The dish — Page 3 — The collected thoughts of sportswriter, bookworm, & food critic Keith Law

→ March 3, 2024
→ By keith

Killers of the Flower Moon (film).

David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read, a true story that works as a thriller, an important part of American history, and a document of racism and injustice that continues to echo today. Like most fans of the book and/or Grann’s work, I was thrilled to hear Martin Scorsese was adapting it for the screen…

…and then I saw the movie was three and a half hours long.

It is a very good movie, but it just didn’t need to be this long, and it works in more detail than the core narrative actually needed. It’s become a trend with Scorsese to create these overlong films that bog down in minor details that sap the energy of the main plot, which in this case detracts from what might otherwise have been the best movie of the year if anyone had said to him that he needed to edit this down to a reasonable length. (It’s streaming on Apple TV+.)

The Osage Nation were once the dominant civilization in the central plains of North America, but in the 1870s, the U.S. government exiled them to a desolate part of what is now northern Oklahoma, a move that backfired on the white colonizers when it turned out that the new Osage lands sat on a large oil field. This made the Osage people quite rich on paper, giving them headrights to a share of the proceeds from the nation’s oil revenues, although a 1921 federal law said that the Osage couldn’t access the cash directly without approval of white guardians until they were ruled “competent.” A series of murders of Osage tribe members in the 1920s, ignored by local authorities, led the tribe to beg the nascent Bureau of Investigations to look into the cases, which uncovered a conspiracy to kill the Osage for their headrights and indeed birthed the modern FBI.

The Osage woman at the center of the case that brought the Bureau into Oklahoma was Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), who married a white carpetbagger named Ernest Burkhardt (Leonardo DiCaprio). Mollie’s two sisters, brother-in-law, and cousin were all murdered at the behest of Ernest’s uncle, William King Hale (Robert Deniro), while Ernest and King nearly killed Mollie by poisoning the insulin injections she needed for her diabetes before the Bureau arrived, led by Thomas White (Jesse Plemons), and solved the case, saving Mollie and sending her husband and uncle-in-law to prison.

The story here is so rich and compelling, especially in Grann’s rendition, that it would be hard to make a bad movie out of it; even when the film drags a little in pace, it’s still interesting because of the wide cast of characters and the sense of creeping doom that dominates the first two hours. All three leads are superb, with Gladstone especially strong, and Deniro looking the most invested in a part he’s been in forever. There’s no mystery as to who’s behind the killings, so any tension is from wondering how long they’ll get away with it, and, if you’re unfamiliar with the story, how many people will die before anyone takes the Osage – who are well aware these deaths are not accidental, as ruled by the coroner – seriously.

That makes the film’s bloat far harder to understand, because it just bogs things down and introduces a broad array of characters, nearly all drawn from real life and many played quite well by famous musicians, that the film doesn’t need. Keeping everyone straight in this movie requires a cheat sheet, and there’s a real imbalance to who’s getting that extra screen time – it’s the villains, all white men, while the Osage get far less screen time and have far fewer named characters on their side; the story unfurls from a neutral perspective, rather than from Mollie’s or that of the Osage in general. The real conspiracy was indeed this broad, involving cousins and criminals alike, yet for the sake of telling the story in a reasonable amount of time, Scorsese should have trimmed some of the names or at least kept a few more of them off screen.

The crimes themselves take up about two-thirds of the film, which does allow for the complex (to put it mildly) relationship between Mollie and Ernest, who had two kids together, to develop on screen, although the script may go too far in casting Ernest as a feckless pawn of his uncle rather than someone aware he was committing murder and poisoning his own wife. By the time the Bureau shows up, it is a welcome shot of energy in a film that had gotten stuck in its own mire, and Plemons livens things up even in an understated performance. The last hour, where the killers are brought to justice, zips by compared to the slow build that came before, with the main tension around whether Ernest will choose to stand by his uncle or confess to his crimes and, on some level, side with his wife. Even so, we get some overblown scenes like Brendan Fraser’s defense attorney bloviating in the courthouse with Ernest on the stand, a perfectly fine scene in its own right but not one that pushes the story forward. There are just so many bits here that could have been cut to make this movie two and a half hours, and in that case, it might have challenged for Best Picture, but instead we get an Apple TV+ movie that feels like it was trying to be a limited series instead.

Killers of the Flower Moon earned ten nominations, including the obligatory Best Director and Best Picture nods for Scorsese; this is the seventh film of his last nine to get him a Director nomination, although it seems far more of a recognition of his name than his work here. Gladstone is the overwhelming favorite to win Best Actress, which may be the only major award it wins; if it wins another, I’d guess Robbie Robertson might win for Best Original Score, as the score is strong, adding to many scenes without ever overwhelming the action or dialogue, and the fact that he died before the film was released will likely win him some additional votes. DiCaprio did not get a Best Actor nomination, even though he at least was better than one nominee in Bradley Cooper.

→ March 2, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 3/2/24.

Nothing new this week at the Athletic, but I’ll have two draft-related pieces coming up next week.

At Paste, I reviewed Dragonkeepers, a new family-level game that I found really disappointing, with the wrong mixture of complexity and randomness.

I’ll have a new newsletter out in the next day or two, but you can sign up here – it’s free and always includes links to everything I write.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Color me shocked, but self-help ‘guru’ Jay Shetty has fabricated or embellished much of his background, according to this investigative piece by The Guardian.
Slate’s Chris Molanphy breaks down what the country chart success of Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” does and does not mean in actual impact on radio and with country listeners.
Will Leitch wrote about the culture-war takeover of the murder of Laken Riley, a University of Georgia student who was killed on the same running trail Will and his wife often take in Athens. Because her alleged killer entered the U.S. illegally, the case is now part of the yelling about the so-called “crisis” at the U.S-Mexico border – even though immigrants commit fewer crimes than U.S.-born people.
Florida’s measles outbreak is due to the state’s active campaigning against childhood vaccinations, so, of course, Fox News is blaming it on migrants.
The state of Indiana has blocked funding to the Kinsey Institute, the world’s top sex-research center, as part of that state’s war on LGBTQ+ rights.
Texas executed Ivan Cantu even though the foreman of the jury that convicted him wrote that he believed the sentence was unjust, as the prosecution hid key evidence that may have bolstered Cantu’s claims of innocence. Just another day in the Lone Star State.
What do you expect from a state where the party that controls all branches of government keeps cozying up to a prominent white supremacist?
A Dallas-area high school canceled a student production of The Laramie Project, about the killing of Matthew Shepard by two bigots because he was gay, after the district passed anti-LGBTQ+ rules last year.
Climate change is driving a surge in cholera cases in central Africa.
An unvaccinated nine-year-old boy in Singapore contracted COVID-19, developed myocarditis from it, and suffered a stroke. His mother says she declined the vaccine for her son because she was worried it would cause myocarditis, a good example of the harm that unfettered disinformation is doing to public health.
Some good medical news: An mRNA ‘vaccine’ to fight pancreatic cancer has entered stage 2 trials. I put the word vaccine in quotes because it’s not a preventative vaccine, but is tailored to specific recipients’ cancers to help train the immune system to fight the rogue cells, particularly those that remain after surgery or chemo.
You would think Arizona, the sunniest state in the U.S., would encourage residents to add solar panels, but the state is bowing to one of its major energy utility companies and adding a “punitive” charge to customers with solar panels. The Arizona Corporation Commission approved a request from utility APS despite failing to evaluate the full impact of these price hikes on consumers.
Missouri’s Attorney General is suing Planned Parenthood for “trafficking” minors to get abortions outside of Gilead.
The death of nonbinary teen Nex Benedict in Owasso, Oklahoma, after several girls beat them to the point where they blacked out, has received a lot of unclear and I think contradictory coverage from major outlets so far. Assigned Media has a solid summary of what we do and don’t know so far and a piece criticizing traditional media for accepting the police & school’s narratives without questioning them.
A married couple in Oregon who taught at Damascus Christian School have been charged with sexually abusing a child there. No drag queens or trans people were involved.
The BBC spoke to several Iranian women who are still protesting the theocratic regime’s requirement that they wear hijabs in public.
Mehdi Hasan announced his new media venture, Zeteo News, which sounds promising, although we’ve certainly seen and heard similar pitches before that haven’t panned out. His work with MSNBC was excellent and I expect him to continue to challenge disinformation and bigotry. I hope there’s enough support to allow him to build the news organization he envisions.
A Beverly Hills middle school is grappling with the spread of AI-generated nudes of students. This issue isn’t going anywhere and I doubt passing laws against the practice is going to do much at this level.
I know you’re shocked, but the construction of Elon Musk’s long-promised Hyperloop in Las Vegas is rife with safety violations.
Two twins from the country of Georgia were sold at birth and separated; they found each other as teenagers thanks to a TV talent show and to TikTok. Amy and Ano are two of thousands of babies who were stolen from hospitals in the Caucasus nation, their mothers told their babies had died, and sold to new families who were often unaware the adoptions were illegal.
Board game news: An expansion for the Restoration Games title Thunder Road is now on Kickstarter and has already cleared $1 million.
A roll-and-write game based on the wonderful board game Cascadia is also on Kickstarter and fully funded already.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, arizona, board game news, climate change, country music, death penalty, frauds, las vegas, links, longreads, missouri, oklahoma, social media, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines

→ March 1, 2024
→ By keith

Music update, February 2024.

Hey, not too bad for a month of just 29 days, although I think the quantity of songs on a playlist has more to do with how many Fridays a month has than how many days. I’m posting this on March 1^st, which is a strong album release day (Liam Gallagher & John Squire, Everything Everything, Kaiser Chiefs, Ministry, Sheer Mag, Yard Act), leading into what looks like a very promising spring of new LPs from some great artists. As always, if you can’t see the Spotify widget below, you can click here.

Kacey Musgraves – Deeper Well. I’m pretty sure this is the first song by Musgraves I’ve ever put on a playlist. It’s just gorgeous, with a hint of darkness in the lyrics to contrast to the lovely guitarwork and harmonies in the chorus.

