V's For Valentine's
A throwback short letter this week
Good morning and happy Valentine’s Day to the lovers. Due to a combination of administrative work and an excess of dogs to walk I found myself with very little free time to write this week. I have a longer, more substantial letter planned for next week. This week I’ve busted out the old school Fives On Friday format to give you a quick update about what I’ve been up to lately.
Now that I only live a long-ish walk or a brief bus ride away, I’ve been going to the Empty Bottle for my live music fix. At the end of January ~*My Girlfriend*~ and I caught Geordie Greep at a sold out show with Chicago’s own Nnamdi opening. Greep and co. stretched The New Sound into a two hour marathon full of new solo sections, extended jams, surprise allusions to other tunes (“did he just quote Perfume??”). It was one of the best shows I’ve seen in years. Then a week or so later I joined my Ferrn buddies to catch Sprite, Babe Report, and Daydream TV at a Free Monday concert. Sprite and Babe Report both feature former Lamniformes drummers (Sam Brown and Peter Reale respectively) and Daydream TV are a new band featuring other old & new friends. Good vibes all around. Great venue!
When we’re not out on the town, ~*My Girlfriend*~ has been catching me up on all of the good television I missed when I was single. So far we’ve watched all of Succession (terrific!) and The Good Place (very funny and surprisingly smart!). Eventually I will convince her to watch Mad Men with me. We also took advantage of the Criterion Channel’s Valentine’s Day programming to watch Moonstruck this week, in which Cher is Italian and a 23 y/o Nic Cage is the sexiest man alive. It’s a shame that Cage has largely been relegated to ironic joke status because no one on earth brings the same heat he does when he’s on.
I’m still playing Bloodborne. It has not helped me learned Portuguese, but it is a lot of fun. I’m a big fan of the way it mixes and matches from a bunch of different strains of 19th century horror tropes to make singularly gross and spooky atmosphere.
As self-assigned Black History Month homework I’ve been reading Liner Notes For The Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound by Daphne A. Brooks. The book is long and dense enough to resist easy summary, but it’s well worth a read. The first half concerns the way that Black women have written and theorized about their own music. The second half, which I’ve just started, seems like it’s a little more scattershot but I’ve really enjoyed the opening essay about the way blues criticism has been defined by a mostly white (and dudely) perspective. Didn’t realize John Fahey was such a jerk!
I mentioned this briefly last week, but I’m a big fan of Open Mike Eagle’s YouTube channel. It’s great to see more artists building their own digital spaces to talk not just about their own music but the music industry as a whole. Eagle’s been an indispensable source of insight and analysis during the ever-evolving Kendrick Lamar/Drake feud, an exceedingly funny rejoinder to the often too self-serious state of rap discourse, and a clear-eyed perspective on the realities of independent music-making in the 2020s.
But what have I been listening to? Glad you asked…
# # # # # The Promo Zone # # # # #
~*My Girlfriend*~ got on my case this week for not telling her that I’m participating in Gary Suarez’s “Music Writing Exercise” on Bluesky. The exercise is to listen to one album you’ve never heard before every day for the month of February and to write a short tweet-length review of it. I’ve always enjoyed this tradition, which started on Twitter before migrating over to the other micro-blogging site. Not only does it encourage me to keep my ear open to new music (a habit that carries over to the rest of the year), it’s also a good way to see what other critics, both pro and amateur, are discovering for the first time. If you’d like to follow along, you can find me on Bluesky here.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Listening Diary ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Here are five songs that I enjoyed listening to recently! You can find a Spotify playlist with all of this year’s tracks here, updated with a new song every Monday-Friday.
“Risk” by Metric (Art of Doubt, 2018)
I heard this over the speakers at the fancy grocery store in Logan Square after completing a yoga mat side-quest and was so struck by the chorus that I had to Google the lyrics right there in the peanut butter aisle. I am forever near a speaker asking “what is this incredible band?” and the answer is always Metric. I should really give them a serious deep dive someday.
“o(__*)” by Hakushi Hasegawa (Air Ni Ni, 2019)
Jon and Ryan from Ferrn both talked up this Hasegawa record in our Discord. This song hits several sweet spots in the collective Ferrn flavor profile. It’s jazzy, it’s got aggressive breakbeats, it sounds like a pop song written by someone that cares about the details. Personally I was won over by the switch to a quintuplet groove near the end of the song. Bold choice, but it works!
“Cry For Me” by The Weeknd (Hurry Up Tomorrow, 2025)
This is a perfect synthesis of The Weeknd’s recent Lopatin synth era and the icy R&B sound he hit the scene with back in 2011, by which I mean it literally goes from the first mode to the second over the course of the song. It’s no surprise that an album so explicitly about The Weeknd’s career would bring his sound full circle. Even the beat switch itself resembles the arrangement choices before he became a reliable hit maker.
