→ July 29, 2026
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Music update, July 2026.

This one took some work, with the draft and my prospect rankings in the middle of the month, plus the misfortune to have two audiobooks I’d requested from my library months ago both show up in the same week, with 14 days to listen to each of them. Anyway, this playlist features the return of the greatest MC in hip-hop history, several of my favorite contemporary artists, some great metal and post-hardcore tracks, even a good dose of psychedelic rock. And I still have to listen to the rest of the new albums from Jack White, Pond, and Quicksand, and give a second spin to Yard Act. As always, if you can’t see the widget below you can access the playlist on Apple Music or Spotify.

Rakim – A Different Kind. The R returns with his first true solo track in 15 years, and I’d argue his best since at least 1999’s The Master, as he sounds rejuvenated, with something close to the pacing and rhythm of his peak output. I didn’t know if we’d ever hear Rakim sound this good again.

Noname feat. DRAM – Squatter. The second song from rapper Noname’s announced, unscheduled mixtape Cartoon Radio comes nearly a year after the first one, “Hundred Acres.”

Moses Boyd – Say Yeah. Boyd’s 2020 album Dark Matter was fabulous, spawning my top song of the year (“Shades of You”) and showcasing his talent both as a percussionist and as a jazz composer. It was gloriously dark, so this return, his first truly solo song in six years, is a big surprise – it’s a gospel-influenced track and very bright. I don’t know if I want a whole album of this, but it’s interesting to see Boyd try something new.

Jorja Smith feat. WizKid – Alive. Smith’s latest album What Are the Odds comes out on August 21st, with this sultry track featuring Nigerian Afrobeats star WizKid as the first single. Smith also appeared on Nia Archives’ “Get Me Down,” but that’s the sort of electronic/drum-and-bass music that I think wastes Smith’s voice.

Meaningful Stone feat. Jay Som – 1+1=0. Meaningful Stone is Kim Jimin, previously a member of Sailor Honeymoon (see below), and her latest single has Jay Som on vocals. It’s dream-pop, driven by a shimmering acoustic guitar, reminiscent of Hatchie and even the Sundays.

mary in the junkyard – Thou Shalt Sprout. I have heard at least half of the songs on this London folk-rock band’s debut album Role Model Hermit, but none of the singles grabbed me at all. Even this one was getting close to the skip button until around 1:35 when the electric guitar shows up and brings a darker counterweight to the vocals.

Wishy – All the Rage. That’s two for two, as both of Wishy’s singles this year (the other was “Lovesick”) are modern jangle-pop bangers. Their second album, Nature’s Pill, comes out on October 2.

The Tubs – Who’s Gonna Love You Now. More jangle-pop goodness from this Welsh group founded by two former members of Joanna Gruesome, one of whom has since left the band. Their third album Hard Life comes out on September 11th, featuring this and another single that just dropped called “Stoop to Me” that’s solid as well.

Echo & the Bunnymen – Brussels is Haunted. Ian McCullough and Will Sergeant will release their 13th album, Apples for Isaac, on September 18th. It’s not “The Killing Moon” or “Bring on the Dancing Horses,” but it’s pretty good for a band approaching its 50th anniversary.

Slow Fiction – turning down flowers. Slow Fiction are a NYC-based quintet that leans into post-punk with some synth-pop and shoegaze revival, but most impressive to me is that this song is six minutes long, which had to give some record label exec a coronary. Their debut album dollhouse comes out on August 7th.

DMA’s – Killing Time. DMA’s put out a four-song EP this month called Killing Time, with “Heatin Park” the best song, followed by this one, plus two other slightly more tepid numbers. DMA’s are at their best when they go big, earning or re-earning the Oasis comps that they have seemed eager to avoid since their second album For Now came out in 2018.

Westside Cowboy – Pin Up Boys. This Mancunian quartet toured with Geese last year, and there’s some similarity in the guitars, although Westside Cowboy’s vocals are more straightforward and I get a Phish vibe from the chorus on this rousing song. Their debut album It Goes On drops on August 21st.

Temples – Megalith. This psychedelic-rock group’s latest album, BLISS, came out in July, highlighted by “Vendetta,” “Jet Stream Heart,” “Glimmer,” and this midtempo track.

Arab Strap – Fighting for You. A satirical number about pining for “the halcyon days” of measles, nuclear war, and high unemployment over a driving rock track.

Elephant Stone – Everything Evil. I don’t think I’d heard Elephant Stone before, but this Canadian psychedelic-rock band is about to release its tenth album, ASHA. This song is punk-influenced in music and lyrics, although they often incorporate Indian elements into their songs (as you might have guessed from the new album’s title).

