home lives, especially when Charlie tells their new coach, Orion, played by Jeffrey Nordling, that the Ducks are the only good thing that any of them have had. Going to a preparatory school should be a good thing for them. But for most of them, it’s not. The new Ducks (who by the way, three of which are people of color, and one of which, is a woman) are immediately told that “their kind” is not welcome at Eden Hall. The Varsity team claim that they feel this way because the captain’s younger brother was not admitted onto the JV team because of the Ducks’ scholarships, but it’s very clear what they really mean. Russ commented that he’s the only black person on the whole campus earlier, and he, Luis Mendoza (The Sandlot’s Mike Vitar) and Ken Wu (Justin Wong) are the only people of color we see in the film. Change takes a toll on each member of the team. We see it the most in Charlie, but we also hear from Fulton on how the separation from his best friend, Dean Portman (Aaron Lohr), who decided not to enroll at Eden Hall, is taking a toll on him. Connie (Margerite Moreau) and Guy (Garrette Henson) have presumably broken up, as the two small scenes we get of them, they are arguing. It’s a transition period, one that the first year of high school often is. But it’s also a look on how a rich, white privileged world is vastly different than the one that the Ducks are used to. 

Coach Orion seems like a hardass, especially when he tells Charlie at their first practice that he will no longer be “Captain Duck” (as coined by D2’s Gunnar Stahl, played by Scott Whyte, who now plays the level-headed Varsity goalie Scooter). This, to the Ducks, is a line in the sand. Ever since Bombay turned District 5 into the Ducks four years previous, Charlie has been their captain. They’re in a whole new environment, where the man who gave them so much happiness and so many friendships isn’t, and their “little Duck tricks” won’t work anymore. Orion thinks Charlie is a showoff, and perhaps he is. This Charlie is vastly different than the sweet, shy Charlie we see in D1 and D2. But this Charlie is older, has just been abandoned by a man he considered a father, and is being harassed on a daily basis for being, as Varsity Captain Reilly puts it, “white trash.” I find it hard to believe sometimes that fans can look at Charlie from the outside, and not see who he is on the inside. All of Charlie’s closest relationships that we see portrayed in this movie, are with women. His mother (who he, as a teenage boy, says “I love you” to in the final scene of the movie), his teammates, Connie and Julie, who he gets a lot more screentime with, and with new love interest, Linda (Margot Finley).

I think now is a great time to talk about the shockingly impressive way all of the female characters are portrayed in this series, particularly this movie, especially for a 90s sports film. Connie has always been a leader on and off the ice. She’s in a relationship with Guy, but it’s not her only character trait. Dubbed “the Velvet Hammer” by Averman (Matt Doherty), she stands up for herself, and for her shy teammates (she literally shoves Peter Mark - a character cut out of D2 and D3 for good reason - in D1 when he insults Charlie) and stands up to the entire Varsity team despite them telling her that they hope they can “fight” with her later. Julie “The Cat” Gaffney (Columbe Jacobsen) is the second best player on the Ducks, despite the little ice time (thanks, Bombay) we see her have. She is the first person to tell of the Varsity, telling Captain Reilly that his little brother “just wasn’t good enough.” She’s a huge facilitator in the fire ant prank and despite the very weird and out of character game she had against the Blake Bears, shows that she deserves the number one goalie slot that Reilly gives her - despite what Goldberg, and the obvious underlying sexism there, have to say. I’ve also always been very impressed with Charlie’s mother, Casey (Heidi Kling). Although she has a romance with Bombay in D1, she makes it clear from the get go that her first priority is Charlie. We know that she took the two of them away from an abusive situation, and she’s a goddamn hero for that. Her scenes in D3 are limited, but they always show her chastising Charlie’s antics and encouraging him to stay in school. It goes unsaid, but it’s clear that she knows that he’s not going to get an education this good in the problematic public school system. But according to Linda, Charlie’s love interest, the private school system is no better. The first time we see Linda, she is protesting the “outdated” Warriors team name. This was in a 1996 kids movie, no less. She holds her own against Charlie, calling him out when he’s wrong. No one aside from Charlie, and maybe Fulton, get much screentime or lines aside from Bombay and Orion, but her presence and the point of her character is clear - not every rich person agrees with the horrible things that wealthy people do. 

Back to the plot.

When the Ducks receive their positions, they learn that Banks, as a freshman, has made Varsity. From an outside perspective, they seems obvious. Banks is the best player we see in any of the films, definitely miles better than the losers on Varsity, so it seems obvious that he would be promoted. But Banks is unhappy with this. Adam Banks is a fan favorite character, definitely due to the sweet, understated performance by Larusso, but we don’t see much of him. From what we do see of him though, he underwent a huge character arc from D1 to now. In D1, Banks goes against his father’s protests and joins the Ducks, claiming that he “just wants to play hockey.” Here in D3, we see that Banks is utterly miserable despite playing with some of the best players in the state, purely because he’s not with his friends. At the end of the film, he makes the (questionable) decision to rejoin the Ducks and go against the Varsity. But Varsity seems to feel that Banks fits in with them, for obvious reasons. He’s the only Duck who comes from an affluent background, and he’s definitely the most clean cut. Captain Reilly is visibly angry in the final showdown with the Ducks that they no longer have Banks on their side, as if he’s betrayed “his kind.”

The turning point of the film comes when after Charlie has quit the freshman team (no longer the Ducks), Hans, a father figure to the Ducks and Bombay, suddenly passes away. It’s an insanely dark moment for a Disney film, especially when Bombay returns to the funeral and reminds the Ducks that it was “Hans who taught them to fly” and Charlie storms off, crying. I think Joshua Jackson, in the Ducks films, as well as in Dawson’s Creek, is phenomenally good at portraying teenagers who wouldn’t normally be seen as leading men. Who let their emotions overtake them, who have anger issues, who deal with familial problems. Characters like that in leading roles were almost unheard of in the 90s, and in the upcoming scenes, it reminds us why this side of Charlie that we’ve seen throughout the movie is not the only side of Charlie.

Bombay takes Charlie to the rink to see Orion skating with his disabled daughter, who was injured in a car accident. He reveals to Charlie that Orion quit the NHL to take care of her, and this immediately changes Charlie’s opinion of him, but he’s still unconvinced about rejoining the team. The next scene is without question, the greatest and most important scene of the trilogy. The last two films spent way too much time telling us how great of a person Bombay was, how he was the Minnesota Miracle Man,despite us seeing so little of that onscreen. We see him making mistake after mistake, hurting the team, being an unjustified dick to those around him. But this scene more than makes up for all of that. I’ve put the quote from this scene below.

Bombay: I was like you, Charlie. When I played hockey, I was a total hot shot. I tried to take control of every game. I wound up quitting. So I tried the law. I ruled the courtroom, but inside, I’m a mess. Start drinking. Man, I was going down. But then this great thing happened, maybe the best thing ever - I got arrested and sentenced to community service. And there you were - Charlie and the Ducks. And as hard as I fought it, there you were. You gave me a life, Charlie, and I want to say thank you. I told Orion about all of this when I talked to him about taking over. I told him that you were the heart of the team and that you would learn something from each other. I told him that you were the real Minnesota Miracle Man. 

Charlie: You did?

Bombay: I did. So be that man, Charlie. Be that man.

It’s a callback to D2, when Jan tells Bombay “Be that man, Gordon. Be that man.” This scene is flawless. Every good thing that has happened to the Ducks, came because of Charlie’s heart. It came because of that game when Charlie refused to cheat, and made Bombay see his wrongs. It came because of when Bombay first tried to quit the team, and seeing how hurt Charlie was, agreed to stay. It was Charlie who stepped out of the game against Iceland so that Banks could play. It was Charlie who found them Russ. Giving the credit to a young, emotionally unstable teenager, rather than their Emilio Estevez, hotshot Bombay, is the best thing this series ever did.

This movie, in my opinion, is nearly flawless. Every moment has been planned to make the same point - change sucks. Especially when you’re a teenager. Even more so when you’re a teenager with trauma.

[gainingfiction]

Lifeguard Off Duty: Chapter 9

(Read Chapter 8 by gainerstories here)

Rather than risk ending up like a sitcom character with two dates to the dance, Bradley decided to roll a few of plans together into the ultimate evening of celebration. Jeremy and the boys from Muffin Tops would stop by his work happy hour at Michaela’s on Friday night. Peter would join him there, and they’d move onto their romantic dinner date afterwards: it had taken a little rearranging, but he’d managed to line everything up into a perfect stretch of hedonism.

After finishing up with the gym’s seated press on Thursday evening, Bradley decided to see if his workouts had done anything for his weight. He stepped off the scales, after clocking in at an eye-popping 324 pounds: a full 11 pounds heavier than he had been just a couple of weeks before. Had he been doing that much celebrating? 

“Hey, man. Can’t wait for tomorrow,” came Jeremy’s voice from behind him.

“Hey, me neither,” Bradley said, turning to greet his gym buddy. He joked, “You trying to see the number?”

“Don’t need to. I can tell by your outfit that it’s still going up,” Jeremy laughed as he gave Bradley’s belly a gentle pat right around his exposed navel. It was Jeremy’s favourite running joke—not that Bradley ever ran anymore.

“Very funny,” Bradley grinned, as he turned to head out for the evening. After half an hour at 24 Hour Fitness, he couldn’t wait to eat whatever lavish spread Peter had come up with that day.

The next morning, Bradley had a spring in his very heavy step. He whistled as he soaped up the rolls and bulges of his colossal body in the shower, and hummed as he ran his towel along the sloping curves of his huge rear. He inhaled sharply to get his work shirt closed, and then inhaled the massive breakfast feast that Peter had cooked up for him: bacon, sausages, hash browns, syrupy pancakes, and buttery toast. Shirt buttons spreading apart as they fought to restrain his gut, Bradley heaved himself into his car and made his way to Muffin Tops.