“Hollow Kid” by VOLA (Friend of a Phantom, 2024)
I’m obsessed with how little sense VOLA’s lyrics make. The grammar works line to line but it adds up to dreamlike babbling. What fascinates me is how well the words work as a sequence of mouth shapes and syllables despite having no coherent linguistic meaning. What this suggests to me is that these Danes & Swedes have some real deal pop writing experience. Listen to how much they make of just one riff and one vocal melody. Very efficient and tasteful writing.
“Shaving Is Boring” by Hatfield and the North (Hatfield and the North, 1974)
Yet another Ferrn recommendation. Ryan’s been big on playing tunes from the Canterbury scene, which is like prog’s goofy jazz-influenced cousin. Yes would have called a song like this “Tributary of Ascension” but instead we get “Shaving Is Boring”. Were any lies told, though?? Why bother with a razor when you can just have the playing on this track burn the hair right off?
\ \ \ \ \ Micro Reviews / / / / /
Here are five micro reviews of albums from my vast Rate Your Music catalog. Long time Lamniformes Instagram followers will recognize these from my stories, however they’ve been re-edited and spruced up with links so that you can actually hear the music instead of just taking my word for it.
Nothingface by Voivod (1989) - Progressive Metal
French-Canadian thrash metal band warps into a sci-fi themed post punk band, with only their drummer’s double kick pedal tying them back to their hesher roots. A unique record, come for the genre-oddity stay for the rock solid songwriting. The guitar parts in particular are out of this world, full of counter melodies and daring harmonic choices. Clearly a huge influence on a bunch of much heavier bands, but I bet a lot of non-metal listeners might really dig this. I’ve never gotten into the rest of the Voivod catalog but every time I listen to this I really want to. [Editor’s Note: I’ve since listened to more Voivod records. This is still a stand out but they’ve got some other heaters too.]
The Divine Wings of Tragedy by Symphony X (1997) - Progressive Metal
If a man in a Symphony X shirt challenges you to a match of Soul Caliber, dare not accept lest your ego be easily bruised. For that man will wipe the floor with you. The purest example of the “Northeastern Italian American prog metal” thing. Bunch of guys named Michael shredding their asses off, openly quoting classical music, and writing songs about mythology and classic literature. Singer Russell Allen literally worked at Medieval Times, the knights in armor theme restaurant, when he joined the band. Super flashy, dorky stuff, but I’m not too shabby at Soul Caliber myself, so I enjoy this record quite a bit.
Rage Against the Machine by Rage Against the Machine (1992) - Rap Rock
A crucial juncture on the “The Matrix fan -> Leftist” pipeline. Hearing this at age 13 exposed me to a whole range of takes and perspectives, it was the first time I heard the phrase “eurocentric” for example. But I don’t think the radical politics would have hooked me if the band weren’t playing out of their mind on this record (this is also probably why Paul Ryan-types missed the memo on the lyrics, the riffs were just that effective). You can tell that RATM were still writing for small clubs and hardcore audiences. These songs stretch out and rely on sloganeering build-ups in a way that their later shorter songs would avoid. The first seven songs on this record are about as perfect a stretch of tunes as you’ll find on a rock album, and the last three ain’t bad either. Amazing recording quality too.
Broken by Nine Inch Nails (1992) - Industrial
Following up his weirdo synth pop debut, Reznor released his most relentlessly aggressive and guitar-heavy record. The fiery cover is a good indicator of the contents. This thing burns hot. Distorted drum machines crackle under true-blue rock riffing, and Trent tears his throat to pieces on the top line. Reznor oozes sexual energy, particular on “Physical” and “Last”, which might be the most underrated great NIN song. A lean and mean little release, truly unique in the NIN catalog and a personal favorite.
Ready To Die by The Notorious B.I.G. (1994) - Rap
The other day I saw a high schooler wearing a Biggie shirt and it struck me that this album is as old now as the Led Zeppelin albums on my friends’ shirts were when I was in high school. I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me that much when Biggie is ubiquitous enough to be the basis of an entire NBA team’s branding strategy. And if any rap album deserves to become “classic rock” (you know what I mean) it’s this one. A rags-to-riches narrative stretched out by raunchy sex raps, raucous shit-talking, and production so clean you could eat off it. Biggie’s fog horn of a voice is the main attraction, as is his skill as a storyteller, used first to spin gunslinging street tales, then his rise to success, and finally in a legit shocking twist the depths of his self hatred. Truly nuts how good his voice was as a considering how young he was. Where the youth shows is in the multiplicity of sex skits, a forgivable but skippable offense on an otherwise rock solid release.