Khruangbin – May Ninth. A La Sala, their first proper LP since 2020’s Mordechai, comes out on April 5^th, and it seems like it may be a return to their all-instrumental style from their prior work.

Parsnip – The Light. Parsnip is an Australian quartet who released an album in 2019 called When the Tree Bears Fruit, but this was the first track I’d heard by them. It’s jangly, catchy indie-pop with some smart-ass lyrics, loosely descended from a lot of the Britpop stuff I was all about in my 20s. It’s from their upcoming album Behold, due out April 26^th, their first new music of any sort since 2020.

Kaiser Chiefs – Beautiful Girl. Kaiser Chiefs’ Easy Eighth Album comes out on March 1^st, their first LP since 2019, but even with production from Nike Rodgers, this is the only single I’ve heard of five worth listening to. It’s fantastic, though. Lead singer Ricky Wilson wrote a short, interesting retrospective on their sudden rise to fame and the vicissitudes of their career for The Guardian this past week.

Pond – Neon River. More weird psychedelic rock from down under. Stay with it through the lugubrious intro for the muscular, acid-tinged riffs in the chorus.

Elbow – Lovers’ Leap. Elbow came along at the wrong time for me, after Madchester and Britpop, two genres I still come back to all the time, but before I got back into current music again around 2007, thanks in no small part to the Arctic Monkeys’ debut album. I’ve checked in on them here and there, such as when they won the Mercury Prize for The Seldom Seen Kid, but their music has just drifted right on by me. That’s by way of explanation of why this is the first Elbow track to ever appear on one of my playlists: it’s not just that I think it’s good, but I think it’s very different. Frontman Guy Garvey promised the upcoming LP, Audio Vertigo, will be “groove-based,” and this song definitely qualifies.

Yard Act feat. Katy Pearson and David Thewlis – When the Laughter Stops. More post-punk goodness from Yard Act, with an appearance from Thewlis reading the “sound and fury” monologue from Hamlet. Their second album, Where’s My Utopia?, is out today, March 1^st.

English Teacher – R&B. There’s a slow start here but it picks up the pace partway through to sound more like other English Teacher tracks, with their modern take on post-punk; their debut full-length This Could Be Texas comes out on April 12^th.

Omni – Compliment. I seem to be very late to the Omni party, as the Atlanta post-punks have received critical acclaim for at least their last three albums now, including the just-released Souvenir, which has this track as the closer.

Squid – Fugue (Bin Song). I’m not always on Squid’s wavelength, but they’re one of the most innovative bands out there right now, especially in their punk-adjacent space, playing with time signatures and working outside of traditional keys. It’s a bit like black midi with less pretense.

Les Savy Fav – Legendary Tippers. I didn’t think LSF were still a going concern, but they’re about to release their first new album in 14 years, Oui, in May. They’ve dropped two singles so far; this one sounds similar to the sound they

Kid Kapichi – Get Down. Kid Kapichi have always reminded me of a harder-edged version of Arctic Monkeys, leaning more into punk than Alex Turner & company do, but here they go back a few decades with talk-sung lyrics telling a story before the hook in the chorus.

Cast – The Rain That Falls. So I sort of knew Cast were still around, but maybe I’d forgotten? I loved Cast in the 1990s – “Sandstorm,” “Alright,” “Beat Mama,” “Finetime” – as they emerged from the ashes of The La’s, whose Brian Wilson-esque frontman Lee Mavers refused to release any new music after their debut album. Cast’s latest LP Love Is the Call is a mixed bag, at best, but this is the best track on the album and you can hear their earlier Britpoppy sound poking through.

Everything Everything – The End of the Contender. These British art-rockers’ latest album, Mountainhead, drops on March 1^st, featuring this song, “Cold Reactor,” and “The Mad Stone.” Those three singles all have the EE sound, but they’ve also felt more restrained, without the sort of controlled chaos of Arc or A Fever Dream.

Love Fame Tragedy – It’s Ok To Be Shallow. The second single this winter from Matthew Murphy’s side project, after December’s “Don’t You Want To Sleep With Someone Normal,” with both sounding … a lot like the Wombats. I don’t think Murphy can write any other way, but fortunately I love most of what he writes, so we’re all good.

Ride – Last Frontier. Ride & Slowdive both making comebacks in the late teens ahead of, or perhaps encouraging, the new peak of shoegaze is a welcome development, given that I liked both bands in their original heydays but definitely did not fully appreciate either.

Brittany Howard – Prove It To You. What Now turned out to be a bit of a disappointment after the title track, the lead single from the record, was so good I named it my #1 track of 2023. I was hoping for more funk, but instead the album bounces all over the place, with a lot of house/electronica and a number of almost dirge-like tracks. Nothing lived up to the first single but this is the second-best song on the LP.

Little Simz – Mood Swings. Little Simz released a surprise EP, Drop 7, with seven tracks and a total run time of just 14:49; it is, as you’d expect, the seventh in a series of EPs that exist in parallel to her more traditional tracks on her albums. It’s weird, in a good way, although it reminds me I need to listen to No Thank You, her December 2022 album, again, as it came out in a dead time for new albums.

Paul Weller – Soul Wandering. Sixty-five and still rocking, Weller, the former leader of The Jam and The Style Council, is back with this soul-influenced track that has some powerful guitar work (I get a little early Tom Cochrane from it) before the Motown-esque backing vocalists come in for the chorus. His latest solo album, 66, will come out on May 24^th, one day before his 66^th birthday.

Waxahatchee – Bored. I can’t believe it’s been four years since Saint Cloud, Waxahatchee’s breakout album, came out, but I guess a fair amount has happened since then. This track is the second from her upcoming album Tiger Blood, due out March 24^th, and both songs seem to lean more into her alt.country side than the roots rock style of the last album.

The Mysterines – Stray. Lia Metcalfe and company will release their second album, Afraid of Tomorrows, on June 7^th. This lead single is more snarling than most of the tracks on their 2022 debut, Reeling, but not quite as fast-paced as their earliest singles, which remains my favorite version of the band. The song’s video definitely leans into Metcalfe’s looks and star power.

Slow Fiction – Apollo. An indie-rock group from Brooklyn – bet you haven’t heard of that before! – Slow Fiction put out an EP last year, followed by this one-off single, which does a tremendous job of building up energy and tension through the bridge and chorus, only releasing it in the final ten seconds or so of the track.

Screaming Females – Swallow the World. The Females announced their breakup in December, but they’ve now released their 2022 EP Clover, previously only available to buy at shows, on streaming sites and on bandcamp.

MAQUINA. – denial. I know very little about this band other than that they’re Portuguese, but this is very Ministry, with a little Death in Vegas thrown in.

Alcest – L’Envol. This French metal band pioneered the awkwardly-named subgenre of “blackgaze,” melding black metal elements with shoegaze, which was later taken over by the American band Deafheaven on their far less interesting album Sunbather. Anyway, Alcest has been putting out some of the best metal albums in the world in the last decade, and their first new LP in five years, Les Chants de l’aurore, will be out in June.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alternative, hip-hop, indie, metal, Music, post-punk, shoegaze

→ February 29, 2024
→ By keith

Maestro.

Leonard Bernstein lived a long and interesting life, earning his place in the pantheon of American music. It’s hard to believe Maestro couldmake him and his life so utterly boring. (It’s streaming exclusively on Netflix.)

Directed and co-written by Bradley Cooper, Maestro is a formulaic biopic that often seems afraid to truly engage with its subject (played by Cooper) or his wife, Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). The film begins with Bernstein at age 25, thrust into the lead conductor role one night at the New York Philharmonic when the guest conductor is unable to go on, a jumbled mess of a scene that foreshadows the movie’s chronic problems with pacing and tempo. Bernstein is in a relationship with the clarinet player David Oppenheim (Matt Bomer), but soon afterwards meets Felicia at a cocktail party, pursuing and marrying her, although he was gay and had a series of affairs with men throughout their marriage. His career progresses in the background, with nods here and there to his series of successful endeavors (and no mention of his big flop, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which became his last Broadway musical), while his marriage teeters and he and Felicia separate, briefly, before reuniting because he conducted a great performance in 1973. And then she gets cancer and dies.

Maestro isn’t even bad, or so-bad-it’s-good, but dull. Bernstein was fascinating as a person and a composer, yet the film does neither side of him justice. He wrote the music and score for West Side Story, scored On the Waterfront, and wrote three symphonies and numerous other orchestral and chamber pieces, which you’d barely glean from this film. There’s relatively little of his music, certainly not his most famous pieces, in the movie, yet the script focuses for an eternity on that one 1973 performance, where he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra at Ely Cathedral – a show that, in the film, led Felicia to forgive his infidelities, which seems to be a bit of Hollywood nonsense. If you knew nothing of Bernstein before watching Maestro, you would likely leave the film believing he was a conductor and not a composer, or at best a minor composer of lesser-known works.

His relationship with Felicia is supposed to be the heart of the film, but it’s in cardiac arrest; it’s a series of interactions, but few if any are illuminating, and there is zero chemistry of any sort between the two of them, which matters given how much the film wants us to believe that, despite his homosexuality, he both cared for and needed Felicia. It’s as if the two characters barely inhabit the same universe, exacerbated by both actors’ attempts to mimic the accents and intonations of the people they’re portraying, which makes Mulligan sound like she’s in a Julian Fellowes period piece. The drive for verisimilitude in biopics has some clear drawbacks, from the distractions of Cooper’s makeup and voice mimicry to the sense that these two characters aren’t even from the same era.

Nothing sinks Maestro as much as how boring the story is, though. There are certainly several ways to treat a protagonist who’s a philanderer, and struggling with his sexual identity in a time of entrenched discrimination and bigotry, yet is also an icon in his field and was recognized as a genius in his own time. Maestro seems unwilling to engage with the darker side of Bernstein’s character – that, even if Felicia accepted him as who he was and what he was doing, he seemed to be using her as cover and as an emotional support. There’s a bigger question of whether a relationship like this can even work, or be equitable, but the script never comes close to exploring it. I’m mystified by the wide acclaim for the film, but there’s always one major Oscar-nominated film that I just don’t get.