After loading up on pastries for the day, Bradley headed to work. He greeted his friends in the recreation department before making his way to his own corner of city hall. As usual, Malcolm appeared with a huge plate of home cooking, followed shortly by Diane and Eric who wanted confirmation that Bradley wasn’t going to bail on drinks. By the time he left the office, he had eaten every crumb that had been put in front of him, but his mind was already wandering to the nachos and fries at Michaela’s.

The place was just starting to get lively when Bradley arrived. He plodded over to Eric and Wanda, who were standing by the bar. As soon as he arrived, Wanda placed a frothy mug of beer in his hand. She added, “Even if you work in another department now, I’m still the boss.”

“Of course,” Bradley said, feeling sincere. Wanda had done so much for him. He chatted with her for a while, digging in when a large platter of nachos appeared beside him. And when Diane appeared with an overloaded plate of fries, he allowed himself to be stolen away. He let his co-worker grab a few pats of his monster gut as he polished off the snacks, before turning to Eric and his boyfriend.

The one-time twinks looked completely overstuffed as they stood side-by-side, splitting well over 300 pounds of excess relationship weight between them. They were still fairly fashionable, but Bradley could see that they shared his struggles with fitting into clothes: buttons strained and cotton rode up to expose their mutual overindulgence. Ordering another beer, he chatted with both of them, realizing that they were as charming and fun as Eric’s social media profiles made them seem.

While Bradley was talking to them, he watched Peter arrive and slip effortlessly into a conversation with Malcolm and Wanda. Bradley realized that they had probably been going to Peter’s coffee cart for longer than he had. He admired the way Peter’s athletic-fit blazer flattered his lithe build, contrasting it to the massive men in front of him and the equally massive man he had become. As he chatted with Peter and Blake, he felt a distinct appreciation for the tattooed hunk in his life.

Bradley was pleased to see that Jeremy had met Hayden and Diego. Excusing himself, he made his way over to the two mountains of lard and the muscle-bound jock. “How are three of my favourite people?” he asked, when he arrived. He stifled a belch, before taking a swig of beer.

“Ah, I love fat Bradley,” Diego said to Jeremy and Hayden, as he clapped his loyal customer on the back. He turned to Bradley. “You were never this relaxed when we worked at the beach! But that’s all water under the bridge.”

Bradley flushed. “I guess I needed to walk a mile in your shoes.”

“Or waddle,” Hayden said. “And maybe not a full mile.”

The guys all laughed in response. Bradley noticed that Peter had joined the group. Patting the lower part of Bradley’s back, he joked, “This guy doesn’t even walk to the fridge anymore, he gets me to grab his beers for him.”

“That sounds like the life,” Hayden said, as the group laughed. “Diego, we need someone to bring us beers.”

“That could be a job for Jeremy,” Bradley said, giving his gym buddy a wink. Jeremy had been throwing himself at the blubber-bound bakery owners practically since he arrived.

The group chatted, and the beer flowed. After a while, Diego and Bradley got to reminiscing about their time at Thick Sands beach. Diego pulled out his phone, showing off an old picture of the two complete with sunglasses, smiles, and perfect abs. Bradley could barely remember what it felt like to be that small, and yet he’d been the beach babe-in-residence for years. If he tried to climb the lifeguard tower at his current size, he’d probably wreck the wooden ladder.

The time at Michaela’s flew by, with Bradley helping himself to the beer and bar food as his friends from work and beyond dropped by to congratulate him and talk. After what felt like no time, but what had really been hours, Peter arrived to remind Bradley of their dinner reservation. Draining his fourth beer, Bradley settled his tab and said goodbye.

“I was just chatting with Christian, the head lifeguard that replaced you. Looks like Wanda offered him your old job. He really is following in your footsteps,” Peter said, as they made their way out of the bar.

Bradley turned and looked at Christian, who was chatting with Wanda and Eric. He reminded Bradley of himself. With a smile, Bradley said, “If Wanda gives him the desk next to Eric, that might be in more ways than one.”

Outside, the air was cool and fresh. Side by side, Peter and Bradley walked to the end of the next block, to the small bistro that had come highly recommended. It was simply decorated, with sleek wooden furniture and a few rustic touches. The couple followed the hostess to their seat, and had a chance to look over the menu.

After a few moments, their waiter arrived with water. He was tall and thin, with a forgettable face. “My name is Justin, I’ll be taking care of you guys this evening,” he said. Justin was obviously gay, and he shot judgemental looks in Bradley’s direction as he spoke. Then, he turned to Peter with a smile. “Can I interest you in any drinks?”

“Yes, we’ll share a bottle of the house red,” Peter said. His face was blank. When the waiter took the drink menu and retreated, Peter rolled his eyes and Bradley chuckled. Apparently some guys still tried to deny the allure of the dad bod.

The pair chatted as they continued to weigh menu options. After a little while, the waiter reappeared to pour the wine and take their orders. After Peter ordered the white fish for his main course, it was Bradley’s turn to order.

“I’ll start with the fettucine alfredo, and then—”

“The fettucine alfredo is a main course,” Justin interrupted.

“I know. I’m gonna have it as an appetizer. And then for my main I’ll have the surf and turf, with an extra baked potato on the side,” Bradley said. He closed his menu. “Medium for the steak.”

With a glare in Bradley’s direction, the server clicked his pen and disappeared as the guys attempted to say thanks.

The two relaxed, drinking freely and swapping opinions about happy hour and whether Diego and Hayden would take Jeremy home. Peter painted quite a picture of the thick throuple that they were destined to become, and Bradley complimented his insight. Conversation was easy, moving from Peter’s family in Korea to Bradley’s high school diving career. Bradley slurped back the pasta, before tearing into his steak and lobster with gusto. Buttery potato and fried veggies disappeared into his vast gut. He felt increasingly stuffed, but he plowed forward. As they talked and ate, they (especially Bradley) finished the wine.

When the time came for dessert, Bradley couldn’t pass up the chocolate cheesecake. Peter tasted a spoonful, leaving Bradley to stuff himself with the rest. When the dessert plate was empty, Bradley excused himself to go to the washroom.

After relieving himself at the urinal, he paused in front of the mirror. No wonder Justin’s eyes had boggled as Bradley walked to the washroom: there were gaping spaces between the buttons of his shirt, revealing swathes of fat. And his gut looked massively round after a full day of stuffing himself stupid. Stifling a belch, Bradley plodded back across the restaurant.

Bradley pulled back his chair and slumped into it, ready to call for the cheque and take his boyfriend home. Except, as his giant rump made contact with the seat, he could feel something shifting. And as his bulging ass settled into place, Bradley heard a whining creak. A moment later, after a violent snap, Bradley’s big butt was on the floor, and he was surrounded by pieces of broken chair. Looking down, he realized that the two buttons straining over the fattest part of his gut had chosen that moment to give up, flying off under the pressure of Bradley’s behemoth belly.

“Holy shit, babe, are you okay?” Peter was at Bradley’s side in a flash.

“Fine,” Bradley said, feeling dazed. He felt embarrassed that part of his massive, hairy gut had been exposed to the cool air of the restaurant, made all the more embarrassing by every set of eyes bearing down on him. Peter’s shredded muscles bulging from the exertion, he helped Bradley to his feet.

By the time Bradley was standing, the manager had appeared. He was a middle-aged man, no more than 5’5” and skinny as a rail. Bradley’s gigantic frame absolutely dwarfed him. “Oh, my God. Are you alright? We are so sorry, sir, truly. Your meal is on us, of course. And let me write a note, your next meal will be on us, too.”

With nothing injured but his pride, Bradley certainly wasn’t going to turn down that offer.

By the time they got home, the couple was already laughing it off. “I really never thought I’d do something like that,” Bradley said, as he undid his remaining shirt buttons.

Planting his hands on Bradley’s sides, Peter traced the expanse of his lover’s thick gut. “You were just too much man for those shitty chairs.”

“Well it’s a good thing you’re man enough to handle me,” Bradley said, clapping the underside of his belly and making it shake, despite the overwhelming fullness.

The two made their way to the bedroom, Peter caressing Bradley’s bulging love handles as they walked. “You know, the first time I went to the beach here, I fantasized about getting rescued by the hunky lifeguard?” Peter said. “If you still have your old uniform around, I could go for some role-play.”

“Sounds great,” Bradley said. He ran a hand along Peter’s hip. “You know what? I have a feeling we’ll be rescuing each other for a long time to come.”

[allspark]

It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like Transformers, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, My Little Pony, Spider-Man, Star Trek, and more! All coming your way for June 12th!

TRANSFORMERS #7

Brian Ruckley (A) Cachet Whitman (CVR A) Christian Ward (CVR B) Livio Ramondelli

When another body shows up, Chromia and Prowl feel the pressure to get answers. Bumblebee, meanwhile, applies for a new job-as a bodyguard. But first, he has to impress Elita-1.

•   New story begins here! •   A brand-new era of Transformers!

TRANSFORMERS #1 (2ND PTG)

Brian Ruckley (A) Angel Hernandez, Cachet Whitman (CVR) Gabriel Rodriguez

GI JOE A REAL AMERICAN HERO #263

Larry Hama (A/CVR A) Netho Diaz (CVR B) Dan Fraga

As Cobra continues its relentless onslaught on a global scale, G.I. Joe is there to meet them in kind. It’s tyranny versus freedom-heroes and villains will rise and fall, bullets will fly, blood will spill, and who and what remains when the smoke clears is anyone’s guess! Join Living Legend Larry Hama and superstar artist Netho Diaz for another explosive adventure into the action-packed world if G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero!

AMBER BLAKE #1 (2ND PTG)

Jade Lagardère (A/CVR) Butch Guice

AMBER BLAKE #4

Jade Lagardère (A/CVR) Butch Guice

Amber Blake has finally found the person responsible for all of the pain in her life-and there’s no way she’s letting him get away again. But nothing is as it seems, and when the people closest to her betray her, she’ll have to use all of her skills to get out alive-and to get the vengeance she’s longed for.