Sailor Honeymoon – I Wanna Leave You. Feminist punk from Seoul, with their debut album The Worst of Sailor Honeymoon coming on August 14th. The first half of the song has them singing the title over and over; the second half offers a list of reasons to leave a partner.

Disgusting Sisters – Sorry Mister. Definitely for fans of Wet Leg, this duo – actual sisters – have released a few singles over the last three years, with their first album Skin & Blisters coming out on October 30th.

Getdown Services – The Bins. This was the first track I’d heard from this British duo, half of which is a guy named Josh Law, so I have some investigatin’ to do. The song reminds me quite a bit of Yard Act’s first album if YA used a drum machine instead of actual percussion, with a dose of Confidence Man, too. Their second album Massive Champion comes out on August 14th.

Yard Act – Fiction. I’ve only gone through You’re Gonna Need a Little Music once so far, and that’s not enough; it’s a complicated, genre-bouncing album, consistent with this British post-punk band’s history of pushing their own boundaries with each release. “Thrill of the Chase” is probably the most Gang of Four-like song on the record, just with more of a punk tempo and heavier flourishes in the chorus; the title track is very Arab Strappy. “Fiction” is a dark, funk-inspired track, with a rhythm that’s consistently off beat so you feel unstable for much of the song.

Gurriers – Nobody’s Coming to Save You. The title track from this Irish post-hardcore quintet’s second album, due out September 24th, is a harsh, dissonant song that still manages to find a hook in the chorus. “Party Lines” came out at the same time and would have made this playlist if they hadn’t released an even better track.

Quicksand – Regenerate. I haven’t gotten to this seminal post-hardcore band’s latest album, Bring on the Psychics, which came out five days after the draft, but I’ve liked the three songs I’ve heard – this one, “Crystallize,” and “Get to It.” Quicksand and Thrice are the two bands who most define what I think of as “post-hardcore.”

Protomartyr – Sounds We Cannot Hear. Tigers fan Joe Casey & co. return with this lead single off their upcoming seventh album Hotel Usona, and if this is any indication it’s going to be a darker affair than their last LP, Formal Growth in the Desert.

Mastodon – Snakes for Dinner. So “Your Ghost Again” wasn’t just a one-off tribute to Brent Hinds, but the first single from Mastodon’s upcoming album Marrow Deep, coming out on August 28th. This second single features vocals from QotSA’s Josh Homme.

Index – Fractured. Control Top was a short-lived DIY punk band from Philly that broke up after releasing one album in 2019. Singer/bassist Ali Carter appears to be out of the music business, but the other two members have founded Index, whose first track leans more into hardcore punk with some faint metalcore elements as well.

The HU – Grey Hun. This Mongolian folk-metal band’s latest album HUN is out now, combining thrash and classic heavy metal with Mongolian throat singing, creating something that’s clearly kin to some of the less extreme folk and Viking metal coming out of the Norse countries (and a little bit of Entombed’s death-and-roll style too).

Insomnium – Gleam in the Black. This Finnish melodic death metal band has that country’s quirky combination of unusually hooky, major-key melodies with typical death-growl vocals, like peak Children of Bodom.

Amon Amarth – Gjallarhorn. More melodic death metal, this time from one of the pioneers of the form. Their lyrics often focus on Viking history and mythology, and their music borrows more from thrash than typical death metal.

Russian Circles – Eluvial. Prog-metal from a Chicago trio who’ll release their ninth album, pointedly titled Nine, on August 28th.

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→ July 27, 2026
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Vigil.

George Saunders is one of the modern masters of the short story, and his one previous endeavor in the longer form of the novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, is a masterpiece that earned him the Booker Prize in 2017. His second novel, the slight fable Vigil, is just as clever and whimsical and creative, and ultimately a huge disappointment.

Jill Blaine is a spirit, maybe an angel, although I don’t know the hierarchy well enough to say what sort, who is visiting the nearly dead fossil fuel executive KJ Boone on his deathbed and confronting him with the havoc he has wrought on the planet through his successful career in industry. She can do this by revisiting memories upon him, although he will get more of this from his daughter when she visits, as well as some other phantoms, including a never-named French inventor and two former corporate cronies who seem very much like the Marley & Marley of the story. There is no traditional arc of redemption here; Boone will die, and we’ll see how much he’s able to even accept complicity in the destruction of the planet, while Blaine herself has some accepting to do around her death at the hands of her husband’s nemesis.