Speaking of which, Maestro was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay; needless to say, I don’t think it should win any of them, with multiple better choices in each category. Greta Lee (Past Lives) should have had Mulligan’s nod, and Leonardo DiCaprio (Killers of the Flower Moon) or Andrew Scott (All of Us Strangers) would have been a better choice than Cooper. The one race to watch here would be Best Makeup and Hairstyling, given the controversy over Cooper’s use of a prosthetic nose to better resemble Bernstein, a choice that the composer’s children have publicly supported. I don’t believe there’s a clear favorite in that category, since Barbie was snubbed, while Variety and Indiewire have both tabbed Maestro as the likely winner. I haven’t seen three of the five nominees yet, so I’ll defer any opinion on this.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2023 movies, 2024 best actor nominees, 2024 best actress nominees, 2024 best original screenplay nominees, 2024 best picture nominees, disappointments, movies

→ February 27, 2024
→ By keith

Stay True.

Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critic Circle award for memoir or autobiography, Hua Hsu’s Stay True begins as a coming-of-age story about growing up as a first-generation American, trying to fit in with other kids through culture and counter-culture. Hsu eventually found a strong friend group at UC Berkeley, doing normal college kid things and seeing the world as full of endless possibilities, until one of his closest friends is murdered in a random carjacking, a senseless crime that destroys so many lives and leaves Hsu in an uncertain world of grief. It’s brief yet Hsu writes so clearly and specifically that each scene feels real – and so do the emotions that come from it.

Hsu was born to Taiwanese parents who emigrated to the United States to flee the repressive government in Taipei in the 1960s and 1970s, then grew up in California as an outsider to multiple groups – he wasn’t white, yet he wasn’t a high achiever like many of the other Asian-American students he saw. He eventually gravitates to music as a way to be cool, particularly towards indie music, even starting his own zine in high school to try to get free CDs from record labels, adopting a cooler-than-thou attitude to people who listened to mainstream artists like Pearl Jam or the Dave Matthews Band, or even latecomers to Nirvana. When he graduates from high school and attends Berkeley, he meets Ken Ishida, who in many ways is all the things Hsu wants to be – effortless, charismatic, handsome, just naturally cool without trying. The two don’t exactly become fast friends; their friendship grows over time, and evolves around and through their differences rather than in spite of them. Theirs was, in Hsu’s telling, the sort of friendship that you are lucky to find a few times in your life, one that lasts for decades even as others drift apart or become nothing more than Facebook friendships.

Of course, Ken is the murder victim here, which I don’t think is spoiling anything if you’ve read any reviews or anything else about the book. It was as pointless as stupid as it gets; his killers bought a bunch of stuff with his credit cards and went to their house, with his car still on their lawn. They were caught almost immediately, and the guy who actually shot him is still in prison in California; his girlfriend, an accomplice in the crime, was just released last year. His murder was enough to shock Hsu and their whole friend group, but Hua takes it even harder because of how their last interaction went, and his guilt that perhaps Ken would still be alive if he’d said or done something different in that situation.

Hsu’s writing is delicate and evocative all at once; he eschews the big twist or shocking moment, and lets the characters – of which he is one – tell the story, with his wry observations often providing humor or some needed context. So much of Stay True asks how to measure a life, to borrow a phrase; when someone close to us dies, how do we remember them, truly remember them as they were, rather than the version we hold in our memories, which may be colored by our emotions or wishes. It becomes tangible to Hsu when he has to deliver the eulogy at Ken’s funeral, where he speaks more honestly than you might expect for the ceremony, while much of what comes afterwards, in the final third of the book, is Hsu trying to make sense less of what happened and more of how to go on. He writes letters to his late friend, sees his figurative ghost when a certain song plays or when it’s time for a cigarette. His relationship with his girlfriend stalls. He reacts as many people would in the face of such a tragedy; few could describe it in such lucid, honest terms.

I did read a review of Stay True that referred to the book as “unsentimental,” which I think depends on how you define the term. Sentimental literature and art is maudlin, weepy, turgid; Stay True is none of those. It is, however, a sad story, told plainly but with tenderness at its core. Hua Hsu lost his best friend, without warning, and without the emotional tools to cope. He’s written a beautiful tribute that speaks to the grief we all must face in some way, while also delving into the details of his life and Ken’s that made both of their stories unique.

Next up: Wise Gals: The Spies Who Built the CIA and Changed the Future of Espionage, by Nathalia Holt.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: asian-american literature, highly recommended, memoirs, national book critics circle award, pulitzer prize

→ February 26, 2024
→ By keith

Stardew Valley.

My daughter loves the video game Stardew Valley, even though, according to her, there’s no actual end or final goal; you just keep playing to accomplish tasks and get more gold or other rewards, without a destination. I find that idea maddening. Whether a game is competitive or cooperative, there has to be a way to win. Otherwise, it’s not a game – it’s work.

The tabletop version of Stardew Valley does have a way to win, although it’s pretty hard to pull off. It’s a cooperative game for up to 4 players, with a solo mode, where you play through four seasons, planting and harvesting crops, rearing animals, fishing, exploring the mine, and making friends with villagers, all to try to achieve four objective cards and renovate the six rooms in the community center by making the appropriate donations. You get 16 turns apiece, and just two brief actions per turn, so you have to be ruthlessly efficient, contrary to the laid-back approach of the video game version. If you achieve all ten goals before you reach the end of winter, you win; otherwise, you lose.

Each season has four cards within it, telling you what to do on the board before players take their turns, and then a cleanup card at the end of the season that reminds you to change out that season’s forage tokens for the next one’s and to choose an additional professional skill card for their chosen profession (farmer, fisherman, forager, miner). At the start of the players’ turn, they may sell goods from their inventory for gold or swap them with each other, and then each player places their pawn on any location on the board, either taking two actions at that spot, or taking one action and moving to an adjacent location to take a second action. The benefit of the latter choice is that the player may take a face-down foraging token from the board, which gives some reward – basic goods like stone or wood, foraged plants that can be gifted or sold, or fancier items like artifacts or minerals that can be sold or donated to the museum for hearts.

The main ways to gain resources and money are growing crops, animal husbandry, mining, and fishing. Planting crops requires buying seeds at the town center, watering them (or praying for rain), and then harvesting them automatically when they have been watered enough times to match the water symbol on the tile. Rearing animals requires building a barn or coop first, and then moving to the farm to collect eggs, milk, wool, or feathers. Any player can fish by going to the river, lake, or ocean, then rolling three dice and assigning them to any of the five fishing tokens in the display, taking the fish that the dice match. The mine has 12 levels, and each has its own map and monster; you roll two dice and gain the reward (or penalty) shown at the intersection of their two values on the map card’s 3×3 grid, which can include the power to move down another level. Lower levels have better rewards, and one of the potential end-game objectives is to reach level 12.

You also need goods to gift to villagers you befriend, another action you take in the town. You draw the top card from the villager deck and give them any gift, as long as it’s not identified on the right side of the card as something they hate. If it’s an item they love, you get two hearts; if not, you get one. If you give them a gift in their birthday season, you get an extra heart. Hearts have many functions in Stardew Valley, but the most important one is to reveal the required donations for the community center’s six rooms.

Each player starts the game with one of the four professions and a basic tool which can be upgraded multiple times with copper ore. After each season, every player takes two Profession Upgrade cards and chooses one to keep, replacing one of the two they already have if necessary. These make your actions more powerful and/or allow you to re-roll or redo some unfavorable actions, commensurate with leveling up in a role-playing game.

There are way too many components in Stardew Valley, and it could have been a much simpler box if they weren’t trying so hard to replicate the video game. It’s cute that there are new crops for each season (except winter), but that’s hardly necessary, nor are all of the types of ore and geodes. You can upgrade crops and animal products to “quality” versions, which are worth all of 1 extra gold coin when you sell them, hardly worth the effort. There are twelve card decks, and that’s counting the four profession upgrade card decks as one. There are two bags of tiles, one of a billion kinds of fish (and trash), one of artifacts and minerals. I count 286 separate tiles, plus the various gold and heart tokens. It’s design overkill, and nearly all of these could have been condensed or simplified.

The fact that the bundles are hidden at the start of the game is just a nuisance, as some of them have to be completed before autumn or the pieces you need will no longer be available – there’s a way to swap them out, but that’s an extra step for no good reason, and the rulebook doesn’t actually tell you that these requirements are time-sensitive. The game is hard enough to complete as it is, but if you don’t reveal those cards early – and you wouldn’t know this unless you read the separate strategy tips insert or read some online suggetsions – you can end up unable to complete the game. There’s also some forced resource scarcity here that isn’t easy to overcome, particularly stone, which you need to go down further in the mine, and there’s no way to buy or trade for it.

The game’s box suggests it will take 45 minutes per player, which was true for us, and I imagine would make the game unbearable for four players (that’s three hours, if you don’t want to do the math). It does feel like a game that will go faster the more you play it, once you have some sense of what actions are more useful given the goals for the game and your chosen profession(s). I do like Stardew Valley for what it is, although if they’d streamlined all the components and some of the rules – maybe making one fishing site, cutting down some of the event cards and item types, and using far fewer goods – I might have loved it.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: boardgames, cooperative games

→ February 25, 2024
→ By keith

Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer is an achievement. It’s a biopic, a deep character study, a thriller, a heist movie, and a Shakespearean tragedy (well, except the title character doesn’t die at the end), wrapped up into a three-hour movie that never lets up its pace. It’s incredible that a major studio bankrolled this and gave it such a long theatrical release, given its subject and its three-hour run time, but I hope its runaway success encourages studios to take more risks on prestige films like it. (It’s streaming now on Peacock, or rentable on amazon, iTunes, etc.)