BERKELEY BREATHED’S BLOOM COUNTY ARTIST EDITION HC

Berkeley Breathed (A/CVR) Berkeley Breathed

The Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of one of the most cherished and fondly remembered comic strips of all time showcases his art in this deluxe oversized edition. You’ve read all the strips, now see the art! This Artist’s Edition features an incredible selection of daily and Sunday comic strips, as well as a selection of sketchbook pages and drawings, published here for the very first time, each and every one scanned from the original art. The dailies are presented at the ACTUAL size drawn, and the Sundays have been slightly reduced but are still bigger and more beautiful than they have ever been presented before! This is the ULTIMATE Bloom County collection by the inimitable Berkeley Breathead!

•   Advance solicited for November release! •   Bloom County returned as a successful webcomic in 2015, with collections published annually by IDW to critical acclaim.

DISNEY COMICS AND STORIES #5

Andrea Castellan, Marco Gervasio, Tito Faraci (A) Andrea Ferraris, Marco Gervasio, Alessio Coppola (CVR) Paolo Campinoti

Three stories never-before-seen in the U.S. await you in another fun-filled issue! In “Mickey Mouse and the Hydrophilic Monsters,” Mickey and Goofy encounter plant life like they-or you-have never seen before! Then, in “Pluto and the ‘Super’ Day,” what happens when Goofy dog-sits Mickey’s beloved pup? Why, nothing less than the unexpected! Finally, in “Shhh,” Peg-Leg Pete and his accomplice encounter more than they bargained for in a robbery gone very wrong!

GLOW #2

Tini Howard (A/CVR A) Hannah Templer

Faced with foes in the forms of the Star Primas-who have real muscles and matching windbreakers-the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling are ready to prove they aren’t unskilled losers. They’re paid television actors! And it’s time to show those Star Primas that paid television actors mean business… Based on the hit Netflix series!

GOOSEBUMPS HORRORS OF THE WITCH HOUSE #2

Denton J. Tipton, Matthew Dow Smith (A/CVR A) Chris Fenoglio

Rosie thought it was bad enough having a witch as a neighbor, but now the witch is trying to take over the whole town! As their parents fall under the witch’s dark spell, it’s up to Rosie and her friends to try and save the day. And they thought algebra was hard…

GLOW #2

Tini Howard (A/CVR A) Hannah Templer

Faced with foes in the forms of the Star Primas-who have real muscles and matching windbreakers-the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling are ready to prove they aren’t unskilled losers. They’re paid television actors! And it’s time to show those Star Primas that paid television actors mean business… Based on the hit Netflix series!

GRAVE TP

Dan Fraga (A/CVR) Dan Fraga

ADVANCE SOLICITED FOR APRIL RELEASE! For fans of coming-of-age stories similar to Stephen King’s The Body; the movie based on it, Stand By Me; IT; Stranger Things; and E.T. Drawn one panel per day over a year, follow the story of three boys who discover a shallow grave while on a weekend camping trip. But that’s just where the mystery begins. The unexpected find reveals a cigar box containing seven mysterious items: a knife, a coin, a pocket watch, a rare baseball card, a gold ring, a silver spoon, and a strange manga comic. How are these items connected? Whose body lies buried? Find out in this once in a lifetime tale of friendship, mystery, suspense, and growing up.

MARVEL ACTION SPIDER-MAN #5

Erik Burnham (A/CVR A) Christopher Jones

Now that Peter, Miles, and Gwen have joined forces, nothing can stop them! Except maybe for homework and an internship at the Daily Bugle. Not to mention being stalked by a most dangerous foe… Kraven the Hunter! All-new web-slinging action in the Mighty Marvel Manner! This exciting new story arc features the Marvel Action debut of Kraven the Hunter! Variant cover by Marvel Action: Black Panther artist Juan Samu!

MY LITTLE PONY FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC #78

Katie Cook, Andy Price (A/CVR A) Andy Price

The thrilling conclusion to the “Cosmos” story arc is here! With the most powerful ponies in Equestria under Cosmos’ control, do the remaining ponies stand a chance? And whose side will Discord take? Don’t miss the end of what might be Katie Cook and Andy Price’s finest MLP story yet!

MY LITTLE PONY TO WHERE AND BACK AGAIN GN

Justin Eisinger (A/CVR) Various

Adapting the most beloved My Little Pony animated cartoon episodes to graphic novels! My Little Pony comes to bookshelves! Revisit the inhabitants of Equestria and learn about the magic that friendship brings in this adaptation of the television series’ sixth season finale! This volume adapts the two-part “To Where and Back Again” in an original graphic novel.

ROAD OF THE DEAD HIGHWAY TO HELL TP

Jonathan Maberry (A) Drew Moss (CVR) Santiperez

Advance solicited for June release! The five-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author introduces the world to the latest chapter of the zombie epic in this over-the-top wild-ride prequel to ROAD OF THE DEAD! The dead rose and are feasting on the living and a young scientist may hold the secret to a cure. Meanwhile, zombies and biker gangs want her dead, so it’s up to a bunch of losers in muscle cars and a hijacked tank to risk everything to save her.

STAR TREK Q CONFLICT #5

Scott Tipton, David Tipton (A/CVR A&B) David Messina

The contest for the ages continues as the Captains race to capture the one exotic creature that Trelane is missing from his intergalactic menagerie-a Borg Queen! But as the Godlike beings revel in the games, the crews are hatching a plan of their own. Don’t miss the penultimate issue of the biggest Star Trek crossover of all time! The crews of The Next Generation, The Original Series, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine come together to face their biggest challenge yet! Written by Star Trek: TNG: Mirror Broken scribes Scott & David Tipton!

STAR TREK VS TRANSFORMERS TP

John Barber, Mike Johnson (A) Jack Lawrence (A/CVR) Philip Murphy

When Kirk, Spock, and the entire crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise investigate problems at a remote mine, they’re met with a explosive battle between powerful warriors who change into vehicles from the 20th century! As the battle between the Autobots and Decepticons rages, it’s up to Kirk to decide-does he violate the Prime Directive and interfere in a war that’s raged for millenia? And how will the Klingons complicate the issue? It’s cartoony fun between two of the most popular science fiction franchises in the world!

•   Advance solicited for May release! •   Four decades in the making, it’s the crossover that fans have demanded! Kirk, Spock, and Autobots! •   Decepticons and Klingons! Optimus Prime and the Prime Directive!

SWAMP MONSTERS

(CVR) Iger Shop

Something’s out there in the mad, murky depths of the fear-filled, sinister swamp… some… swamp… THING is coming for you! And it’s out for mud! The terror team that brought you Zombies, Return of the Zombies, and the petrifyingly popular hit series, Haunted Horror, takes you on an excursion of evil into the dankest, lagooniest corners of your nightmares, and dredge up over 240 pages of icky, drippy, slimy, grimy beasts from the grungy bottom of the Pre-Code comics’ bog. Swamp Monsters includes a fascinating introduction by comics legend, acclaimed artist of Swamp Thing, “Swampy” Stephen Bissette!

V-WARS GOD OF DEATH ONE-SHOT

Jonathan Maberry (A) Alex Milne (CVR A) Ryan Brown

Michael Fayne was patient zero of the plague that exploded into the Vampire Wars. A cult of militant vampires wants to resurrect him. Luther Swann leads a strike team to prevent the rise of a vampire god. New York Times bestseller Jonathan Maberry returns with an all-new V-Wars tale.

Five-time Bram Stoker award-winning author Jonathan Maberry returns to his signature comic book creation in time for the new TV series starring Ian Somerhalder!

Cover and interior art features the return of Transformers: Unicron superstar artist Alex Milne! Watch for V-Wars on Netflix starring Ian Somerhalder in 2019!

  Join the IDW Hasbro Shared Universe related conversation here in our Comics Discussion and Reviews section and here for all other franchises, superheroes, or general comic book discussions! Not a member? Join our community by creating your own free account here! Or jump right into the live chat on our Discord server or our Facebook Group!

IDW Comics Shipping List for June 12th! It’s time for our weekly Diamond Comics Shipping List! Check out some great titles IDW has in store for us next week like…

[grimelords]

​My March playlist is finished and posted on time for once! Please enjoy three and a half hours of my new and old favourite music. A lot of post-hardcore, country of a few different flavours and a thirteen second long song that goes beep beep boop. Enjoy.

Old Money - Omar Rodriguez-Lopez: Who among you will join me on my podcast ‘Omar Podriguez-Locast’ where we discuss one of Omar Rodriguez’s 60+ insane solo albums every week and grow gradually infuriated with the very existence of each other until listeners are just tuning in each week for the episode where one of us finally snaps and attacks the other with a microphone?

America’s Most Blunted - Madvillain: It’s weird that this song about the wild and wacky world of jazz cigarettes opens up with a Steve Reich sample before moving into some real Reefer Madness type lameness at the end. Songs from so long before any type of legalisation are so lame like 'recent research shows that it’s not so darn harmful!’. This song is still very good though. I only found out that Lord Quas was just Madlib recently but I really respect the idea of having a rap alter-ego that’s just you with a pitch pedal.

Love My Way - The Psychedelic Furs: An underrated part of Call Me By Your Name is when Armie Hammer hears this song playing from a car and sprints over to dance with a woman who looks like she’s doing the monster mash.

Seven Stop Hold Restart - Bear Vs. Shark: Despite their bad name Bear Vs. Shark are a very good band and the best lyric in this song is when he says 'I am nine years old with short legs and arms.’ What I like about this song, and this band, is that the screaming is not the sort of affected scream-singing of a lot of their contemporaries it’s just a stocky guy absolutely yelling his guts out, which I appreciate.

Turncoat Revolution - Hot Cross: I think that’s close to what I like so much about Hot Cross too, I’ve never listened to Saetia either (the other band this guy sings for) but maybe I should because I just love this guy’s voice. The central hammery riff is so appealing to me but my favourite part of this song is the ending where the three chords just shrink away as the whole thing mellows down, it feels like realising you’ve been mad at something that happened in a dream this whole time.