I wanted to like Vigil, because I have liked everything I’ve read by Saunders, and in interviews he comes across as an earnest humanist and someone deeply in love with the craft of writing. This book ain’t it, to put it mildly. Lincoln had its heart at the center of the book, while Vigil has its heart on its sleeve and can’t stop showing it to you. The characters are not that interesting, even though Saunders makes a real effort to give Boone some depth, while creating some moral complexity by pointing out how much of modern life is possible because of the exploitation of the planet’s petroleum. There’s more gravity here in Boone’s life story, the kind of look back that’s a common trope in fiction from Citizen Kane to The Late George Apley, than there is in the attempt to get some sort of deathbed conversion from him, and that leaves the book feeling maudlin rather than meaningful. What exactly was the point of the exercise here? Are we to empathize with Boone, who had agency and used his resources to debase the planet and silence opposition, if he has a brief moment of clarity before dying? It’s a slice of life story, or perhaps a slice of death, but in the end leaves us no wiser than we were when we began. For a writer of Saunders’ talent and stature to push this wisp of a story into the world, and to do so as his second novel in the wake of a first one that remains one of the best novels of this century, is more confusing than anything that happens in the book itself.

Next up: Changing it up with Anthony Horowitz’ Close to Death.

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→ July 25, 2026
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Stick to baseball, 7/25/26.

For subscribers to the Athletic this week I posted an updating ranking of the top 70 prospects still in the minors.

I sent a new issue of my free email newsletter last weekend, and hope to get another one out Sunday or Monday. For social media shenanigans, you can find me primarily on Bluesky, Instagram, and TikTok.

And now, the links…

  • How the hell is there an anti-sunscreen movement? I see some of these videos from wellness grifters and they should all be forced to lie in the sun for hours every day without sunscreen.
  • My home state of Delaware requires that any organizations engaging in political advertising in the state disclose the names of donors who give over $100, regardless of where the donors live. The Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a Koch-backed anti-government group, sued the state over this transparency law and lost. Good.
  • The Times’ editorial board points out that the second home tax is a net positive for New York – and underscores the lies that wealthy homeowners told to try to dissuade lawmakers from passing laws that ask them to pay their fair share. I’d go much further: I don’t think mortgage interest should be tax-deductible on any residence after your primary one.
  • The board game publisher CMON has been struggling for several years now, but NFTs are not the answer. They’d planned to invest $2.1 million in an NFT video game maker, whatever the hell that means, but backed off that plan when, I assume, they sobered up.
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→ July 21, 2026
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Big Fan.

Joe Posnanski and Michael Schur wrote a book together. It’s called Big Fan: Two Frieends, 82,490 Miles, and the Wild, Wonderful Sports We Love. If you have listened to their podcast, or read their writing, you know exactly what this book is going to be like. Reading it was like listening to a six-hour conversation between the two of them with occasional guest stars. I am also probably in the innermost circle of their target audience, not least because I know both of these knuckleheads, to the point where I am, in one paragraph, one of those guest stars. (They identify many of those one-graf guests by first name and occupation, which sometimes works to obscure who it is, but sometimes you get “Patton is a Comedian.”)

The general premise of Big Fan, which is the tiny bit of glue holding together a bunch of comical dialogues between these guys and a few of those guests, is that they’re exploring what it means to be a real fan of something, while also taking some of the longest and weirdest road trips possible. There’s a trip to Fairbanks, Alaska, for the Midnight Sun Game, which I have actually never attended in 25 years in the industry. They go to a darts championship, which sounds a lot more fun than I imagined. They have a pretty incredible experience going to an Unrivaled game. Joe makes Mike go to a WWE event that ropes in Jen Statsky, co-creator of Hacks, maybe my wife’s favorite show ever. Mike makes Joe play pickleball, which Joe (like my friend Will Leitch) claims to hate with the fire of ten thousand suns, something I don’t understand because pickleball is very fun and also good exercise for old people, which all four of us are. Dink. Dink. Whoops, you’re in the kitchen.

There’s a good bit of a lot of sports in there, obviously, and if there were nothing in the book but these two guys’ observations on sports, it would be great. I would gladly watch any real sporting event – not professional wrestling, sorry, that is pretend – with those two guys just to hear them riff. Maybe they could offer a real-time alternate feed to the World Series so I don’t have to listen to John Smoltz. I don’t need analysis of the game; I need to hear two people who are enjoying the game, and who let that come across in their chatter. They would be the anti-Smoltz. (Or anti-Lalas, as I was just exposed to that guy’s vapidity again today. He makes an inflatable doll seem like an intellectual giant.)

They also know a lot of people – I mean, a lot of people – and there are a couple of fantastic cameos in the book, not including mine. Tom Hanks wrote the intro, and I could probably just stop there. Linda Holmes explains her rebirth as a Phillies fan because of the likability (and success) of the current roster. Joe gets on the ice with the Shibutanis. They leverage knowing people into hugging Mookie Betts. Brandon McCarthy appears in transcripts of a group chat the three of them have. And those interstitials with the first name/vocation include a lot of famous and not-famous people talking about what they’re fans of and why.