Based on the biography American Prometheus (which I have not read), Oppenheimer tells the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the physicist who led the United States’s effort to develop a nuclear weapon, known as the Manhattan Project. It’s framed by the events that came after the war, when Oppenheimer became an advocate for international control of the very weapons he helped to develop, leading to a sham hearing that led to the revocation of his security clearance and a subsequent public hearing that led to the downfall of his chief antagonist, Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey, Jr.). The movie itself runs from the 1920s, when Oppenheimer was still a student, meeting Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) and studying under Max Born (mentioned but not depicted), through his time as a professor at Berkeley, his tenure in Los Alamos leading the Manhattan Project, and the post-war attacks on his reputation. The movie focuses on his professional efforts, but his personal life, including his marriage to the biologist Katherine (Emily Blunt) and his affair with the psychologist Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), although the movie drags when the focus shifts away from the thriller at the heart of the film.

Writer and director Christopher Nolan packed Oppenheimer with dialogue, so there are very few moments of silence in the film, and any time the movie is focused on the professional arc, it flies. (If I were a more pandering sort, I might say it moves at the speed of light, but I’ll leave those jokes to the least common depunimator.) The script underscores just how massive the undertaking and how unlikely the assembled team of physicists and other scientists was. It’s easy to let hindsight make the development of the first atomic bomb seem like an inevitability, but it was a gigantic effort that required the participation of scientists from across the west, including some refugees from the Nazi regime, and coordination across multiple agencies and university laboratories. The physics behind nuclear fission was only discovered in 1938, and the plants refining the plutonium needed for the bombs didn’t even come online until 1943 and 1944. We know how the story ends, but the movie puts you into the action enough that you can feel the tension and the uncertainty among the scientists – who knew what was at stake, but had no idea if they’d succeed or when.

Oppenheimer’s marriage and infidelity make up the film’s secondary plot, and while it’s an important part of his story and is intertwined enough with his professional life – including his pre-war flirtation with the Communist Party – that it has to be in the film, but there’s so little development of Katherine’s or Jane’s characters that neither role amounts to much beyond one good scene apiece. There’s not enough screen time for either of them, since neither was involved in Los Alamos, and the result is that two Academy Award-nominated actresses are little more than props – which makes Blunt’s nomination for Best Supporting Actress more than a little surprising.

The two best performances are, unsurprisingly, the two that earned Oscar nods – Murphy for Best Actor and Downey Jr. for Best Supporting Actor. Murphy has worked with Nolan before in Inception and Dunkirk, and he gives a superb performance here as the title character, depicting the scientist as a sort of aloof genius whose determination and focus allowed him to lead the project to completion, while also showing his confusion at how his actions affect people around him, including his wife and his mistress. Downey’s career resurgence has been fun to watch, although if you’re old enough to remember his earliest work as part of the so-called “Brat Pack,” you probably saw how talented he was; I remember his supporting performance in the 1995 adaptation of Richard III, which was the first serious role I’d seen of his, and how compelling he was in every scene, often overshadowing other more accomplished actors. Downey isn’t known for dialing it down, but that’s what he does here, to great effect, so that Strauss comes across as an intense, ruthless, yet very professional politician, someone who often acts in his own self-interest but never out of emotion. As much as the movie puts Oppenheimer at its center, Strauss has his own story arc within the movie where Oppenheimer is often just a bit player, giving Downey the chance to be the lead actor in this film-within-a-film. Two outstanding performances in a gripping, wide-reaching story would put just about any film near the top of my annual rankings.

Oppenheimer was nominated for 13 Oscars this year, and I’d guess it’s going to win a slew of them, including Best Picture, Best Actor (for Murphy), Best Supporting Actor (for Downey, Jr.), and Best Director, although I haven’t finished all of the nominees in any of those categories yet and can’t offer an opinion on whether it’s deserving. Of the films I’ve seen from 2023 so far, though, it is the best, just ahead of Past Lives, which is a tighter and far more affecting film, but without as much ambition or as wide a scope. It did not receive a nomination for Best Visual Effects, however, despite the stunning scene where the first atomic test takes place in Los Alamos; perhaps that’s not enough compared to the other nominees, none of which I’ve seen.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2023 movies, 2024 best actress nominees, 2024 best adapted screenplay nominees, 2024 best director nominees, 2024 best picture nominees, 2024 best supporting actor nominees, biopics, highly recommended, movies

→ February 24, 2024
→ By keith

Stick to baseball, 2/24/24.

My entire prospect rankings for 2024 are now up for subscribers to The Athletic, including:

I held a Klawchat earlier this week to take questions on the lists and more.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Apiary, the latest game from publisher Stonemaier Games (Wingspan, Scythe, Tapestry); The Search for Lost Species, a deduction game and sequel to my #1 game of 2020, The Search for Planet X; and The White Castle, my #1 game of 2023, designed by the folks behind The Red Cathedral.

I also sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter last week, about how we had to put our cat, Hexie, down when a blood clot traveled to his descending aorta and paralyzed his hind quarters. It’s been tough.

And now, the links…

Longreads first: Religious zealot and billionaire Tim Dunn is behind the Texas GOP’s hard shift to the right as he tries to remake the state into a Christian theocracy. Imagine if a Muslim billionaire used his money in a similar way. It’s certainly not about following the teachings of Jesus – as does this Catholic charity in El Paso, which is now facing closure at the hands of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
I’ll also just mention here that religious ‘nones’ are now the largest single group in the U.S. The term refers to anyone who does not identify themselves as affiliated with a church or religion, including atheists, agnostics, ‘spiritual but not religious’ people, deists, and others.
The New York Times had an excellent story on the athletes recruited to The New School in Florida, as the state pours money into the once-liberal institution to try to turn it into a southern version of Hillsdale College. The kids are going to be all right, despite the adults’ best efforts.
Gary, Indiana, has an ongoing lawsuit against gun manufacturers over their tacit allowance of illegal gun sales. The Indiana Republican Party is trying to pass a bill that would invalidate the suit and protect gun manufacturers from liability.
A former minister in the Christian cult The Truth admitted to molesting a young boy through his role in the ‘church,’ part of a decades-long pattern of abuse and cover-ups in the home-based movement, also known as Two by Twos.
A doctor who went to Gaza to help victims of Israel’s ongoing assault wrote in the LA Times that what he saw “wasn’t war – it was annihilation.”
In the face of growing hate towards Palestinians, some chefs and restaurant owners who come from or trace their ancestry to Palestine are choosing to emphasize their identity
The 76ers’ proposed downtown arena is likely to cost the city millions in lost tax revenue while also risking Philly’s vibrant Chinatown neighborhood. Let the owners pay for it themselves.
There’s a huge measles outbreak in Florida thanks to parents rejecting universal medical advice and skipping the MMR vaccine. Florida’s Surgeon General is telling parents they can still send their unvaccinated kids to school. Measles is the most contagious virus that infects humans, and it can kill children and adults, either during the infection itself or up to a decade later due to an incurable neurological condition called SSPE. This is abject insanity. The MMR vaccine is safe, effective, and led to the (temporary) eradication of measles from the Americas, until Andrew Wakefield and the fucking idiots who follow him brought it back.
KFF Health News looks at how these fringe anti-science views became so dominant in American politics, and what it might mean this November.
Meanwhile, vaccine denialists are everywhere, downplaying the severity of measles. I see it every day on the disinformation hellhole of Twitter. Measles kills, maims, deafens, and more. It can lead to weeks of hospitalizations. I would love to see health insurers insist on vaccinations for coverage, because why should my premiums go up just because someone else was too dumb or misinformed to make the right choice?
West Virginia Republicans saw this outbreak and decided to exempt private schools from the state’s strict vaccination requirements, because I guess having the nation’s highest death rate from opioids wasn’t good enough!
Timor-Leste (formerly known as East Timor) is battling simultaneous outbreaks of three mosquito-borne diseases: Zike, dengue, and chikungunya. We need more releases of genetically modified mosquitoes and mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia bacteria to reduce their numbers before these diseases spread further.
Tim Burke, formerly of Deadspin, was indicted in Florida for allegedly hacking Fox News video streams of Kanye West and Tucker Carlson … that Burke says were unprotected by passwords or other encryption. This is a freedom of the press issue. You could contact your Representative or Senator, especially if any serve on their respective Judiciary Committees, as I’ve done. An attack on any journalist is an attack on all of us.
A Texas attorney poisoned his pregnant then-wife with abortion pills, which didn’t cause the pregnancy to terminate but caused enough damage to the fetus that their daughter has developmental delays. He was sentenced to merely 180 days in jail, because abortion bans are not about saving babies (or fetuses), but about subjugating and controlling women.
Abortion rights are a consistent, winning issue for Democrats, writes Ilyse Hogue in the New Republic, and the party needs to lean into that more.
We got an answer, belatedly, on the Hugo Awards’ exclusion of certain works, notably those by Chinese or Chinese-American authors, and it was craven submission to Chinese government involvement. Dave McCarty, a sci-fi fan who was head of the Hugo Committee for 2023, and others resigned and/or were censured. One of the winners, Adrian Tchaikovsky, has already said he will no longer cite or list the award among his honors.
This satirical column from The Crimson mocks national reporters’ obsession with campus life at Harvard.
Posts from the transphobic ‘activist’ LibsOfTikTok led to at least 21 bomb threats against schools, libraries, small businesses, and more. Twitter has done nothing to shut Chaya Raichik down, despite the real-world consequences to her actions.
Pamela Paul wrote an anti-trans editorial in The New York Times. It was riddled with inaccuracies.
The co-founder of the anti-LGBTQ, book-banning advocacy group Moms for Liberty engaged in threesomes with her husband and another woman. Bridget Ziegler is on the school board in Sarasota County, Florida, and her husband Christian (heh) was the former head of the Florida Republican Party. MfL’s influence appears to be waning as more people catch on to their radical agenda.
Seattle cops raided several LGBTQ+ bars in the city, taking photos of patrons, citing regulations banning “lewd conduct.” Owners and patrons fought back, and the state’s liquor board, which oversees such businesses, agreed to knock it off and end this collaboration with the police.
New York’s Nassau County issued an order banning teams with trans athletes from using public fields or arenas, yet another pointless, cruel rule pandering to bigots, a solution in search of a problem.
Republicans smeared Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) over comments she made – but they used a bogus translation to do so.
An old indie blog called The Hairpin that closed in 2018 has come back to life as a zombie clickbait farm.
A mother of four was shot and killed while driving to work in Philadelphia in November, and her family says the police aren’t doing enough to try to solve the case.
There’s a Kickstarter open for Conservas, a new solo bag-building game from designer Scott Almes (Tiny Epic Galaxes, Beer & Bread).