Mag11 P82 - Venetian Snares and Daniel Lanois: Venetian Snares is apparently doing an album with Daniel Lanois who produced a bunch of U2 albums so my dream of a Bono/Venetian Snares team up is one step closer to reality. I like collaborations like this where you can very clearly tell who did what part. It’s hard to mistake when and how Venetian Snares is involved in a song a lot of the time. I really like this team up because freeing Snares from any kind of melodic responsibility allows Lanois to give the song a huge amount of space, unprecedented in a Snares song where the melody is often just as frantic as the rest of it.

Cornflake Girl - Tori Amos: Do you remember when Tori Amos had that album called American Doll Posse where she was doing a bunch of characters or something and it’s got one of the worst covers of all time in my opinion and I think about it a lot. Had a song called Big Wheel on it that I get stuck in my head a lot. But this isn’t that song so never mind! I was thinking about the production on this song, and how crazy it is to have whistling as a big part of your song while avoiding having everyone think of it as 'that whistling song’. All the instrumentation on this is great, the mandolin and acoustic next to each other making a huge bed for the piano to move under, then the harpsichord sounding keyboard and the guest vocal near the end, there’s just so much happening I love it.

The Field That Touches My House And Yours - Sarah Louise: This is probably the upcoming album I’m most excited about right now. Sarah Louise (who’s one half of House And Land who I’ve posted about before) is pulling a real James Blake by releasing a lot of amazing instrumental music and then suddenly revealing she’s an absolutely incredible singer and songwriter as well.

Jezebel - The Drones: The Drones have a lot of good songs about how it’s the end of the world and we’re all fucked and we’re all gonna die but this is one of my favourites. The sort of wide ranging scientific nihilism of an opening line like 'strontium 90, removed from milk’ really sets the tone for the rest of this song as it lays out every war like an ongoing nightmare that you have no option but to participate in as your body and the earth turn to muck in their wake.

How Sweet It Is - Karen Dalton: Everyone always talks about Karen Dalton as this mercurial folk phenomenon but I really love her second album where she just does standards with a full band. Hearing her bring her insane, complete chaos sense of rhythm to these regular-ass songs is such a delight to me. The way she just swoops in on the first line with absolutely no regard for whatever else is going on really cracks me up. That the song has backing vocalists for the chorus just makes it better, I imagine them singing while glancing at each other with panicked eyes as she just wildly darts around the microphone and sings absolutely whenever.

Bang Bang - Vanilla Fudge: Pitchfork had some video about the origins of heavy metal and I lasted about ten seconds becuase they mentioned a 60s psychedelic metal forerunner named Vanilla Fudge and my brain went 'funy’ so I looked them up instead. This song is a nightmare I absolutely love it, there’s simply not enough organs around anymore. The organ sounds absolutely immense and balanced against their cursed harmonies it sounds even bigger, what a jam.

Ride For Me (feat. Young Thug & 24 Hrs) - A-Trak and Falcons: Young Thug has finally brought back his insane Harambe voice and I for one couldn’t be happier. I have no idea who 24hrs is but he for real sounds like when Justin Beiber first came out so that’s a thrill.

Space Song - Beach House: This might be the platonic ideal of a Beach House song, it’s just beautiful and I don’t think I really have anything more to say about it. Beach House put out two albums in 2015, they put out the on that this song is on and then like three weeks later they surprise released another one and I was so shocked by the deluge of content that I have never listened to the second one. A powerful lesson for Beach House.

Anna - Will Butler: This song is so good I have no recollection of what the rest of the album sounds like, I just listen to this song over and over and over. Every part is good. The brass, the 'ba ba ba’s, they way he says 'you Got to get Mo-nay’, the piano breaks that sound like he’s just slamming it with flat hands. What a gift.

Hawkmoon 269 - U2: Here’s the straight up truth that nobody wants to hear: Rattle And Hum is U2’s best album. It’s literally just The Joshua Tree except better. It’s every bad instinct of U2 turned up to 11, which is what makes it good. He mentions preachers like twenty times on this album and there’s a gospel choir on two songs, it’s all happening all the time.

Silver And Gold - U2: Here also, is the straight truth: this is U2’s best song. A proper straight up political song about a specific idea, incredible instrumentation and Bono realising halfway through his speech that the crowd unfortunately does not care about Desmond Tutu’s request for economic sanctions against South Africa.

Hunting For Witches - Bloc Party: Post 9/11 war on terror indie is such a good genre. Kele’s always been a bit of a lame-o and he’s really on display here but when the instrumentation bangs like this it’s forgivable. Bloc Party have always seemed like a band where absolutely everyone is pulling their weight and doing the most in every single song and this is a good example. The drums! Matt Tong deserves a trophy!

All Of The Lights - Kanye West: I literally remember where I was the first time I heard the drums in this song, that’s how good it was. I can’t believe I only just found out that every single famous person features on this song. I thought it was just Rhianna but it turns out it’s La Roux in the 'fast cars shooting stars’ bit, Cudi in the 'getting mine’ bit, and fucking Fergie in the 'unemployment line’ part PLUS Elton John and Alicia Keys in the outro? This song is ridiculous. It’s almost a shame that such an incredible song in every aspect features some of Kanye’s most boneheaded verses but I suppose that’s what I love about him.

Let’s Hear It For The Boy - Deniece Williams: I’d like to invite you all now to stand and give a round of applause for my dipshit miser boyfriend that dresses like shit and can’t sing, I love him. I love this song a lot because I feel like she’s talking about me. This is a great song that’s right at the top of my long list of potential wrestling entrance themes.

Hey! - The Go! Team: I was premature when I said that new Go Team album wasn’t that great because it is in actuality very very good. This song would make a good wrestling theme too now that I think of it.

Monument - Royksopp & Robyn: I put the T.I.E. version of this song on my list last month and that prompted me to give the original another listen because it’s honestly just as good in a totally opposite direction. A long bit of space-jazz instead of a monolith threatening to crush you.

Merrymaking At My Place - Calvin Harris: My friend sent me this song and said it reminded him of Mother! which is very funny in my opinion. Loads of people come to my house, they take stuff inside of my house, and smoke stuff outside of my house, lots of people at my front door, lots of people in my front door, trying to get into my house. At my place [leaning into the mic] Baby. [panicked] Baby at my place.

Precious Lord (Take My Hand) (Parts 1 & 2) - Aretha Franklin: I was searching spotify for a good version of The Day Is Past And Gone and ended up finding this Aretha Franklin album that is absolutely incredible. It turns out it’s her first ever recording from when she was 14, which is mind boggling. It sounds like it was recorded from the back row of the church so it has this incredible amount of space to it and she just completely fills it with immense power. Even her piano playing is amazing. The whole thing is just an astonishing piece of music.

Big Iron - Marty Robbins: I was camping this month and thinking about country music, and so this and the next few songs are the result of that. I think Taylor Swift should not only pivot back to county for her next album but pivot back to this kind of cowboy story-song country. She should, in fact, just cover this song. This is The cowboy album and I feel like Marty Robbins may have been the most American man that ever lived, he used the money he made from cowboy songs to finance a NASCAR career.

Country Dumb - Josh T. Pearson: I spent a long time on the fence about Josh T. Pearson because music like this always raises the question of authenticity. He sort of feels like the country version of Nick Cave to me, straining for a very very authentic thing but in actuality a Berlin art boy. The main difference between Pearson and Cave though is that Pearson is actually very good. So I reconcile it by telling myself he’s a sort of Lana Del Rey character singer or something like that. This song is so great and I especially like his guitar style of letting the words lead and the guitar follow, where the lyrics are at the forefront and every part of the music is purely in support of them. 

Angel From Montgomery - John Prine: I’m so glad that John Prine is enjoying a bit of a late life resurgence in popularity among the Youth right now because he really deserves it. He feels like the songwriter that every songwriter loves but nobody else has ever heard of. I love this song, it feels like it was custom built to be some 70 year old country woman’s 'Hurt’.

Bogota Affair - Kid Creole And The Coconuts: A good and tropical song about getting cucked on an island and absolutely loving it.

Mientras La Veo Sonar - Rx Bandits: I figured out the reason I like this song and it’s honestly just that it sounds like watered down Mars Volta and I’ll take all of that you’ve got.

Joan, I’m Disappearing - City Calm Down: The way the first line of this song is an unexpected anacrusis makes me laugh cause it feels like the guy from The National just suddenly stepping into your room and collapsing into a seat to complain. I absolutely love this song, I’ve been listening to it on repeat. It’s melodically brilliant in the chorus, it just keeps giving, and structurally it never gets boring by just getting bigger and expanding the entire time to this huge emotional outpouring. I love the lyrics to this song because they’re so pathetic, which sounds like a strange and cruel thing to say but it’s true. It’s such a specific misguided melodramatic plea for a childish love that went on for too long and it’s just so heartbreaking and pathetic, and when it’s turned up to the emotional peak it’s believable and you sympathise. I wish this song went for five minutes more.

Footsteps - Dardanelles: This album was the critical darling of Australian music in 2006 and then this band just totally disappeared and I couldn’t find it for a long time before someone added it to spotify last year and now all their songs have <1000 plays. Very mysterious. I go through stages of being totally obsessed with this song, every part of it is just my favourite kind of pretentious art rock shit. 'This trail of breadcrumbs below your feet whispers like muscle cars on heat’? That’s good lyrics!

Queen Majesty - Techniques: I heard this song late at night when I was listening to ABC RN to fall asleep and some old guy was explaining how rocksteady was better than reggae and now I agree with him.

Opal (Four Tet Remix) - Bicep: The way this song builds around the central strong chords is just incredible, it’s a really simple motif and the way it comes back and sits foundationally through the whole piece. I love in the later half how the extra off-time melodies that seem to have no relation at all to the just come swooping through and almost destabilise the whole thing before those strong strong chords come through again. Also I have a strong suspicion that the snare sound in this is just Four Tet slapping his desk which I respect.

Jesus Came To My Birthday Party - The Middle East: I can’t overstate how much this song is directly wired to my brain stem. It is just perfect. This song is so simple but it feels like it came from another dimension to impart wisdom to me. It honestly makes me feel crazy. This whole album feels like the long lost brother of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea thematically and it really deserves a similar spot in the canon in my opinion. Please listen to it.