It is a hoot, and I’m not just saying that because 1) they sent me a copy of the book and 2) I know both of them, and would at least like to remain on good terms with them, lest Mike create a character named Leith Kaw and make him a serial killer or, worse, a private equity bro in a future series. Big Fan is good fun, and it was just what I needed in the weeks leading up to the draft.

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→ July 20, 2026
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One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

Part story of the genocide in Gaza, part scathing critique of Western culture, and part memoir, Omar El Akkad’s book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This should be required reading in every American high school. It lays utterly bare the emptiness of American imperialist thinking, the ‘special’ relationship our governments have always had with Israel, and our willingness to look the other way when the deaths of others disturb or inconvenience us.

El Akkad was born in Egypt, grew up there and in Qatar before moving to Canada, and became a U.S. citizen a few years ago. He worked for many years for The Globe and Mail, and prior to this had written two novels, but no non-fiction books. It reads as if he has been saving up his rage, his indignation, his despair for decades so that he could pour it out on to nearly every page of this slender book of under 200 pages. It is a damning, heartbreaking read, rendered in extremely human language.

The main throughline of One Day is Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, which El Akkad refers to as “the world’s first live-streamed genocide,” the last a word he uses often and with plenty of justification. Indeed, the west’s fear of using that word, which extends to its media and political leaders of both U.S. parties, is also a major subject in the book, because, unlike any previous genocide (including the one that is likely happening right now in Sudan), we have visual evidence, we have videos and audio recordings, we have witness testimonies from people who were there and survived, and from people who were there and did not, but whose testimonies made it out.

El Akkad minces no words for the pusillanimous pundits who bothsides their way around the conflict, or for those who seek to dehumanize Palestinians. He points to the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman’s comparison of various Arab groups to spiders and caterpillar larvae (the U.S., of course, was a lion), the Times of Israel’s Luciano Mondino saying that Palestinian children “are the explosives of the future,” and the Israeli “Defence” Minister who called Palestinians “human animals.” Palestinians, Arabs in general, or just all brown people are still seen as something less, as the savages who simply can’t understand democracy or the rules of war or western civilization, such as it is, where we attacked an entire country that had nothing to do with 9/11, simply because 9/11 happened and the people who did it looked sort of similar. Yet after Hamas’ terror attacks and the massacre of October 7, 2023, when a single, unsourced story about murdered Israeli babies appeared online and then in major newspapers, even earning a mention by President Trump, even though the story was a hoax. It was seen by tens of millions of people, at the least, and I’m going to go on a limb and say that few of them stuck around to read the correction.

He does condemn Hamas, and describes their barbarous acts of October 7 in appropriate language, while also asking why it is that all people of Arab descent are expected to condemn terror attacks by Arab or Muslim groups, while white people are not expected to do the same – are called antisemitic and threatened with consequences if they do condemn – when Israel bombs a hospital or an aid convoy, or blockades Gaza so no food or medical aid can reach the starving population. He brings receipts; when Canadian protestors scaled Mt Sinai hospital in Toronto and flew a Palestinian flag, Canadian leaders condemned it and called hospitals sacred places of healing. They did not condemn Israel for bombing such sacred places of healing in Gaza.

Within the broader framework of the Gaza genocide and the ongoing failure of American imperialism, El Akkad also gives glimpses of his own life story. He remembers Egyptian security forces, barely adults, stopping his father after curfew, tearing up his security papers, and trying to arrest him, only for his father’s boss to happen upon the scene and save him – maybe saving his life. He remembers life in Doha, Qatar, which was exploding with newfound wealth thanks to the oil deposits beneath the tiny peninsula, and imported laborers to build up the city, often in near-slavery conditions, with no rights, no freedoms, and no way out. He also explores the environment of the last two years in the writing world, where may writers have declined to use their platforms to call for an end to the genocide, and where enough did speak out that PEN America had to cancel its 2024 awards ceremony because so many winners and nominees withdrew. He points out that the cost, perhaps fewer books sold, a cancelled appearance here or there, pales compared to the costs borne by the victims of genocide. One person’s words will not stop an attempt to extinguish a people, but enough people’s words, spoken together, might.

While El Akkad was writing the book, the war on Gaza entered its third year, and he notes that our attention had moved elsewhere. Yes, there is more sentiment in the U.S. electorate now that we should not be funding Israel’s efforts, and a few more elected officials and candidates are speaking out, but media coverage of the assault on Gaza has waned. We can only stare at misery for a few minutes before our eyes glaze over and we choose to look elsewhere.