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: abortion, board game news, florida, guns, harvard, hugo awards, indiana, lgbt rights, links, longreads, new york, philadelphia, religion, seattle, social media, stick to baseball, texas, vaccines, west virginia

→ February 20, 2024
→ By keith

Klawchat 2/20/24.

Starting at 1:30 pm ET. Subscribers to The Athletic can read my entire prospect rankings package, including the top 100 prospects, the ten guys who just missed, my farm system rankings, and my top 20 prospects & org reports for all 30 teams.

Keith Law: I started drifting to a different place. Klawchat.

Ben (MN): I’m traveling for work but have one free day in San Diego. Any food recommendations?
Keith Law: The Crack Shack, Juniper & Ivy, Bird Rock Coffee, The Mission.

Brett: FYI, Petty up to 99 in Reds camp today. Good early sign but increases injury risk as well I suppose…the baseball gods giveth and taketh. Thank you for all you do especially with the mental health side of things. It’s so important to make people feel like it is OK to get help, that nothing is wrong with them. I am in healthcare and have been getting mental health services since Covid in part because of your example. My life is much better for it, thank you…
Keith Law: He just hasn’t held that velocity as a starter for two years now. I did have delivery concerns with him in HS when he was 97-100 or so, but he toned that down last year. And you’re welcome – I probably should be talking about that stuff even more.

Joe: The Dodgers gave up two players with some value for Trey Sweeney, so I was surprised that he didn’t get a mention in the LA write up. Do you think they did the trade because they needed the roster spots, or do they see something you don’t?
Keith Law: Maybe they see something they can do with the swing, but I just don’t think he’s anything but an up-and-down guy. He would have made a lot of top 20s, just not the Dodgers’.

SamStead: Hi Keith! Do you think Brett Baty settles into an above-average regular at 3B? What’s his outlook? Thanks!
Keith Law: The bat will be. The glove is debatable but I would let him stay there for now.

Mike: What do you make of the Brewers trying Frelick out at 2B/3B? Is it a move because of a crowded OF or more of an indictment of their options in the infield?
Keith Law: Chourio’s got the contract, Mitchell can play center, Black could play center if you can live with the arm … I think this is about getting Frelick into the lineup.

Guest: Chances Jett Williams gets called up before the AS break? I think the kid is legit.
Keith Law: I’d say zero. He’s barely 20 and has 6 games above A-ball. Also they have this guy at shortstop, you may have heard of him…

Chris: Keith, you wrote that Wilyer Abreu might be a 4-WAR player if he sticks in Center. If he can’t handle Center and ends up in Right, what’s the equivalent of that? I assume that’s still a productive regular, just not a star?
Keith Law: Yep, spot on.

Richard: You rock Keith! Very much appreciate the effort you put into the prospect / org rankings…it’s the primary reason I have the Athletic each year.
Keith Law: Thank you! It’s exhausting but now it’s all on the site and I can turn the page to the draft.

Adam: Is Michael Harris better than you expected? If so what did you miss?
Keith Law: I don’t think so … I might have been light on the contact, as he’s not striking out as much as I’d feared given his mediocre pitch recognition.

Jason: when will the corporate welfare for stadiums end? now the dbacks want to hold phoenix hostage on a 26 year old stadium
Keith Law: When voters consistently tell these owners to fuck off – and tell their legislators the same – the corporate welfare will end. if your state rep/senator votes for one of these handouts, you vote against them.

Tom: I really enjoy your podcasts on the athletic! Are you doing more anytime soon?
Keith Law: Nothing imminent.

Preston: At what point will any of the Boras Four just tell him to get a deal done? I presume they are along for the ride but can’t imagine they would want to go too long, right?
Keith Law: They know the deal. Scott gets his guys paid in the end, but it can take a while. You choose him as your agent, you’re signing up for this.

Bobby B.: Thoughts on Puerto Rico? Obviously an older board game, but imo one of the greats
Keith Law: Agreed it’s one of the greats, looking forward to the revised edition some time this spring.

Troy: Was Robert Gasser anywhere near the Top 100?
Keith Law: He was not.

Morgan: Who are a few prospects you see shooting up the rankings for 2025?
Keith Law: For every team, I included a Sleeper prospect, who is someone not currently on the top 100 but who I predict will make the top 100 next offseason. I think I had 6-7 guys do that this year (and I promise I’m not juking the stats – I don’t put guys on the 100 just to make myself right!).

Garrett: I loved this line in your assessment of Elijah Green (while also being said this has to be said now): “We can’t draft and develop this type of player as an industry if MLB prevents teams from giving them the development challenges they need.”
Keith Law: People often ask what rule change I would make if I were Commissioner. It would be allowing teams to operate a short-season affiliate if they want to. I’m pretty confident 20+ teams would choose yes.
Keith Law: This chat is brought to you by Oreos. They didn’t sponsor it. I’m just eating Oreos right now.

Guest: So glad to have KLawchats back. Just passing along a note, that while you don’t write your lists for fantasy baseball, many of us subscribers do love to use them to advise our fantasy decisions. While I get the timing of releasing the lists post Super Bowl, many of us would get more value from them earlier prior to our early February drafts. Appreciate the work.
Keith Law: Thank you. That decision was made above my head.

Mike: Hi Klaw, tough 2023 for former Dbacks prospect Ryne Nelson. Do you think he can become a viable number 4ish starting pitcher still for them?
Keith Law: I do. Might give him a half year or more in long relief this year.

Alex: Have you seen the new Master and Margarita movie? I haven’t yet, and the book has always struck me as kind of unfilmable.
Keith Law: A reader told me about it the other day but I haven’t seen anything about it otherwise, and I agree, it always seemed like it would lose way too much on the screen.

Holly: On the Nats’ writeup, no mention of Mason Denaburg. Is he still a prospect at all?
Keith Law: He walked 49 guys in 36 innings in low A last year, mostly in relief. I imagine he’s a release candidate at this point.

Alex: Can’t say I was surprised by Atlanta’s ranking – as you said, they traded everybody. On the other hand, as an Atlanta fan, it seems to me that you’re *supposed* to trade your prospects to improve the major league roster. Are there any of Atlanta’s major moves that you would seriously question?
Keith Law: I think giving up Malloy for Joe Jimenez was an overpay. And I believe I said at the time that I wasn’t convinced Sean Murphy would be better than William Contreras, certainly not enough to justify trading everything they did. But overall, no, I think Anthopoulos has done an excellent job, including his big trades.

Tom: Can you give some detailed thoughts on the Red Sox royals Schreiber trade?
Keith Law: The David Sandlin prospect writeup is now in the Red Sox top 20. No-brainer trade for them.

RC: Two completely unrelated questions for you…
1) What level of panic would you have if you were Mike Elias regarding the rotation regarding Bradish and Means? Is it worth shelling out money for another starter or making another trade?
2) I’m considering a job offer in Newark, Delaware. How do you like living in the state? What would you recommend for food and activities for a second visit on home scouting?
Keith Law: I wouldn’t panic, but they still have more position players in AAA/majors than they can use and I would at least see what trading some combination of them – Cowser, Kjerstad, Mayo, Westburg, etc. – might get back in a starter. More worried about Bradish.

As for Delaware, it’s great overall. Lots to do here, great little downtown in Wilmington with some fantastic restaurants (Bardea, Le Cavalier, La Fia, two food halls), two art-house cinemas, two venues for concerts and traveling theater, low cost of living for the mid-Atlantic. Public schools are underfunded, though, and there hasn’t been great appetite to remedy that. Check out Winterthur, Longwood Gardens (just over the line in PA), & the Nemours Estate.

Egan: What are you expectations for Brandon Barriera this year development wise? Future rotation arm?
Keith Law: Let’s see how the body looks. Had high upside in 2022, has supposedly shed most of the extra weight he put on last year, but when a guy lets himself go like that I want to see the commitment to his conditioning.

John Sterling: (on the Dominguez v Spencer Jones question) I know you avoid being influenced by other expert rankings, but I know you also do take in information from other analysts/experts. Help me understand why there seems to be some uncommon divergence about two high profile prospects in same org who both spent most of last summer in the Somerset Patriots outfield. Thanks.
Keith Law: I assume we’re valuing different things.

DH: Suppose Samuel Basallo were a solid average defensive 1B, and not a catcher. Where do you suppose he’d rank in top 100?
Keith Law: Middle, probably 40-60 range.

Adam D.: Obviously without naming names, have you ever found yourself gravitating away from a scouting source after too many reports that turned out to be mostly untrue?
Keith Law: Yes.

JW: Have contracts to pre-arb players started to turn in the direction that they aren’t actually good for teams? The news of the potential Alvarez extension got me thinking that the Mets would need to be getting so much value on the back end to give up the cheap early years. They way they are structured based on actual cash basically aligns with what these guys would be making anyway, so all the teams are actually getting is the ability to have the player for more prime years without having to commit to post prime years (the value of which we dont know yet), but the cost of that is giving up years where they are actually cheap (the value of which we do know). Am I over thinking this?
Keith Law: I don’t think the early year salaries in those deals are close to high enough to make these a negative for the teams. If they’re right, they’re getting like $30 million of production (or more) for $2 million.

Andrew: Anything in Elly’s rookie year that makes you concerned about him long-term? Is it all about contact with him?
Keith Law: Yes, primarily about contact. Could end up in CF rather than SS but I expect he’d be plus there.