Eden - Talk Talk: The dynamics in the guitar playing is what really gets me in this song. The huge crescendo where it feels like the sound is being pulled apart from the inside dissipating to steam as soon as the groove kicks in. I don’t know, there’s not much to be said about Spirit Of Eden that hasn’t already been said, it’s transcendental music. It’s cliched but this is great driving music, music to space out and think about the universe to.

Outlaw Blues - Queens Of The Stone Age: What a treat to suddenly discover that one of my favourite bands has covered my favourite Bob Dylan song and done a great job of it too!

No Condition Is Permanent - Marijata: Ok this is embarrassing but the way I found out about this song was some goober on the overwatch subreddit had made playlists for every hero (Torbjorn’s was all electo-swing and pirate metal so who knows what the fuck was going on) and this and the next song were both on the Doomfist playlist, which was a lot of 70s afro-funk and highlife music which personally isn’t really telling the full story of Doomfist but that’s a whole other post. Anyway this song is great, and I’m glad I listened to this whole dumb-ass playlist to find it. I have a real affinity for songs like that that feel like the recording only ended cause they ran out of tape or the singer collapsed from exhaustion. This song could go for another 20 minutes and I’d only love it more.

Love And Death - Ebo Taylor: The groove of the drums in this song and the melodies of the horns are just hypnotising, and combined with the lyrics this feels like some very dark magic that I completely love. The guitar is really amazing in this as well actually, especially the solo where he switches back and forth between jazz soloing and just frantically strumming open chords.

Automatic (12" Version) - The Pointer Sisters: Huge fan of the extremely powerful megaman synth that comes in about halfway through this song and just charges the whole place up. I love how rich and deep her voice is, how it’s built on by the harmonies in the prechorus and then unleashed in the chorus. I also love how simple the chorus is, it doesn’t overshadow the rest of the song and the verses are just as good which is exactly what you want from a long mix like this. Huge fan of the deep guy’s voice just saying 'au-to-ma-tic’ during the fade out too, give that guy some more to do.

White Girl - Soul Coughing: Lyrically most Soul Coughing songs sound like somewhere between echolalia and reading out every street sign that you see, which is very appealing to me because that’s essentially how I communicate, but this one feels like a dire warning about an approaching conqueror. Also the ending of this song make me laugh because it’s the same as at the end of New Noise by Refused where he just screams 'THE NEW BEAT’ over and over and over after the instruments have all finished and in my eyes that’s a very very funny thing to do with the phrase 'white girl’.

Tone Tone Tone & Tone Tone Two - Shuta Hasunuma and U-zhaan: This album feels like some real Tiny Mix Tapes-core; a collaboration between two Japanese composers - a found object orchestra composer and a tabla player but against all odds it’s actually good. Unfortunately my favourite part of it is this 13 second piece of music that sounds like the brand ID for a very high-end podcast network.

I Won’t Be Found - The Tallest Man On Earth: I listened to this song eight times in a row and sang along the whole time on my drive home from work the other day. His voice is so uniquely good, a cowboy yodel with a slight swedish accent. I’m hooked right from when he sings 'morning’ as 'morning-AH’.

Now U Got Me Hooked - A.A.L: I can’t get over how good this new Nicolas Jaar side project album is. It’s just wall to wall bangers, a perfect party album. I love the really raw sound of a lot of the drums in this song; the huge clap that’s on the edge of being over-distorted mixed with a huge rumbling kick blowing out the low frequency that eventually cleans up and brings the sample back in and almost eliminates the bass entirely before it drops again and the sequence starts over. I love how long a lot of the songs on this album are, every idea is given so much room to completely stretch out.

Ride - Lana Del Rey: I saw Lana live last night and as soon as the first notes of this song played the girl in front of me absolutely screamed 'BITCH!!’ and I felt a real kinship with her. I really think this might be my favourite song of hers. It makes me so emotional every time and I can’t even pinpoint why. The way she sings 'fucking crazy’ the huge, sweeping chorus. It’s just amazing, I love her so much! Bitch!!

listen here

[geekade]

Turn It Up: The Holiday Special

I thought it was a little nuts that two of my all-time favorite groups were putting out holiday albums this year. I mean, maybe it’s just my odd luck, but when they both ventured out on Christmas tours at the same time, 13-year-old me was absolutely in heaven. Then I noticed that Spotify was suggesting other albums – not the classics either. They were showing me all kinds of new holiday music being released this year. While I don’t know what caused the trend (though I venture it was out of a need for some kind of happiness in the world), it’s been a fun ride through many musical areas this holiday season. Let’s check out some of the best in each world of music.

The Ones We Probably Expected

Herb Alpert - The Christmas Wish

It’s around this time of year that we start to appreciate both choral and instrumental music much more than any other time. Herb Albert is one of the best in the business, especially if you can appreciate the sounds of brass. This combination of smooth jazz with upbeat Tijuana sounds is something from the classics but with an incredibly cool sound for now. If you need to feel warm in the cold months, this might just be right up your alley.

Josh Groban - Noel (Deluxe)

We’re starting this list off with some of the ‘obvious’ suspects because they’re the voices I’m sure the holidays wouldn’t be the same without. Josh Groban has been crooning for us for a few years now, and his vocals have become almost a necessity to Christmas. Noel was released in 2007, and following his successful run on Broadway this year, Josh brought it back around for the 10th anniversary, adding five new tracks. They range from the classics of “White Christmas,” to his own rendition of “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” – literally something for everyone.

Pentatonix - A Pentatonix Christmas (Deluxe)

Again we get a re-release, this time from a group that has solidified their position as a classic Christmastime act. This one is just a year later on the heels of last year’s charting release, and again adds five more arranged songs. The group took to their social media to help promote this year’s release as well, speaking more to the experience of putting these songs together, taking us deeper into the process. With the exit of one member and the entrance of a new bass, the group has certainly had an eventful year, and this tops it off nicely.

The Comebacks We’re Glad to See

Hanson - Finally It's Christmas

The band themselves have labeled this “20 Years In the Making” and they did not disappoint. “Snowed In” is actually an acclaimed Christmas album that most people I know keep in heavy rotation over the holidays, so I’d imagine the pressure was on to live up to it this time around as well (Hanson fans, you’re welcome for the little joke there). From the opening harmonies on the title track through Ike’s quiet and beautiful ending with “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” the band has provided yet another classic album. And hey, now they’ve built up enough material to warrant a Christmas tour – aka the only way they can get away with doing a concert without singing “MMMBop” (though, thanks for sneaking it in during the NYC show, Mark Hudson).

98 Degrees - Let It Snow

Again, it’s been quite a while for these guys since their original Christmas album, This Christmas, and they still have every bit of the soulful vocals they always did. The biggest difference this go-around is their devotion to their social following and fans. They have been all over the place this season promoting the album, all starting with Nick’s impressive run on Dancing With The Stars (which brother Drew won years back… I may be biased on my Lachey brother choices though). The guys have grown and are letting us get to know them so much more now, showing their humor and talent as men who have grown to be comfortable in their own skins and with their own voices. This is a welcome addition to their classic sound (and yes, they were concert #2, same week as Hanson – bless you New York concert schedules).

Cheap Trick - Christmas Christmas

This is the one that took me by surprise. Maybe calling this section ‘comebacks’ doesn’t make a ton of sense, as every band has had recent releases in addition to their holiday albums, but they are certainly a group of albums I would not have expected last year. Anywhos, Cheap Trick is a pleasant surprise to this list, melding their old classic sound with upbeat holiday cheer, including three original tracks. The band said it was very natural to put this one together, and I have to say, it’s the perfect addition to all of us little weird punks’ collections amongst the sugary carols otherwise surrounding the season.

New Kids On The Block – Thankful: Unwrapped

I didn’t believe it when I first saw it, but apparently NKOTB jumped on the Christmas album train this year too. Don’t get too excited – they’re not singing the classics, and really it’s just three tracks added onto their earlier EP release from this year, Thankful. But hey, everyone needs an excuse to perform this time of year, and you need the right themes to the music to make that happen. Welcome to the train, once again, boys.

The Compilations We’ll Enjoy

Various Artists - Holidays Rule, Vol. 2

You may or may not remember round one of this compilation set, where there were some cool takes on some old classics. Well, five years after the first one, Paul McCartney has brought folks together to create that magic once again. This time we get such greats as The Roots, The Decemberists, and Andrew McMahon adding in their style. This is every hipster’s dream if they actually enjoy the holidays, and if not, it’ll help put them in the mood.

Various Artists - Now That's What I Call Merry Christmas

On the flip side of styles, here we instead get all of the major radio pop artists of the past year putting their flair on holiday songs. NOW has always done a pretty great job of gathering the greatest hits together, and their specialty albums like this are no exception. They meld the old and new, kicking things off with deceptively new tracks from Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, but transitioning into the true bests with Elvis and the Beach Boys taking over the soundtrack. It’s all a bit confusing, but probably a good set for the whole family to enjoy.

The Unexpected New Sounds

Gwen Stefani - You Make It Feel Like Christmas

I will willingly admit that post No Doubt (and really, Post Tragic Kingdom), I have not been a big fan of Gwen Stefani. That said, I think this album has actually allowed her to embrace the unique voice that I’ve otherwise never loved a whole lot these past few years. It’s a pop album through and through, and all the cuteness you might want while decorating for the holidays. Maybe if I had heard this one sooner, I would have actually decorated my apartment this year.

Blake Shelton - Cheers, It's Christmas

It only seemed appropriate to follow one with the other, so we get into Blake Shelton’s Deluxe release this year. I have mixed feelings here, but for those of you that are looking for that sweet country Christmas sound, you’ll find it here. The bittersweet moment is hearing a newly written “Home” done as a duet with Michael Buble. It’s been Christmas-fied with many of the lyrics changing and a lack of Miranda’s backing vocals. It holds up, along with the gentle album from this otherwise seemingly raucous guy.