One day, he points out, this will end, either because someone will stop Israel from wiping out the people of Gaza, or they will succeed to the point that there are too few Gazans left to matter. At that point, we will all have to reckon with what we did and said, if we did or said anything, to explain it to our children, our grandchildren, to ourselves. How does one finish the sentence, El Akkad asks, “it is unfortunate that tens of thousands of children are dead, but…” He has no answer. Neither do I.

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→ July 18, 2026
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Stick to baseball, 7/18/26.

The draft is over, which means my team-by-team recaps are up:

If you’re more interested in just the top names regardless of teams, here’s my day one recap. Plus I held a Q&A on Friday to talk draft & prospects. I also recapped the Futures Game on Sunday.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter today. You can find me primarily on Bluesky, Instagram, and TikTok.

I appeared on KJR with Chris Crawford to talk about the Mariners’ draft and prospects, on HB with Soren Petro to talk Royals draft, on 101 ESPN in St. Louis to talk Cardinals draft & deadline, and on 92.3 the Fan in Cleveland to talk about the Guardians’ draft, prospects, and young hitters.

And now, the links…

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→ July 11, 2026
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Stick to baseball, 7/11/26.

Happy Draft Day! I posted my final mock draft on Friday and held a Q&A to answer your questions about it, after posting one on Monday and holding a Q&A that afternoon. I posted my final Big Board of the top 100 prospects in the draft class, ss well as some scouting reports on prospects beyond the top 100 who will probably still be drafted. I also previewed the Futures Game rosters, and posted a scouting notebook on Atlanta, Baltimore, Washington, and Mets prospects.

I appeared on KIRO-Seattle to talk Mariners prospects and the trade deadline, and on The Score Chicago to talk about the draft and some big-picture baseball questions.

I’ll send another issue of my free email newsletter once I clear the draft stuff. You can also find me on Bluesky – I’m only posting links on X at this point, not replying to anything and not allowing new followers – and I continue to be more active on Instagram and TikTok.

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: This Vulture story by Irin Carmon on Today’s handling of the Nancy Guthrie story, including the environment behind the scenes and the difficult questions the show has had to face, is absolutely fantastic. I can’t even do it justice in a sentence or two here.
  • America is entering a postliterate age, as succeeding generations read less and comprehend less of what they read, writes Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic. Those of us who do still read account for an increasing share of books purchased in what Horowitch refers to as a “niche hobby.”
  • America is self-destructing, writes Stephen Marche in The Guardian, arguing that this was written in our founding. I loved the line “Donald Trump is the ultimate nostalgia act.”
  • Florida is the new Texas: Gov. Ron DeSantis is killing prisoners at an unprecedented rate, signing death warrants and leading to the state’s highest execution levels ever. Two of every five U.S. prisoners put to death were killed by Florida.
  • Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), who is running for the Senate seat held by Jon Ossoff, spent $400,000 in taxpayer money to make campaign ads, which is illegal. That’s in Judd Legum’s Popular.info newsletter; I see zero mainstream coverage of what sure seems like misuse of taxpayer funds.
  • The U.S. District Court judges of the Western Washington District wrote an editorial about how tyranny threatens an independent judiciary, whether it’s threats of violence against jurists on the bench or claims that someone is above the law entirely.
  • Also in The Atlantic, Spencer Kornhaber examines Lizzo’s latest album flopping and how easy it’s become to fall into the “Khia Asylum.” I liked Lizzo’s 2022 album Special, and didn’t even realize she’d released a new one, Bitch, until I saw this story.
  • So many Kickstarters for interesting board games: Ringyo, the latest game from the publishers of Distilled and Luthier. It’s a simultaneous worker-placement game and is in beta on Board Game Arena.
  • The Isle of Penguins, the latest game from the designer/publisher of The Isle of Cats and its various spinoffs.
  • Galileo’s Truth, from two of the designers of Egizia (one of the best complex games ever), Lorenzo il Magnifico, and Coimbra.

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→ June 30, 2026
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Music update, June 2026.

June was heavy, in a good way – this list has more psycheledic rock, post-hardcore, or metal tracks than most of playlists do. If you want to rock out, I have a few songs for you. As always, if you can’t access the widget below, you can access the playlist on Apple Music or Spotify.

Mastodon – Your Ghost Again. How could I start this playlist with anything but this new track from Mastodon that pays tribute to former member Brent Hinds, who left the band (or was kicked out) in March of 2025, then died in a motorcycle crash in August?

Jack White – Dollar Bill. I’m very into this new Jack White vibe, which seems to be carrying over from 2024’s No Name, such as on that album’s “Archbishop Harold Holmes.” (That track got a surprise video last year starring John C. Reilly, who came up with the concept. It played at Tribeca this spring.) White’s new album Frozen Charlotte comes out on July 10th.