Bobby: Who do you predict will win ROY in NL and AL?
Keith Law: I’ll do full predictions in late March when we see who’s actually getting the playing time. Just a stab right now, I’d say Caminero and Noelvi.

dallas: Do you believe there is a flaw in stockpiling middle infield prospects like the pirates and Cleveland have done over the years? It seems like (with PGH) especially all their minor leaguers have the same profile.
Keith Law: There’s no flaw in that specifically, but maybe there’s a flaw if they’re all 5’7″ and unlikely to stay at short?

Robert: Putting aside the economics of whether or not public financing of sports stadiums makes sense, what do you think of White Sox ownership asking the public for $1 billion to pay for a new stadium, when they are one of only two franchises who’ve never offered a $100M contract to a player?
Keith Law: I don’t see a connection between those two. The purpose of public subsidies for private enterprise is economic development, not helping the team win. The economic development doesn’t justify the subsidies, of course, but that’s a separate question.

DH: Did his first year performance decrease Volpe’s best-case ceiling for you?
Keith Law: No. He didn’t belong in the majors to start the year.

Pool: Who is the international prospect that will be stateside for the first time this season that you are most excited to get eyes on?
Keith Law: Felnin Celesten.

Morgan (NY): You buying into Stanton’s body transformation as a harbinger of athleticism and renewed success at the plate?
Keith Law: No, it’s a function of health, not conditioning.

James: It’s spring training. I’m in the worst shape of my life. Any thought as to why the Boras 4 hasn’t signed yet? Can the Cubs really go with PCA and Morel at 3B instead of Bellinger/Chapman and expect to contend?
Keith Law: Yes, they can expect to contend in that division. I have a feeling they end up re-signing Bellinger though.

James: Ever play Code Names? We’ve been playing it a lot lately, lots of fun.
Keith Law: Yes, solid party game. Not my favorite of the genre but I’ll always play it.

Marlins Fan: Marlins have a bunch of (very) young and raw 18/19 year old pitchers outside of Meyer/White like Juan De La Cruz, Walin Castillo, Karson Milbrandt, Julio Mendez, Lester Nin, Damelvi Tineo. Any of those that you like outside of De La Cruz who you ranked fairly high?
Keith Law: Milbrandt was up there too.

Guest: I assume Caleb Durbin and Tyler Hardman are nothing more than org players? The latter not even getting an NRI is a bad sign.
Keith Law: that’s how I view them.

Neal: The Phillies can’t possibly consider extending Bryce Harper can they?
Keith Law: I hope not, he’s tall enough as it is.

kevin: surprised to see Jake Gelof blurb about him just being a corner OF. Is 3B not possible any longer? thanks!
Keith Law: Don’t see him every sticking at third.

Bobby: You are higher on Cam Collier than most. I have him on my dynasty baseball team. Just curious, why should I stay optimistic with him despite a lackluster 2023. I know he’s obviously young, but what is his ceiling?
Keith Law: Middle-of-the-order bat ceiling. Started the year slow as he had a lot of adjustments to make, but improved substantially as the season went on – and was only 18, younger than some high school draftees last year.

Zak: What’s the next rule change you’d like to see implemented at the MLB level?
Keith Law: ABS is coming eventually, but in the meantime just raising the bottom of the strike zone slightly would probably get us a lot more balls hit into play.

Troy: Donaldson over Black last season. This season it doesn’t appear he’ll have a starting job to start the season. Does Black need more time in AAA? Seems odd the Brewers aren’t carving out a spot for him. Even if it’s super utility guy.
Keith Law: He can’t throw enough for third so I’m not sure what their intention is, with Frelick perhaps getting the nod at second.

Brent: Noah Schultz is an exciting prospect for the White Sox. Seems like the biggest concern for him is health. If he can pitch like he did for 120 plus innings instead of 20 something. Can he become the team’s top prospect next year? Thanks.
Keith Law: Yes, but he ended the year on the IL with a shoulder impingement so I doubt they push his workload that much.

James: Was looking at the 2016 draft. Will Smith the only all star in the first 41 picks before round 2 which has three all stars and round 3 which also has three. Two best players (Burnes, Bieber) went in round four. Was that just an odd year? I feel like normally teams nail at least half the top ten picks
Keith Law: Yes, that year’s draft wasn’t great at the time and it’s been awful in hindsight. Moniak, Senzel, Ray, Puk, Pint, Collins, Groome … yeeeeesh.

gach zreinke: Thoughts and timetable on Dodgers’ Hyun-Seok Jang?
Keith Law: Hasn’t thrown a pitch yet. I imagine we’ll all see him in spring training.

Mike: Is Colson Montgomery a middle of the order hitter on a contending team?
Keith Law: That would be his absolute ceiling – if he gets to his peak hit/power and also stays healthy. He just did not look right last year even after he returned, which is why I had him outside the top 25.

Mike B: Great job as always with the prospect lists. So I know you didn’t have time yet for a full write up of the O’s/Brewers trade. Do you think this was the O’s finally doing a good job of digging into their prospect depth to get a top mitch pitcher? I thought it was a good trade for both despite Yankees fans saying the O’s gave up less than the Yanks were asked for!
Keith Law: Yes, I think it was a good trade for both sides.

Guest: Everything I read about Wilken makes him sound like.a legit bat. Just on O, is he a Guy?
Keith Law: I think so.

Matt: Assuming Franco never plays again, are the Rays off the hook paying him?
Keith Law: If he’s in prison or simply unable to secure a work visa, yes, they’re off the hook.

kevin: what was the biggest reason for cartaya’s down season and is it fixable?
Keith Law: I asked a lot of people that question and the consensus answer was “I don’t know.” If he was hurt enough to destroy his performance, no one seems to know about it. It wasn’t an obvious failing, like an inability to hit a high fastball. People who loved him a year ago were befuddled too. That’s concerning because if you don’t know what’s wrong, you don’t necessarily know what to do next. I would return him to AA to start the year, at least.

CVD: Are the Lerners actually keeping the Nationals, or is this just posturing like Angelos did with the Orioles?
Keith Law: I assume this is posturing.

Caleb: Have you played any of the Wingspan expansions? I have the Euro expansion and love the new birds, but I’m afraid the Oceania expansion (with Nectar) will change the mechanics too much.
Keith Law: I have not, unfortunately.
Keith Law: My Wyrmspan review copy is on its way, though!

Guest: Did the Padres ruin Luis Torrens?
Keith Law: Taking him in the rule 5 draft may have ruined him.

Hoobastank: Trying to make sense of the Tigers big improvement in farm rankings. Would you credit it mostly to the difference between how Harris and Co handle player development compared to Avila? Anything specific in differences? Such a huge turnaround, in a years time, all from guys drafted from the previous regime. Has to be one of the quickest impacts a new FO has a had on existing talent on a farm, no?
Keith Law: Strong draft, some big steps forward from guys in the system thanks to new PD folks, and a lot of other teams sliding due to promotions or other factors. I do think the minors as a whole are down – the #5 team this year might have been #8-10 a year ago.

James: You put so much work into these rankings and the draft. Are there any cheap teams that aggregate your and other’s thoughts, especially with the draft, since it’s such a crap shoot? Or could your thoughts on someone like Owen Caissie be used for/against them in trade discussions?
Keith Law: I know teams that take my rankings, MLB’s, BA’s etc. for the draft and use them in their draft models. I always say that’s not the purpose of the rankings, but I can’t stop them from doing so.

Jay: Atlanta is stretching out Reynaldo Lopez in the Spring. Any chance he can stick as a starter?
Keith Law: He’s never had the arsenal or command to start. He can hold his velocity deep into games, but that’s never been enough for me to consider him a starter – I got a ton of grief for leaving him off my top 100 for that reason.

Shodai: Who would you rather have starting in CF in 2025- PCA or Cody Bellinger ignoring salary?
Keith Law: I’ll go on a limb here and say Bellinger.

Ryan: Assuming he stays healthy and remains a starting pitcher, how long will it take to build Reggie Crawford up until he is MLB ready?
Keith Law: Feels like it could be two more years in the minors, no? He barely pitched this past year coming off TJ and never pitched that much before.

Brian: Who are some former prospects who’ve faded that you anticipate a breakout for this year? Last year you called Leody Taveras and Cole Ragans. Alek Thomas? Brett Baty?
Keith Law: I’ll do the breakouts list in mid-March – I haven’t thought much about that piece yet.

Brian: Who was your biggest disappointment when doing the rankings? Was there one player going in you thought would have had a bigger impact in 2023 and would be a star that just didn’t materialize?
Keith Law: Cartaya was originally on the list in the 70s or so, but as I circulated it to sources & also considered him further I realized I had no argument to put him on the list except that he was on it last year.

James: Who would you have taken 1-1 in the last draft?
Keith Law: Crews or Langford. Not a pitcher.

Ryan: Your report on Jun-Seok Shim was really encouraging. Do you have any additional info or that you could share?
Keith Law: I don’t hold information back. It’s all in the articles.

Andrew: Cleveland traded Junior Caminero for Tobias Myers. Why’d they do that? And has Clev. turned into a sneaky bad FO? Caminero, Nolan Jones, and Yandy would look pretty good in that lineup.
Keith Law: Brito’s going to be good and I don’t think Jones has that kind of year if he’s not playing at altitude. I think they didn’t know what they had in Caminero and the Rays out-scouted them. (Cleveland has cut its scouting staff, and that may be hurting them.)

Adam D.: Love the sleeper note on Rayner Arias potentially making a big jump. Am I crazy to think that this time next year the Giants could have five top-100 players (Eldridge, Arias, Whisenhunt, Martin and Crawford)?
Keith Law: Seems really optimistic on the last two. Maybe one of them gets there, but both is a lot to ask.

Steve: Is there any hope left for Luis Patiño ?
Keith Law: I’d still take a flier on him.

James: Who has better chance of winning the pennant again? Dbacks or Rangers?
Keith Law: Rangers but if I were betting I’d bet the field instead.

James: Is Lawlar blocked? Is he better than Perdomo? Will Lawlar start at AAA?
Keith Law: Perdomo shouldn’t block Lawlar when they believe Lawlar is ready.