Sia - Everyday Is Christmas

Anyone else remember when Sia Furler was one of those songwriters who you didn’t know about, but you dang well knew the songs of? Yeah, that’s a distant memory for me too. Sia has really come out as a strong artist all on her own. This album is completely unique and a treat for anyone who is a fan of her in any way shape or form. Heck, there’s even a song called “Puppies Are Forever” – give me that over a diamond any day!

Kaskade - Kaskade Christmas

If nothing has been up your alley yet in this list, Kaskade is one of the final remaining pieces to cover just about every genre of music available. Yes, the dance/trance artist threw us this one out of left field and it’s got all the right grooves you’d want or need from him and his appearing friends throughout. I want to say this is a weird experience, but I think it’s borderline brilliant – this is an untapped market for sure, and it’s almost sort of nice to have that gap filled in.

Lindsey Stirling - Warmer In The Winter

I couldn’t explain why now, but I really did not like Lindsey Stirling for a while. I think it had something to do with the difficulty to track down her publishing when I first started my job, or maybe a bad experience on the business side. Whatever the case may be, all of that changed this season on Dancing with the Stars, where she was paired with Mark Ballas. This girl’s creativity and grace and just general amazing quirky attitude was a downright inspiration. She is a performer in every sense of the word, bringing such imagination to every single move she makes. Just take a listen to this album. It doesn’t fit a niche and I’m so glad for that. It’s so incredibly different and delightful and all I want to do is see every performance and video she could possibly create around this music. There’s a reason I saved it for last – this one’s the highlight of the season by far.

[theworstbob]

the thing journal: 30 july 2017 - 12 august 2017

the pop culture things i took in over the last two weeks (because i was busy last week). in this post: faces and sounds, catch me, superstore, me. i am mariah... the elusive chanteuse, crazy heart, platinum, cocksure, the obsessives, okja, golden, if you wait, nervous system, moana, right thoughts right words right action, who told you to think??!!?!?!?!, the incredible jessica james, moonrise kingdom, and unbreakable kimmy schmidt

1) Faces and Sounds, by Pete Holmes: Faces and Sounds is such a good name for a Pete Holmes album. Like, if you were to read a transcript of a Pete Holmes set, it would obviously still be very funny, but it wouldn't seem like one of the best things in the world. But when the material is paired with Pete Holmes' boundless exuberance, it's one of the most distinct comic experiences of all time, like Pete Holmes is one of maybe three people I could imagine both wanting and being able to pull off a joke about Enrique Iglesias in 2017 because he can sell you on the idea that he's a man who is enjoying the fuck outta some Enrique Iglesias in 2017. Pete Holmes is a nice boy who likes to say fun words!

2) Catch Me, by Maggie Baugh: So I was sick last week, so I missed a Thing Journal, and now I'm here, and I'm looking at this pop/country album I listened to, at this point, exactly two weeks ago, and I'm trying to figure out something I remember about it, but all I can remember from this album is thinking, "This is an acceptable way to background 38 minutes." It's a fun time, but it's not particularly memorable, there's no strong character to any of the songs, nothing that suggests any strong desire to rise above the level of "#16 country radio airplay single."

3) Superstore (s2), cr. Justin Spitzer: And it's kind of the same thing with this sitcom! This is significantly more memorable than Catch Me -- the romance between Wheels and Lauren Ash is one of the single-greatest romances in history, every interaction those two shared made me happy forever, and it's worth noting that the show knows the perfect amount of usage it can squeeze from the teen mom's husband's character, but it is very much A Sitcom, something that's gonna be really fun for the seven hours it'll take to watch it (slash have it on in the background during Zelda times) but isn't going to make an effort to rise out of the B+ range. It's a good show, recommended if you're looking for something to enjoy, but not if you're looking for something to sink into, if that makes any sense.

4) Me. I Am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse, by Mariah Carey: Her. She is Mariah... The elusive chanteuse.

5) Crazy Heart, dir. Scott Cooper: I'm not sure how long I would've made it into this movie were it not for Jeff Bridges and the promise of more T. Bone Burnett. It makes me angry that T. Bone Burnett's wastebasket is filled with songs a million times better than anything I could ever write, and Jeff Bridges adds layers of depth to a character that doesn't really deserve his performance. Like, here's my main gripe: this movie is about a self-destructive person, right? But this movie chooses to depict the dad he destroyed, you see him interacting with Buddy and Maggie Gyllenhaal and think he could've been a wonderful husband if it weren't for that damn ALCOHOL, when a much more unique movie would've been the movie just at the edges, about how he destroyed Bad Blake. Like, imagine Bad Blake watching Scoggin' Billiam or Walker Wheeler or whatever ponytail's name wasperform the best song he ever written and knowing that Scoggin' Billiam could never do it justice, that Bad Blake kept Bad Blake from enjoying a career-defining hit and has to settle for royalty checks, that's a way cooler movie about what art means and the things we do to chase dreams and how we get in our own ways, it's a way cooler movie than "man loses woman and decides it's time he gets right." Like, it's a movie about a musician that doesn't have any music after the forty-five minute mark. That's dumb.

6) Platinum, by Miranda Lambert: So with this album, Project 2014 was completed, I caught up on all the 2014 releases I think I want to listen to (though I'm sure we'll find more at some point), and I am free to move on to 2013. This is one of the better Miranda Lambert albums, and it hit all the Miranda Lambert buttons, songs about being a pissed-off ex, songs about people understimating attractive women, standard country songs about being proud of small-town upbringings, it's all there. I feel like there's five album reviews from last week and all of them are some variation on "it was good," and I'd like to say I tried my best but I'm not sure that I did? Like you can probably tell that this was the last capsule I wrote, there's gotta be some air of "if I can say three sentences about this album I will be at last free."

7) Cocksure, by Laura Stevenson: Of all the female singer/songwriters I've heard about from checking Dan Campbell's Twitter feed, I think I like this one the most, simply because she's plugged in as hell. This album just rocks. I wish I hadn't gotten sick over the weekend and had written this capsule after listening to it twice in one day, when all the songs were fresh in my mind and I could have called out some specific lyrics, but bad as I am at listening, I still remember that this album is a joy, and I'm very much looking forward to hearing more from this person.

8) The Obsessives: THIS WAS A GOOD ALBUM BY A PUNK-LEANING BAND AND I ENJOYED IT AND GODDAMNIT WHY DON'T I EVER REMEMBER ANYTHING, I SAID I WAS GONNA WRITE STUFF DOWN AND I DIDN'T AND NOW I'M HERE YET AGAIN, WAY TO GO ME like I've been at this post for three hours and I can come up with things but i just, ugh, i'm bad at listening

9) Okja, dir. Bong Joon-ho: One of the things about Netflix as a production entity is that it seems to be staying out of the creators' way as they try to make their thing. It's giving people creative and financial freedom, provided they can make something lucrative for Netflix. And if the upshot is more movies like this, where high production values are being paired with thematic complexity and brutal endings, I'm for it. Like, this is a bold, devastating ending. (Turning spoilers on!) The corporation is the winner. The girl gets her pig back, but she's also going back to the farm knowing the horrors that occur behind the scenes, having seen the grotesqueries the corporation deemed not good enough for the cameras. The environmentalists get arrested, and the corporation gets a gold pig that's probably worth more than they were going to make off the meat the pig was going to produce, as well as continue to kill pigs. The machine keeps churning, and all a regular person can hope for is the chance to be afforded a small, personal victory. Not a lot of filmmakers would have been willing to go there, and not a lot of studios would have been willing to let them explore that place.

10) Golden, by Romeo Santos: I don't speak Spanish, so I'm not gonna pretend I have anything truly substantive to say, but one thing I'd like to point out is, the instrumentation on this record is something I never hear. Like, because I don't listen to Spanish-language stuff, I don't hear guitars played the way they are on this record, so even if I have no idea what this album is about (I'm assuming it's about how good Romeo Santos is at horny), I can still get some value out of hearing a new way to play music. Like, I can't remember if I brought this up when I watched the Finnish film The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki, but in that film, there's a scene where a bunch of the boxers have a naked splash fight in the locker room. That scene either doesn't happen in American film, or happens as a joke, like, "Look at these silly boys having an effeminate fun time!" But with the Finnish movie, they're just like, "Yeah. Sometimes men have naked locker room splash parties. It's fun to have fun," and they move on, and it's cool to see how other cultures treat that sort of thing.

11a) If You Wait, by London Grammar: This isn't a full album, or at least I wouldn't consider an album featuring a live performance from The X Factor to be a complete artistic vision, so I'm not counting it as a full thing. I did enjoy hearing the undeveloped version of the ban I so enjoyed on Truth Is a Beautiful Thing, hearing some of the ideas they had for their sound, hearing things that they would eventually drop, I dunno, this might just be because I like introductions, but it's fun to revisit debut albums well after the fact. ...Except The Wonder Years' Get Stoked On It! The Wonder Years is my favorite band, but I don't know if I'll ever be ready to hear what Get Stoked On It! sounds like. Anyway, London Grammar, they're really dope. I'm not gonna go back and see if I compared them to the Parks & Rec scene where Tom is confused at how the shapes make him feel things, but that's how London Grammar makes me feel. I have to figure out these shapes!

11b) Nervous System, by Julia Michaels: So let's also bring this up, because Julia Michaels is an awesome songwriter and most of these seven songs are good and I can't wait for a full album, true YAS hero Julia Michaels, but also, "There's no innuendo/It's exactly what you think/Believe me when I tell you/He loves the color pink." I mean. You can? I would never tell you you can't. I'm just not. You can! I'm not.