Liminal – The Crop. Unabashedly late ‘60s psychedelic rock, very in line with what Temples typically does but a little darker in tone. Hailing from the Northern Rivers region of eastern Australia, this quartet has put out two albums to date, and promised a new and more experimental one this year, with this the only song released so far.

Temples – Glimmer. Oh, hey, speak of the devils. Bliss came out on Friday and it’s more of the usual, which is a good thing in my mind, as I love Temples’ guitar-forward psychedelia.

Pond – Skyworks. More psychedelic-rock, although Pond’s flavor is more experimental than Temples’ is. This Australian band put out their latest album, Terrestrials, on June 19th, and it’s a little more pensive than their last few albums – I didn’t find anything as immediately compelling as “Neon River” or “America’s Cup,” but songs like this one, which is more powered by the beat than the guitars, still landed for me.

Les Big Byrd – Artificial Sunlight. Sticking with a theme, this is a psychedelic-space rock group from Stockholm whose latest album Ruin Everything came out on June 5th. The first track is called “Hökvind” (featured on one of my previous playlists) if you want a sense of what they sound like.

The Afghan Whigs – Jungle Roux. The Whigs will release their tenth album, Soft Control, on August 21st, featuring this driving lead single. I was never into the band in their 1990s heyday, but I’ve really enjoyed their second phase, especially 2017’s In Spades.

Suede – Emotionally Unavailable. Suede continues to evolve and surprise; this extra track from the deluxe edition of their 2025 album Antidepressants is in that album’s post-punk vein, but has a harder edge and rocks out in a way they haven’t really done much since their 1990s peak.

Quicksand – Crystallize. Another band I didn’t get into in their original tenure – which, in Quicksand’s case, lasted just two albums, and came way before I was at all a fan of what is now called post-hardcore – but whose work post-reunion I’ve loved. Their fifth album, and third since they got back together, is titled Bring on the Psychics and comes out on July 17th.

Zoh Amba – Dead End Street. Amba is a multi-instrumentalist whose previous output was mostly free jazz, but on their latest album, Eyes Full, they’ve changed it up to a hybrid of alt-country and grunge to better tell stories of their childhood growing up in Kingsport, Tennessee.

beabadoobee – Sun Has Set. Beabadoobee’s fourth album, Pylon, comes out in Septeber; this lead single is a real rocker, and while it’s still clearly her sound, it feels like there might be some Olivia Rodrigo inspiration behind it.

Big Truck – Central Reservation Blues. Big Truck is the brand-new side project by Laurie Vincent, who is half of the English punk band Soft Play (ex-Slaves), but there’s no punk at all on this jangly indie-pop song or their other released track, the jazzier “Collided.”

feeble little horse – Poison. Bitknot is probably going to end up on my top albums of 2026 list; that swirling guitar lick between the verses here is a good example of why. It’s their first album since their founding guitarist left the group, but I don’t think I’d have noticed had I not read that fact, because this is still guitar-driven rock, pop and anti-pop at the same time, with harsh and even dissonant rhythms set against sweet melodies in the vocals and some of the lead guitar.

Slow Pulp – Better Man. I was mixed on Slow Pulp’s last album, 2023’s Yard, preferring their harder, more grunge-tinged stuff to some of the material that better matches their name. This track is the former kind – heavier, very ‘90s alternative rock, with a great hook in the chorus.

Young Empress feat. Prides – Never Enough. Young Empress is a duo of two unrelated people with the surname Davies, hailing from the West Midlands; Prides is now a solo act of Stewart Brock, the only remaining member, whose distinctive singing voice helps elevate this electro-pop song to something more demanding of your attention.

Rosa Walton – Romance is Dead On. Both members of Let’s Eat Grandma put out solo albums this year; Walton’s was my preference over that of bandmate Jenny Hollingsworth (who records as Jenny on Holiday). Both record in the same experimental dance-pop vein as their main band does, though, and I didn’t find either solo album that much a departure from LEG’s stuff.

Wishy – Lovesick. Wishy’s 2024 debut album earned them plaudits all over the music press, but I found most of it lacking in hooks, other than “Triple Seven,” which landed at #91 on my top songs of that year. This one is fucking banger, though. I name-check Velocity Girl a lot around these parts because that specific sound – power pop with distinctive, bright vocals above a rougher-edged backdrop – will always speak to me, and this song does it, too.

Meg Stalter feat. MUNA – Gay. It’s a novelty song, but kind of slaps? I have to admit I always thought Stalter’s Pride Month corporate videos were a riot, so perhaps I was primed to like this.

La Sécurité – Deny. La Sécurité started as a side project during the pandemic, but their debut album Stay safe! was such a success that they’re back with a new album, Bingo!, featuring more of the same dance-punk from the first LP.