Jason: what is the ceiling with jackson chourio? given all the factors (his deal, etc) should he be on the MLB club opening day?
Keith Law: I would really rather they give him time in AAA, now with no pressure around a call-up since he’s getting paid regardless. I think he’s going to be a superstar – a top 10 player in MLB at his peak.

Brian: Do you ever discuss your sources with other prospect writers? I’m curious how secretive the world is/isn’t when you all know the same people (and most say they cross reference lists with scouts), and how that plays into the differential product of the lists.
Keith Law: Not names, necessarily, but I might say “the Mets told me” something when talking to Eric or Jonathan.

Red: What are your thoughts on the Fanatics jersey fiasco? Seems like everyone agrees that they are crap.
Keith Law: Not really my lane but they did look bad.

Chris: Keith – we just heard another sob story for a billionaire owner (this time out of Arizona) laying the groundwork for extending a hand out to taxpayers to fund a stadium deal that (i) isn’t necessary, and (ii) will NOT create any economic benefit for the community. It seems like a simple solution is for Congress to make the anti-trust exemption conditioned on no public financing for stadiums. For every senator that accepts money from wealthy owners that is impacted with the prospect of security a MLB franchise in her or his home state, there’s another that is impacted by a franchise leaving. Not necessary a question, but more of a commentary. /fin
Keith Law: You’ll never get this to happen, though. MLB lobbies Congress and there is no real opposing entity pushing money into DC like that.

James: Will Skenes debut this year?
Keith Law: I imagine so.

Bobby: Thoughts on Jung Hoo Lee? Probably harder to scout international guys but you would have more information than the average American fan has access to
Keith Law: I wrote about him and the signing here.

Blood on the Tracks: Chase Burns or Brody Breckt?
Keith Law: I saw Brecht Friday, think I’d lean Burns.

James: Was Gabe Kapler a good manager? I feel like the giants were always over performing
Keith Law: I think he was. He got fired for failing to overperform last year.

AnalyticsPlant: Klaw – your prospect work seems to have the momentum of a runaway freight train. Why are you so popular?
Keith Law: I am not contaminating the planet.

Dave: The Pirates handling of Henry Davis seems … odd? He struggled in right field with minimal experience at the position, which seemed to carry over to the plate. With Endy hurt, it looks like he would catch but is now fighting for a backup role behind Grandal. What would you do with him this season?
Keith Law: Catch him every day. I’d be surprised if he really was the backup behind Grandal – I haven’t heard/read anything about that, and Grandal was below replacement level last year.

Matt: I thought it was funny the 49ers didn’t know the rules of overtime. Imagine that happening in the 10th inning of Game 7 and the closer didn’t know the game would be over if he gave up a hit.
Keith Law: Same.

Aaron: The Oceania expansion mechanics updates are very nice and go a long way to balancing actions on the board. Egg spamming is not quite as viable
Keith Law: And Asia has a two-player mode I’d love to try.

Ryan: Speaking of Padres and Luis. Is Campusano just another example of catchers needing more time to develop?
Keith Law: I think so.

Gsteve27: I know u often remind the listeners/readers that baseball is hard but what do you think was the cause for Gavin Stones and Miguel Vargas disappointing season after having a lot of success in the minors? Are you still believing in Vargas as you are in Stone?
Keith Law: Read what I wrote about Stone in the top 100.

James: Hunter Goodman from the Rockies just a guy? Could he be a GUY?
Keith Law: He’s 1b only, maybe, and swings and misses way too often. I don’t see it.

James: Are you surprised more teams haven’t used the Braves strategy more of locking up young players to long deals early?
Keith Law: Oh I think a lot of them try.

James: Does the transfer portal influence the way you look at a player or not or are baseball evaluations mostly immune to that?
Ryan: What’s a reasonable MLB peak for Ethan Salas look like, assuming he gets past the inherent teenager catcher risk?
Keith Law: Transfer portal doesn’t affect player evaluations – I have no issue with players moving to another school for NIL $ or playing time or any other reason.
Keith Law: Salas looks like a monster, could be ++ defense with power and patience. We haven’t had a prospect this young with this performance since Harper.

Brian: Can we expect more Klawchats soon?
Keith Law: I plan to, travel permitting.

Caleb: Cards fan, and they have the #8 pick this summer. I’m going to guess this year’s top 10 isn’t as loaded as last year’s, but how does it compare to an average draft?
Keith Law: Right now it looks below the norm because the high school hitting class is very weak.

Adam: Hey Keith. Thank you for all your work. It’s always a fun time when your lists come out. Have you ever thought about compiling a ranking of your sleepers that you do for each team? Would be interested in the their order of where you see them ranked against each other.
Keith Law: All 30 sleepers ranked? I had never considered that.

AJ: Vlad Jr. settling in as a .270, 30 HR guy would be a bummer after what he did in 2021. Do you give him a mulligan for the last 2 years? Or did he just have his career year early? Troy Glaus style
Keith Law: A two-year mulligan is a lot. Kind of stunned by the low BABIPs. Not like he doesn’t hit the ball hard. His actual stats were well below what you’d expect from his batted-ball data, so there’s some reason to hope he’ll bounce back beyond just a .270/.340/.460 line.

Jay: Who would you take 1.1 in this year’s draft as of today?
Keith Law: The most honest answer is that I don’t have enough feel for these guys yet. If you really, really want a name, I think it’s Wetherholt, who also left last night’s game with a hamstring injury so I may have to wait a bit to see him.

Shodai: Last year there were a lot of negative opinions out on Miguel Amaya, did his MLB stint help answer any of those questions for him going forward? Also do you ever randomly wonder what Junior Lake is up to these days? #callback
Keith Law: Last year, I wrote this: “he could end up the Cubs’ catcher before the year is out as a 20-homer type with some patience and better defense than Willson Contreras offered.” Probably too high on the power, but I think the rest is going to turn out to be right.

Steven: Any thoughts on Jason Benneti moving to Detroit broadcast team?
Keith Law: He’s one of the best. Glad he found a good spot.

Ryan: Only two years for Crawford? That surprises me because like you said, he has barely pitched. Thanks for the work you do!
Keith Law: I imagine they’ll try to get him 15-20 starts this year for 60-80 innings, then bump him up some more in 2025, and in 2026 hope to get him to the majors – unless they want to make him a straight reliever before that.
Keith Law: Of course that assumes he performs well. Has the stuff, certainly.

Guest: When talking to people, why do they value prospects over actual MLB talent. One guy told me he likes Jackson Holliday over Bo Bichette…isn’t Bichette Holliday’s peak??
Keith Law: I think Holliday can be better than Bichette, but how I value the two would depend on the team. Are you trying to win in 2024? You’d rather have Bichette.
Keith Law: I think Holliday will be better than Bichette, to be clear.

David: What should the Red Sox starting OF be this year if you had your pick?
Keith Law: Abreu, Rafaela, Duran, with Yoshida DHing?

Richard: Excited that we get to see Yainer Diaz catch most days (so long Maldy!). What kind of output do you think is reasonable for him as an everyday guy?
Keith Law: .270/.300/.475, 20 homers or so?

Harold: Although it would be hard to gather the data to answer this definitively, what percentage of the time does a pitcher, such as Bradish, end up requiring TJ after a UCL sprain that they try to remedy through PRP?
Keith Law: I don’t know if anyone knows the answer to this, but that players try PRP because it’s not major surgery and in most aspects of life you pick the non-surgical option first before the surgical one.

J.P.: Thoughts on Dom Smith’s signing? Here I thought Busch was all set to play 1B for the Cubs, and now he’s as blocked as he was with the Dodgers, apparently.
Keith Law: The Cubs signed Smith to a minor-league deal. He’s not blocking Busch.

Zane: I feel like the Reds have a slew of talented young international prospects. Who is your favorite out of Carlos Jorge, Hector Rodriguez, Alfredo Duno, and Ricardo Cabrera?
Keith Law: That’s answered in the Reds top 20 – it’s the guy I ranked highest.

Sammy: Thoughts on Colt Keith this year? Will he be able to handle 2B?
Keith Law: I think his bat will play anywhere and second base might be a challenge for him, at least in the short term.
Keith Law: I know scouts who think he should just play first base and rake. I’m not there yet.

James: If you notice a player in another club is undervalued like the Rays did, how do you go after them without tipping the other team off?
Keith Law: Subtlety. It’s a negotiation – you don’t tip off the other side to what you really want, and you might ask for more (give us Brayan Rocchio!) and when they laugh, you say “oh okay fine we’ll take some rando off your DSL roster.”

Guest: Hey Keith, reading through the Rockies Top 20 right now and truly blown away by how bad they’ve been drafting in the first round. All of Veen, Montgomery and Hughes showing real signs of missing. This has been a long-running issue with the team, it feels like. What strikes you as the issue? Scouting, development, pure dumb luck?
Keith Law: Hughes got hurt – different than the other two, although Veen’s had injuries too. But I don’t see Hughes as a bust at all.

Sammy: Amed Rosario just signed with TB- what does that mean..
Keith Law: He’s about to have the best year of his career?

Woodsy: I, too, am traveling to for work, but going to Atlanta. Any food recommendations? Thanks, KLaw!
Keith Law: I haven’t had a regular dinner in Atlanta in some time, although I love Ponce City Market (Spiller Park for coffee) and Krog Street Market. A few of my ATL favorites have closed, including Empire State South and the Lawrence.

James: We are somehow even more divided politically that four years ago. Any chance a player wouldn’t sign with a TX/CA team because of their political beliefs?
Keith Law: Haven’t heard of that, although I can imagine someone not wanting to raise their daughters in Texas (or, if there were a team there, in Alabama).

Chris: Manfred seems pretty intelligent and self aware. But every time he opens his mouth when asked to comment on the A’s move to Las Vegas, he seems petty, dismissive, and completely out of touch, particularly when it comes to empathizing with Oakland fans. Is he that beholden to ownership where he can’t even seem to acknowledge reality?
Keith Law: I think Manfred doesn’t have an ‘inside voice,’ so to speak. He doesn’t soften the message or speak in platitudes when talking to the public – which on the one hand is refreshing, even though it’s also rather telling.