12) Moana, dir. John Musker & Ron Clements: This would be one of the best Disney movies if they had cast an actual actor instead of The Rock. He gives a very enthusiastic performance, it's clear The Rock is trying his best, but it is equally clear that The Rock is not a voice actor, nor should he have been asked to be a voice actor. Like, there's probably a cooler movie here where Moana ends up having to fight both the volcano monster and Maui at the same time, where Maui reveals he was never more than a selfish jerk and Moana has to push herself to overcome Maui's selfishness to restore order and go as far as she can, but because The Rock isn't capable of nuanced vocal performance, it's kind of a standard buddy comedy with a few highlights ("Shiny" best song, I can't believe Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a top-tier Flight of the Conchords joint) and Alan Tudyk giving an Oscar-worthy performance (I can't tell if it's funnier if they just used real chicken noises and gave Alan Tudyk a credit for the chicken or if Alan Tudyk was actually in a recording studio making chicken noises for thirty minutes) but not enough meat for this 28-year-old man to be satisfied with a children's movie. Um, know your audience, maybe?

13) Right Thouhgts, Right Words, Right Action, by Franz Ferdinand: Franz Ferdinand could make this exact album a thousand more times and I would love it a thousand more times. This music is my happy place, which means Franz Ferdinand has achieved their goal.

14) Who Told You to Think??!!?!?!?!, by Milo: I had to look up whether or not whether or not the Link to the Past boss Arrghus was named after some mythical figure or another because I heard some line like "Argus with a hundred eyes" and needed to confirm if I was giving this guy a shout-out for the first Link to the Past reference in a rap song I've ever heard. Truns out: it is! So that's one special thing about this album, how it's so densely laden with references that you sort of need to have a reference guide handy just to keep up, to catch everything this dude is saying, something which warrants multiple, attentive listens, which, pffft, who the fuck got time for that? So I probably haven't explored this record fully with one bus listen, but I'm excited to get in there again at some point.

15) The Incredible Jessica James, dir. James C. Strouse: There's a way to make a thing about what it's like to be an Artist in New York City that's its own thing and doesn't feel like the other billions of things about being an artist in New York City. I know this because I read literally show me a healthy person this year. This was... This was not an example of how to tell a story about being an artist in New York City, or being single and looking for love in New York City, or looking for love in 2017 with all these apps and social media the kids use these days. Jessica Robinson does her best to make it unique, and man, this film did not deserve the work she put in making this film watchable. But yeesh, this movie doesn't need to exist.

16) Moonrise Kingdom, dir. Wes Anderson: So first off, let's all agree we are giving Wes Anderson side-eye for the copious shots of 12-year-olds in their underwear. I know it's for art! But remember last Thing Journal, when we watched Jackie Brown, and there was a long, long close-up of the one girl's feet? I do not trust Wes Anderson! But I do enjoy his films, as I am a pretentious white boy with a sense of whimsy, and can I tell you guys about the funniest line I've seen in a movie all year? The boy and the girl are mourning the dead dog. "Was he a good dog?" "Who's to say? But he didn't deserve to die." That is the most Wes Anderson shit of all time and I loved it. It was a charming film about young love and broken people finding each other, especially resonant since it is two kids. We only hear the stories about how they act out their emotional damage, but when they're with each other, they're calm, at peace, because they found a kindred spirit, and I thought that was touching.

17) Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt s2, cr. Tina Fey & Robert Carlock: Maybe it's because I spent the first 25 years or so of my life accepting the 22-minute sitcom, but every single episode of this season, I would ay, "Hey, this was a fine episode! I bet we're ready to wrap up soon!" and then I'd see there were eight more minutes of sitcom left. And that's not specifically a critique of this show, I think everyone making TV shows in a commercial-free environment needs to look into their hearts and ask themselves if they really need to take advantage of lax time limits, but especially in a show as zany as this one, you run the risk of running out of gas for minutes at a time, or needing to explore unnecessary subplots, like Jane Krakowski crusading against the Washington Redskins, which, why? Why would th -- no! You don't need that to be a plot point! You didn’t need to bring up the Native American thing again! Why would you lean into that? No! This is me being exceedingly negative about a season of television I truly enjoyed, Ellie Kemper is a national treasure and when this show is on it is unlike any other, just that unfortunate tendency we all have to focus on misses instead of hits.

[grimelords]

I realised I finished writing up my January playlist and then forgot to post it, so I’m doing it here and now at the tail end of February. It’s 3 hours of good music, complete from A$AP Ferg to ZZ Top. Please enjoy.

​Dream House - Deafheaven: I started the year off with extreme mental anguish at the realisation that Sunbather is five years old this year and that I am thusly one million years old and have wasted my youth. That aside, Dream House is still an incredible song. It does what the best songs do and speaks directly to the teenaged part of your brain that thinks nobody will ever understand you like this song does right now. It is an overwhelming experience, the whole album is, and very good for having an embarrassing amount of emotions while you're driving alone and it's very loud.

Hold My Liquor - Kanye West: When this song came out I remember someone said the best musical moment of 2013 was when you couldn't tell the difference between Chief Keef and Justin Vernon on this song and I'm inclined to agree.

Melody 4 - Tera Melos: I've talked about this album at length in these playlists and probably featured almost every song at this point but I'll just say, what I like so much about this song is how it moves so effortlessly between a very melodic almost pop-punk type chorus before disintegrating into stop start mathematics and back again before you even notice.

B Boy (feat Big Sean & A$AP Ferg) - Meek Mill: I don't know how the fuck he did it, but somehow Meek Mill got a bunch of rappers who are normally nothing amazing (Meek included) to operate at the absolute top of their game for whole verse each. Highlights especially are 'I got commas on commas on commas, and I ain't talkin about a run on sentence!' 'put my P up on her head like that bitch is reppin Philly, and I wheelie in the pussy like my n**** meek milly' and the immediate about turn of A$Ap Ferg saying 'You thinkin' Khloe don't know me, I'm in the car dashin' haters/I'm in the Kardashian, get it? I'm lyin', can't I pretend?/They say fake it 'til you make it, well let the fakin' begin!'

Shabba REMIX - A$AP Ferg, Shabba Ranks, Busta Rhymes, Migos: This song's a good example of how many different flows you can get to work over one beat, and how much it improves the song. Ferg is so fast and so varied, then Migos even it out with straight triplets for most of their verse before Busta kills it by just doing absolutely everything. Great job everyone.

Attak (feat. Danny Brown) - Rustie: I normally can't stand Danny Brown but he kills this song. I still have a lot of feelings about Rustie, who showed so much promise for being the weirdo that dance music needed before presumably watching HudMo make a million producing for Kanye and friends and deciding to remove every interesting element from his music to make it palatable for rappers. That is, at least, my theory. This song is great, but every other song on this album is an example of this approach not working and instead producing boring, half assed songs where nobody's at their full potential.

Ultra Thizz - Rustie: Compare it to this, the busiest song in the world. The way the melody of the bassline that sounds like it's about to swallow you whole contends with the synth melody AND the pitched up vocal melody for your attention, they all come it at once and trade barbs before being superseded by a fuzzy, inscrutable guitar solo which fades out and leaves us back at the start. What I love about this song is the absolute maximalism and hypercolour sounds, combined with the only simple melody being the big chord stabs that centre the piece combine into a total sensory experience. Not to mention the rhythms, where absolutely every part of it seems to be slightly stranger than you expect, constantly dropping one beat before or after you expect - your first clue is the snare build at the start suddenly splitting into triplets.

If I Were A Carpenter - Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash: My girlfriend showed me this song and it unlocked a third of the triangle in my brain where this song, Wichita Lineman by Glen Campbell and The Engine Driver by The Decemberists make a sort of trinity of songs about having a job and thinking about Wife. They're all very very good too.

12 Bricks - OG Maco: Outside of the famous video, which is very good, this song is also incredible. Another in the pantheon of songs with extremely minimal instrumentation where the vocal performance is so good it doesn't need anything. The slight delay makes all the screaming and wooing toward the end just pile on top of each other in waves building the texture up until it finally levels out.

Requiem Para Um Amor - Toquinho: I really cannot get enough of the organ in this song. I don't think I've ever heard a classical guitar/electric organ duet before and now I'm hungry for more.

You Can Be A Robot, Too - Shintaro Sakamoto: This song appeared on my Discover Weekly playlist and I'm not really sure why but it's very good. I can't tell if it's actually a children's song or just playful like one but I appreciate it either way. When it started playing from the playlist the album cover was a cartoon of a kid surrounded by robots, but when I tried to add it to a playlist the art changed to a green picture of a skeleton playing a lap steel guitar with an explosion in the background, which felt very cursed to me.

Raver - Burial: This song has always stood out to me on Untrue because of how straightforward the beat is. Under anyone else's control this would be a normal song but instead it's this incredibly detailed, messy piece of work that feels like looking at a house song through a dirty window. I also have no proof at all to back this up but in my mind the xylophone line is sampled from Donkey Kong 64 or possibly Banjo Kazooie.

Cavalettas - The Mars Volta: I remember reading a bad review of this album when it came out that was mad because it pulled 'the most egregious studio trick in recent memory' by having the whole mix except for one guitar get sucked down into a wormhole multiple times, including the bass getting physically detuned until you can hear the strings slack before resuming as normal a second later. In my opinion it's incredibly funny and it sounds good so more bands should do it. Also the other day I saw the drummer Thomas Pridgen comment on Omar Rodriguez's instagram 'check ur dms bro'. Imagine being in a band with someone for a decade and not having their number, insane.

Flash Back - Rustie: Honestly I cannot get enough of this bassline. This song is another good example of what I was talking about with Rustie dumbing his melodies down after this album, the main line in this winds around and around itself in this loping confused rhythm and against the bass that's also syncopated it just ends up sounding like hypercolour, which is a feat for a song that's basically just those two melodies against each other for the bulk of it with some plastic choir stabs throughout.

Heaven - DJ Sammy: What an absolute perennial banger. Can you believe this AND Boys Of Summer were on the same album? Incredible stuff DJ Sammy. I've been meaning to make a playlist of all the 90s/2000s lame rave songs that are secretly very emotional and have definitely inspired absolute emotional turmoil in ravers the world over like this Better Off Alone and Heaven Is A Place On Earth, but for now just enjoy the Bryan Adams classic as reimagined by DJ Sammy.