Lakecia Benjamin feat. Terence Blanchard – Beyond the Dawn. Jazz saxophonist Benjamin released her new album We Dream on June 5th; this track includes jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard, twice nominated for Oscars for his scores for Spike Lee films.

Yard Act – New Beginnings. This post-punk band’s third album You’re Gonna Need A Little Music drops on July 17th; their sound continues to evolve from their first record, which was practically an homage to Gang of Four, to something more expansive musically, merging art-rock and even alternative hip-hop with that post-punk basis. This track has a very slow start, but the back half pays off with layers of sound behind an intense chorus.

Trashcan Sinatras – Melodramatic. This was actually the third single from the Scottish band’s upcoming album Ever the Optimist, due out July 31st, and came out in May, but I prefer it to the June release “Games for the ZX Spectrum,” which is more maudlin and lacks this song’s hook.

Car Seat Headrest – Joe Drives Again. I’ve never loved CSH, mostly because of the vocals, but the vocals are more ‘normal’ here and it’s a catchy, bouncy melody. The first line of the chorus is definitely borrowed from another track that I can’t place.

Sleep – Have Spacesuit Will Travel (4;20 Flexi Edit). Sleep announced in June that guitarist Matt Pike is no longer part of the band after 25 years; their new lineup features Melvins drummer Dale Crover, ex-Void guitarist Bubba Dupree, and original vocalist/bassist Al Cisneros. I don’t know if this was related to Pike’s embrace of the work of antisemitic lunatic David Icke, but unlike most Sleep fans, I’m fine with them moving on. This song sounds a bit more commercial than what I think of when I think of Sleep, but I do like the melding of space rock and stoner metal, so I’m happy to see what else they produce.

Tygers of Pan Tang – Forevermore. Tygers of Pan Tang were part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal in the late 1970s, churning out four albums over a three-year span, but their biggest success was a cover of “Love Potion No. 9” and they disbanded for about 13 years before original guitarist Robb Weir restarted the group in 2000. They’ve been prolific since then, with their new album Electifyed (due out in September) their eighth in 25 years, and frankly they sound pretty damn good. If you like Maiden, Priest, Angel Witch, or Saxon, this should be in your wheelhouse.

Lost in Kyiv – Liminality. Instrumental “post-rock” music from a Paris quartet, turning more towards metal on their third album (and changing the spelling of their name from Kiev). It reminds me a bit of Alcest, without the shoegaze/blackgaze elements.

Insomnium – Shadow Life. This Finnish melodic death metal band has put out some interesting stuff over their nearly 30 years, with flirtations with progressive/technical metal and even some overtly commercial elements – there are clean vocal harmonies in the chorus on this song – alongside the death growls. I can’t say I’ve listened to everything they’ve done since their great 2014 album Shadows of a Dying Sun, but this is the best track of theirs I’ve heard since then.

Warning – Night Comes Down. There’s doom metal, and then there’s Warning, who make Candlemass sound like EDM. Warning isn’t heavy like Cathedral; they’re slower, darker, more depressing musically. If you like Candlemass or Saint Vitus, check these guys out.

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→ June 29, 2026
→ By

The Score.

Multiple people suggested C. Thi Nguyen’s book The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game to me this spring, but I was way ahead of them, putting a hold request in at my library the week it came out. It is a book about games, although it is much more a book about philosophy and the modern world, and touches on games – good and bad – as a way to address how we are manipulated into pursuing goals or acting certain ways by the rules that other people or corporate entities set up to manage us.

Nguyen’s premise is that we are all, to some degree, playing other peoples’ games – passively choosing to do things that do not fulfill us or help us achieve our goals or just make us happy, because we are instead following what amount to scoring systems in all aspects of our lives. The simplest example is the pursuit of greater income over all else at work: If money is what truly makes you happy, then maybe that’s the right game to be playing, but for most people, money isn’t everything (once you have enough to meet your basic needs), and for nearly all people, there are diminishing returns to making more money, unless you’re a psychopath who needs to make more money than anyone else, in which case you are playing a different game as well.

Perhaps the most salient and accessible example Nguyen gives is health. The rise of personal health devices – I owned a Fitbit for about five years before I got sick of how they died every year and a half or so and became trash – has led owners or wearers to judge their health along a few specific scales, such as weight, BMI, resting heart rate, heart rate variability, and so on. None of these is an actual measure of health, and Nguyen points out that even defining what it means to be “healthy” in a global way is difficult at best, and probably impossible to operationalize in a practical sense.