Matt: Even the mayor of Vegas thinks the A’s should go back to Oakland. Is Vegas a long term answer for a MLB team?
Keith Law: I do not think Las Vegas will ever be a good market for MLB. It doesn’t have the population/demographics for 81 home games, and climate change is only going to make it harder to play or live there. There are other markets with more favorable characteristics, including Nashville, Portland, and Austin.

Ty: what pitch data stats do you look at when compiling your lists?
Keith Law: Not to be glib, but everything I can get my hands on. I want to know everything I can, and then I try to work from the facts – data, scouting reports, my own observations – to the conclusion.

Guest: Should the Tigers have taken Jenkins?
Keith Law: They should have taken Langford, although that in no way is a knock on Clark (or Jenkins).

Ben (MN): Is there any trustable data on how much money MLB teams make per season? Reporters discuss the Twins receiving a lower payment from their TV deal this season as if the team would be operating at a “loss” by maintaining the same payroll as last year. I find it hard to believe that they are breaking even in a normal year and that any increased expenses would mean a loss. Wouldn’t a lower TV payment but a similar payroll likely mean the team just makes less of a profit for this one year?
Keith Law: I do not believe any MLB team is actually operating at a loss. You can make a paper loss on your income statement but these businesses generate stupid amounts of cash.

Morgan: First time in Savannah and Charleston. 2 days each. What are some can’t miss things?
Keith Law: Was just in Charleston over the weekend. Finally ate at FIG, which was a bucket-list place for me. Best part was actually the sticky sorghum pudding dessert.

JRG: Thanks for all the writeups on prospects. There are a number of guys who seem to have all the tools, but just never can put it together. Over the course of your career, what was the best example of a guy that didn’t seem like he would put it together, but then everything finally clicked for him and he made the leap?
Keith Law: Josh Hamilton’s probably not the best answer, although his name was the first to come to mind. I’ll have to think about this one as I can’t find a really apt example.

ZAS: Do you expect Cleveland to be aggressive and try to get Deyvsion De Los Santos AB’s? I assume Manzardo will be forced to start the year in AAA although I feel like he’s ready.
Keith Law: I don’t think Deyvison is going to hit at all. He wasn’t even a top 20 guy for Arizona and wasn’t on my Guardians list. I really am not a fan.

Thai: Where in the top 100 would Roki Sasaki rank if he was eligible?
Keith Law: He’s not eligible and I haven’t given him anywhere near the consideration I gave all the guys I did put on the rankings (or just beyond it).

Leonard: Does Taj Bradley have enough effective pitches to solidify a spot in the TB rotation>
Keith Law: Yes.

Shodai: Speaking of Manfred and things that are bad for baseball, where would you put the odds of an industry shaking gambling scandal in the next 10 years of so? Based on other sports I’d say it’s a dead lock that some players are gonna get popped but I’m worried about something bigger.
Keith Law: 100% chance some player gets suspended for betting on games. Maybe 25% chance of a broader scandal. We have had a few scouts get caught up in gambling stuff, back in the early 2000s. The pervasive nature of sports betting now just makes it way more likely we have problems.
Keith Law: That’s all for this week but yes I do hope to do these more regularly again now that the top 100 is behind me. Thank you all for reading and for your questions. Stay safe!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: klawchat

→ February 3, 2024
→ By keith

Music update, January 2024.

PSA: The top 100 prospects ranking runs on Monday for subscribers to The Athletic, followed by the ten guys who just missed on Tuesday.

January ended up a big month for new music, especially for new albums – it seems like a lot of artists/labels held stuff back from mid-November until after the New Year. Not included were some new tracks from ‘90s faves like the Jesus & Mary Chain, Buffalo Tom, and Black Grape. As always, if you can’t see the widget below, you can access the playlist here.

Liam Gallagher & John Squire – Just Another Rainbow. I can’t believe these two British rock icons (of Oasis and Stone Roses, respectively) have gotten together to put out an album, or that either of them sounds this good at their respective ages. The second single, “Mars to Liverpool,” was a bit of a letdown, though, and I’m hoping the record isn’t a bunch of mopers. Also props to Liam for knowing the order of colors in the visible spectrum.

Sprints – Heavy. This Irish punk act’s debut LP Letter to Self is going to end up on my top albums of the year, with this, “Adore Adore Adore,” “Up and Comer,” and “Literary Mind” all standouts.

Courting – We Look Good Together (Big Words). And Courting’s latest album, New Last Name, is also going to end up on my top albums of the year, leading with the poppy banger “Throw” followed by this track, with “Flex” and “The Wedding” also highlights.

Folly Group – Pressure Pad. Will Folly Group’s Down There! also make my top albums of the year list? We’ll have to wait on that one, but I’m a new fan of their experimental art-rock sound.

Bob Vylan – Hunger Games. “What will you win yourself tonight/spin the wheel for a chance at a hot meal.” The righteous anger here harkens back to the earliest days of punk, when working-class angst found its outlet in loud, short bursts of guitars and shouts.

Softcult – Heaven. I wasn’t familiar with Softcult until they popped up on my Spotify Release Radar playlist, which … well, sometimes the algorithm works, as they remind me a ton of early Lush (shoegaze era, not “Ladykillers”).

The Lemon Twigs – My Golden Years. I didn’t love the Lemon Twigs’ 2023 album Everything Harmony, although it made a slew of best-of lists for last year. This track has a way better melody than anything on that LP, with that same ‘60s power-pop sound that has some Beach Boys influence in the harmonies.

Talk Show – Red/White. Talk Show have been on my playlists for a few years now, so I was surprised to hear that their upcoming LP, Effigy, due out on the 16^th, is actually their debut. This last advance single has clearer vocals than in some of their other tracks, but still has that mélange of punk, goth, and industrial.

Waxahatchee & MJ Lenderman – Right Back To It. I’m here for just about anything Waxhatchee does, and it says something that I have a track by Lenderman, whose work as a solo artist and with the band Wednesday does nothing for me, on my playlist.

Ride – Peace Sign. Ride were part of the original shoegaze movement, so it amuses me that they’ve moved into a much different space, more psychedelic dream-pop than the minor-key noise of shoegaze. I like both iterations, for what it’s worth.

Shabazz Palaces feat. Stas THEE Boss & Irene Barber – Angela. Shabazz Palaces is Ishmael Butler, formerly known as Butterfly while he was in the seminal jazz-rap trio Digable Planets. His output under the new moniker, which used to be a duo until Tendai Maraire departed the group, is more experimental, with funk, jazz, and electronic elements, although hip-hop still finds its way into many of their tracks. This song comes off their upcoming album Exotic Birds of Prey, due out March 29^th.

Jamie xx – It’s So Good. Yes, yes it is. Jamie xx – of the xx, of course – had two all-timers from his first true solo effort, “Loud Places” and “SeeSaw,” but this is the first thing he’s released since that 2015 record that’s captured that same ebullient feeling.

Etta Marcus – Girls That Play. Marcus’s second album, The Death of Summer & Other Promises, came out on January 24^th. Her alt-pop style reminds me of Ingrid Michaelson, but less cloying.

Yard Act – We Make Hits. I loved Yard Act’s debut album, and they’ve clearly evolved their sound to incorporate some new elements without losing the sardonic, witty lyrics and offbeat rhythms that made The Overload so good. Where’s My Utopia? comes out March 1^st.

Sheer Mag – Moonstruck. Sheer Mag’s third album, Playing Favorites, comes out March 1^st, and this track might be the poppiest thing the Philly garage-rockers have ever put out.

The Libertines – Shiver. The likely lads are sounding older, wiser, and … sober? Carl Barât’s vocals will always give their music a rougher edge, but the Libertines may actually have grown up a little.

Khruangbin – A Love International. A peak-form instrumental track from the Texas Thai-jazz trio ahead of their new album À la Sala, due out April 5^th.

Bill Ryder-Jones – If Tomorrow Starts Without Me. The best track on Ryder-Jones’s acclaimed new album, Iechyd Da (a Welsh toast meaning “good health”), this is also one of the only ones that doesn’t move at the pace of a funeral dirge.

swim school – Give Me a Reason Why. More shoegazey goodness from this Glaswegian trio ahead of a headlining tour in the UK.

Sunny Day Real Estate – Novum Vetus. I don’t know if it needed to be seven minutes, but hey, any SDRE track is good by me. It’s their first new release in ten years, although the song itself originated in the sessions for the 1997 album How It Feels to Be Something On.

Real Estate – Haunted World. I had to put these two back to back, didn’t I? Otherwise I might have lined this up with the Lemon Twigs, as it’s got a similar vibe, an acoustic track that reminded a lot of the Shins.

GEMZ – Younger. GEMZ is Jen Wood and Ted Chen, and if you’re close to my age, you might remember Jen Wood’s short-lived band Tattle Tale from the early 1990s, or maybe you know her from her contributions to The Postal Service. This is her newest endeavor, but her vocals are the draw no matter the style of music.

TORRES – Happy Man’s Shoes. What an Enormous Room, TORRES’s sixth album, came out on January 26^th, and the tracks I’ve heard seem weirder than their previous output, but in a good way. I saw one review compare the LP to Goldfrapp, which I can definitely hear on this track.

Masta Ace & Marco Polo feat. Coast Contra – Certified. Yes, that is Masta Ace of the Juice Crew, which also featured Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap, and for a man of 57 who’s fighting MS he sounds damn good.

Judas Priest – Crown of Horns. These Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees will release their nineteenth LP, Invincible Shield, in March, featuring this oddly upbeat track (which still has some great soloing). Glenn Tipton is credited as appearing on the album, although he’s now 76 and has been dealing with Parkinson’s for over a decade.

Tom McGovern & Cory Wong – Everything Smells Like Salmon. I’m not much for joke songs, either because they’re not funny or because the joke wears thin after one listen, but this one has some staying power. It’s pretty funny, the lyrics are very clever, and Wong’s guitar work is always worth a spin.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2024 in music, alternative, hip-hop, Music, shoegaze

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