Stalking To A Stranger (Planets Collide Remix) - The Avalanches: I owe this song a lot because it not only for me into Hunters And Collectors, who it turns out have far better and angrier songs than Holy Grail, but it also turned me onto Vertigo/Relight My Fire by Dan Hartman which is sampled at the start. When this song came out it was the first new Avalanches song in a decade or so and nobody knew what to make of it because suddenly Avalanches songs just have screaming men in them, which was very good.

Miracle - Kimbra: I think that very soon everyone is going to figure out that Kimbra has been the pop genius the world needs and she's been here all along.

Wayfaring Stranger (Burial Remix) - Jamie Woon: Jamie Woon got a raw deal in my opinion. He had a song remixed by Burial, and then Burial co-produced Night Air for him and he was the king of dark and mysterious British dubstep wave, but then James Blake and everyone else came along and sort of overshadowed him totally. Now that whole movement is sort of clouded because of how quickly 'dubstep' came to mean 'skrillex', and for some reason the only place this song is on Spotify is a compilation called The World's Heaviest Dubstep, Grime & Bass.

Chanbara - At The Drive-In: A lot of writing about At The Drive-In focuses on how they never really captured the ferocity of their live shows on record until Relationship Of Command but the absolutely big screams on this working against the salsa bongo rhythms is an amazing thing. I also kind of prefer the weedy half-clean guitar sounds on this and their first album especially to Relationship of Command's crunchier sound, it feels like it gives a lot more space to the weird noodling melodies that come and go.

All Medicated Geniuses - Pretty Girls Make Graves: The intro of this song absolutely blew my 15 year old math rock mind with how simply it transitions from the snare on the beat to the snare off the beat. It is endlessly fascinating to me because I am a dummy. Every part of this song is amazing to me, from the big swing band bassline behind the guitar that's sort of just screaming through the verses and absolutely on its own journey through the chorus to the drums for the reasons I already mentioned but also the way they keep everything straight and absolutely refuse to indulge the guitar's worst math impulses.

Dangerous - The xx: I really love the horns in this song, and the big air raid sirens toward the end. It is still shocking to me that The xx transitioning to making upbeat bangers worked out for them but I'm so glad that they did.

Running - Bully: I was listening to a podcast about water management policy and infrastructure called Water You Talking About because I am young and cool and for some reason they were using the chorus of this song where she goes 'I'LL ADMIT IT! I GET ANXIOUS TOO!' as their theme song in an episode which is I suppose appropriate but also really made me laugh.

Simultaneous Contrasts - Warehouse: The singer in this band has my new favourite voice, it's amazing. She sounds like she's eaten a belt sander or something. I love the way the guitar line follows her vocals up in the chorus and also just how extremely busy the whole band is around her. They remind me of some kind of alternate universe Life Without Buildings where she's pissed off instead of just beguiling.

Light Up The Night - The Protomen: There's no reason this band should be good. They wrote a rock opera based on the story of Megaman inspired by Queen and Bruce Springsteen and it actually turned out incredible somehow. Unfortunately since this album came out almost a decade ago all they've done is a couple of live albums and covers albums, so I may never get the resolution I crave on the story of Thomas Light and Joe and whoever.

Tonto - Battles: Here's what's so good about this song: it spends 2 and a half minutes winding up to a huge centrepiece that's over way too soon and then the next 4 minutes slowly slowly slowly winding down to absolute zero. It's like the opposite of how to write a good song but it's absolutely enthralling.

Wall Street - Battles: Around a minute into this, there's two snare hits where it sounds like it's part of a roll that got digitally muted that I am obsessed with. Every part of this song is incredible, but the drums throughout alternate between sounding like he's desperately trying to keep up and sounding like pure power and total command. I especially love the big brassy snare sound that comes up from underneath occasionally to pull the brakes. The performance of this song that Battles did for La Blogoteque is one of my favourite videos on youtube.

Every Single Line Means Something - Marnie Stern: For about a week this month I developed a quiet mania about John Stanier from Battles filling in on drums in the Late Night With Seth Myers Band (for some reason), and then I found out that Marnie Stern is apparently in that band as well and it really threw me for a loop. I don't really know why this was such an incredible thing or why I focused on it so much, maybe something I need to figure out, but it reminded me of this great song so that's a positive. This is some of my favourite work Zach Hill has ever done because he's being forced to play pretty much a normal backbeat for a lot of this song and it feels like he's been cursed by a witch. The amount of power he's putting out for such a straightforward idea is incredible. Of course because it's Zach Hill he's also doing the absolute most in every other part of the song. I haven't even mentioned how much I love Marnie on her own song! Anyway, listen to this whole album.

Hacker - Death Grips: I never got into the hype around Death Grips when they were the thing, and haven't really investigated their discography past this album, but this song is an absolute masterpiece and probably everything you ever need to know about them. Lyrically between this and 'I've Seen Footage' there's a pretty neat summation of their worldview, paranoid because your existence is inextricably linked to the internet and everything that entails, 'having conversations with your car alarm'. 'make your water break at the apple store,'

Pass The Word (Love's The Word) - The Mad Lads: I was looking up where the sample's from in Hilltop Hoods' Chase That Feeling and it turns out it's this song. Try to listen to this whole intro. He's trying to give a sermon but his dumbshit friends simply will not shut the fuck up for fully three whole minutes. Other than the intro the song is very, very good.

Monkey Time '69 - The Mad Lads: I also found this other song by the Mad Lads called 'Monkey Time '69', which to me is the definition of comedy.

She's Got Guns - The Go! Team: New Go Team album! Unfortunately nothing on it sort of lived up to the promise of the first two singles Mayday and Semicircle song, but this song is still a hit. The way this is mixed is so good, the brass behind the massive bass and spacious drums and the vocals sort of backgrounded within it all, very appealing.

Coast To Coast - Tune-Yards:It feels weird that a Tune-Yards song can be this smooth. A sort of apocalyptic, politics is ruined, new york is sinking, funky smooth jam.

Cattle And The Creeping Things - The Hold Steady: I've never listened to much of The Hold Steady outside of this album because I don't feel like I really need to, it's got everything I'd ever need. Sorry to always to talk about drums but the amount of reverb on them in this song makes them sound absolutely huge and I really love it, especially in the last verse they just become massive. Also I went through a long period of being obsessed with the lyrics of this song, it's a good distillation of this whole album's christian cult/drugs in middle america story and it is completely my shit.

Losing All Sense - Grizzly Bear: There's something about Painted Ruins that's impenetrable to me. I keep listening to it and only absorbing about one song at a time, totally loving that song and then ignoring the rest of the album. Now it's Losing All Sense.

Blue Cheese - Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile: This song is like Kurt Vile in his purest form, just sort of strumming and talking about whatever the fuck. The best part of this song is when they go 'woo hoo!!!' then he whistles a little bit and then says 'here come the lone ranger!' in an elvis voice and plays a solo that sounds like he's tuning his guitar. Also right at the end you can hear someone's phone message tone going off.

Catch Me If You Can Theme - John Williams: John Williams didn't have to go as hard as he did with the Catch Me If You Can theme. I have this in my head all the time. I love the rapid shifts in this recording, because I guess it's functioning as the overture so he's just cycling through every different variation he's got in his aresenal.

I've Seen Footage - Death Grips: It's good that Death Grips' most popular song is about how the internet melts your brain There's a good quote from Zach Hill about where the title came from: 'The line “I’ve Seen Footage” was from a conversation I had with this street-person dude in Sacramento named Snake Eyes. A friend of ours recorded him on the porch in a conversation– he didn’t know he was being recorded. He was all fucked up on drugs and shit, just rattling off all this crazy information. He was talking about structures on the moon. I mean, I talk about those things, too. So we were talking about moon structures, and Snake Eyes says, “I’ve seen footage! I’ve seen footage of it!” And I was like, “That’s good!”

The Bucket - Kings Of Leon:It seems impossible that Kings Of Leon were a really good band at one point but here's the proof.

Standing Next To Me - The Last Shadow Puppets: I'm a truther for Muse ripping off Knights Of Cydonia from The Age Of The Understatement by The Last Shadow Puppets but that's a post for another time. This is a perfect song in my opinion. The absolute pace of it, the minimal drums that are just sort of accenting the strumming, the huge sweeping strings elevating the whole thing, the fact that it's over in just over two minutes. Incredible.

Jesus Just Left Chicago (live) - ZZ Top: Nobody believes me when I tell them but ZZ Top are very good. I have a fantasy about this song that ZZ Top were ringleaders of a sort of revival blues cult and this song is gospel to them. Jesus did really leave Chicago and he's heading towards California and we will be here waiting for him. You may not see him, but he sees you and he loves you. This and the La Grange recording are absolutely furious for live recordings, I love how much crowd noise there is in it throughout, they are truly fucking loving it.

La Grange (live) - ZZ Top: Especially here, my god they love it. La Grange is a good song because it's just a good riff and one verse of nonsense lyrics that are just an excuse to go the fuck off for the remainder. The huge drum fill and the 'have mercy everybody!!' is massive, the solos are ferocious, and somehow this song that feels like it could jam out for 15 minutes is reined in and tightly structured and has somewhat abrupt end.

Barracuda - Heart: Hey remember Guitar Hero? Cause I had ptsd flashbacks when this song came on during I, Tonya.

Bloodmeat - Protest The Hero: I don't know how exactly Protest The Hero pivoted from a concept album about a goddess(?) being executed(?) and bringing about a new genderless utopian age(?) to their second album opening with this very bicep emoji classic metal song about the mongol hordes slaughtering all who oppose them, but good for them I suppose.

Born On A Day The Sun Didn't Rise - Black Moth Super Rainbow: The drums in this song have no place being that huge. Black Moth Super Rainbow are good and I can't believe I hadn't listened to them in years until I woke up with this song in my head one morning, like an omen.

Been Drinkin' Water Out Of A Hollow Log - Mississippi Fred McDowell: Literalyl every Mississippi Fred McDowell song sounds exactly the same which is good because if it works why change it. In my understanding this song seems to be about a man dying of hunger and thirst on purpose to meet god, which is very good to me.

Listen here.