Nguyen also discusses social media, even though he appears to be a very scant user – or perhaps he’s simply following his own advice. I recently hit 6000 followers on Instagram, a rather paltry number, and the app told me to celebrate it and gave me a graphic to share (I did not). Is the point of using Instagram, or any social media app, to amass likes or followers? I would argue it is not. Yet the rules of their particular game, in Nguyen’s framework, say that that is the point – this is how you measure success on Instagram, and therefore you should act accordingly. I gained followers particularly because of two videos I posted, one criticizing MLB’s proposal to the union, the other criticizing UNC’s head coach for abusing the arm of an 18-year-old pitcher on his staff. So should I post more critical videos to try to stir the pot and gain more followers and likes? Reader, I will not. That would be playing someone else’s game.

The Score is incredibly light and easy to read, certainly the most accessible philosophy or philosophy-adjacent book I’ve ever read. (It beats the pants off Sophie’s World.) The chapters are short, and most chapters are built around short anecdotes, many taken from Nguyen’s own life – I respect and appreciate how many quirky interests he has, some of which align with my own, like board games and cooking, and some of which don’t, like rock climbing (go around it) and yo-yo tricks (which I didn’t know was still a thing).

There isn’t much mention of specific games in The Score, which was a little disappointing because they would have provided some more specificity for Nguyen’s examples. He does mention The Mind for its elegance – it has a very short rule set, yet is very fun and offers significant replayability – and a few video games he likes, as well as the fact that he lost many hours to playing the original Civilization video game in college, which happened to me as well (fall of junior year … I was thoroughly addicted to it). I thought he might get more into the gamification phenomenon, where companies use various techniques like points, rewards, leaderboards, competition among friends or strangers, and so on to encourage users to engage in some specific behavior. Duolingo is gamified language-learning. I have mixed feelings on it; about two years of daily use got me to a very basic level of conversational Welsh, and I’ve been using it for German for the last nine months, where I’m probably also at basic conversation as long as you can forgive my incorrect word order. Verb at the end I get, but the rules for the stuff in the middle … well, Duolingo doesn’t teach that kind of material, because it can’t be as easily gamified. So am I learning languages, or playing a game about learning languages?

You don’t need to be a gamer of any sort to read and gain something from The Score, and to the extent that they’re marketing it as a book about games, that’s a mistake. This is a book about life; I’d call it a self-help book if that term didn’t have pejorative connotations. Nguyen subtly lays out how to figure out when you’re being played by someone who wants you to play their game, and then how to find the games, literally but more figuratively, that you do want to play, actions that will help you be happier and find fulfillment, whether it’s in your family, at work, or in your many hobbies. And if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re too online like I am, and could use a reminder that every app and algorithm is trying to sucker us into playing their games, so the answer is to log off and play something else instead.

Next up: I just finished Big Fan by my friends Joe Posnanski and Mike Schur and began Gene Wolfe’s Shadow & Claw.

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→ June 27, 2026
→ By

Stick to baseball, 6/27/26.

Nothing new this week at the Athletic, but I’ll have an updated Big Board and a reaction to the Futures Game rosters in the coming week, plus probably a scouting blog – I’ve been accumulating some notes but have been waiting for something big or wow or otherwise hook-worthy to lead the column. Getting Anthony Eyanson’s worst outing of the year – he was 90-93 and couldn’t find the plate – did not help matters.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter on Saturday morning. You should sign up. Also, you should follow me on Instagram or TikTok, because I’m posting videos on both places now. Please don’t call me a ‘content creator.’ (Or an ‘influencer.’ I might die of shame.) I’m still on Bluesky first among all social media outlets.

And now, the links…

  • Speaking of the First Amendment, ICE agents found a woman who posted the name of the agent who killed Renee Good in Minnesota, Jonathan Ross, after he was identified in numerous news reports. The agents demanded that she take the post down. She has steadfastly refused.
  • Charlie Warzel writes in The Atlantic (gift link) about the myth of SpaceX, a meme masquerading as a company.
  • Cambodia’s crackdown on phone-scam compounds, where trafficked people were held captive and forced to mass-text or call potential victims, has put those people on the streets of Phnom Penh with no place to go and no easy way back to their home countries.
  • Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) warns Democrats not to throw trans people under the bus, on moral and strategic grounds. If you give up on the rights of one oppressed minority, the other side will go after another minority, and another, and another, because they have learned you won’t fight for them.
  • This New York Times piece on bank tellers stepping in to stop people, often the elderly, from falling for phishing scams is both heartening and depressing. Most people want to do good. We are also so far away from being able to manage and regulate the technologies that we use every day.
  • I nearly backed this Kickstarter for Sprout, an upcoming game about houseplants – a core interest of my wife – but couldn’t get enough of a sense of what the game is like, and at $39 it seemed a lot to commit for a game I didn’t understand. Which is a long way of saying it might be awesome, but I want to wait and see.

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