→ December 20, 2023
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Top 23 albums of 2023.

This year turned out to be a very good one for albums, better than last year, but worse for individual tracks, which I’ll talk about a little more when that ranking goes up. I was afraid I’d struggle to keep up my gimmick of doing a ranking as long as the last two digits of the year, which I’ve had to abandon every once in a while, but I ended up with plenty of albums to consider and spent a lot of time listening or re-listening to albums to make some of these final cuts – and to decide on the actual #1, which was very much a game-time choice. Get ready to read a lot about shoegaze and post-punk, although the very top of the list goes in a different direction entirely. Some honorable mentions include Cory Wong – Rocket; Black Honey – A Fistful of Peaches; Emma Anderson – Pearlies; Queens of the Stone Age – In Times New Roman…; Speedy Ortiz – Rabbit Rabbit; Brad – In The Moment That You’re Born; and, of course, The Baseball Project – Grand Salami Time.

You can see my previous year-end album rankings here: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and my top albums of the 2010s. My top 100 songs of 2023 will go up in the next day or two.

23. Egyptian Blue – A Living Commodity. If I told you there was a band that cited Wire, Gang of Four, Radiohead, and Iceage as influences (which Egyptian Blue has), you’d probably imagine something a lot like this Brighton band’s debut album, which wears all of these influences but weaves them into something new enough that it avoids sounding derivative of any of them. There’s a tremendous energy here that powers the album, something I interpreted as the freshness of youth – but maybe that’s just because I’m old now – and that makes the album feel incredibly alive even though it’s underpinned by a sound that’s nearly 50 years old. Standouts include the title track, “Matador,” and “Skin.”

22. Deeper – Careful! The latest add to my list, Careful! only hit my radar a few weeks ago when WXPN music director Dan Reed tabbed it as his #1 album of the year. (His top ten was pretty solid overall.) Deeper’s last album, Auto-Pain, came shortly on the heels of the news that their former guitarist had killed himself, and the album’s darker content reflected that. Careful! is more upbeat, almost ebullient at times, which contrasts with the post-punk sound that they still maintain on this album – with a heavy dose of David Bowie, according to singer/guitarist Nic Gohl. Standouts include “Glare,” “Tele,” and “Build a Bridge.”

21. The Hives – The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons. The Hives’ first new album in eleven years found the Swedish band, down just one of their original members, rejuvenated, sounding as good as they did on their first couple of records nearly twenty years ago. They announce their presence with giant riffs on the opener (and best track) “Bogus Operandi,” and the whole album carries that same sense of bluster and grandeur. There’s plenty of the muscular rock we’re used to from the Hives, plus some diversions into hardcore (the one-minute “Trapdoor Solution”, or the slightly longer “The Bomb”), These guys can rock, and they’re not afraid to do so. I suppose the lesson is to lean into what you do well. Standouts include “Bogus Operandi,” “Two Kinds of Trouble,” and “Countdown to Shutdown.”

20. Daughter – Stereo Mind Game. This Irish trio’s previous album was the soundtrack to the video game Before the Storm, released in 2017, without so much as a single in the interim, to the point where I assumed they’d hung it up. (Bands come and go so quickly these days, and because I’m always trying to keep up with what’s new, I tend to forget even bands I liked.) Daughter’s sound was always ethereal and pensive, one of the few bands I liked who used mostly slower tempos, while here they expand their repertoire just slightly with some stronger melodies and even, dare I say, something a little upbeat like “Future Lover,” one of the standout tracks along with “Swim Back” and “Be On Your Way.”

19. White Reaper – Asking for a Ride. White Reaper’s first three albums were all pretty similar, hard power-pop records with a punk influence but an overriding sense of melody along with a good bit of obnoxious fun in the lyrics. On their fourth record, they actually go … metal. You can’t listen to the first two songs here and not think Motörhead or even some early Bay Area thrash, and even when White Reaper takes their foot off the gas a little bit on the album’s best track, “Fog Machine,” they just shift from early ‘80s metal to the late ‘70s metal sounds (think New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands like Maiden and Priest) from their previous records. Other standout tracks include “Pink Slip,” “Bozo,” and the title track. Also, if you’re into more serious metal, the best albums I heard this year in that genre were Wayfarer’s remarkable American Gothic, Horrendous’s Ontological Mysterium, and Myrkur’s Spine.

18. Grian Chatten – Chaos for the Fly. When I heard the lead singer of Fontaines D.C. would be doing a solo album, I assumed it would be something in the vein of his regular gig, something between punk and post-punk with a strong working-class edge … and Chatten instead delivered a thoughtful, meditative, acoustic record that’s mostly his vocals and a guitar. There’s a little rockabilly here in “Fairlies,” what I can only describe as lounge music on “Bob’s Casino,” and a mournful piano track on “All of the People.” Standouts include “Fairlies,” “The Score,” and “Last Time Every Time Forever.”

17. Belle & Sebastian – Late Developers. A surprise release from the Scottish icons, just eight months after A Bit of Previous, with their trademark wry lyrics along with sunny pop melodies with a dark undercurrent. I’ve been a little surprised to see it omitted from many year-end lists, to which I attribute its release very early in the year (January 13th) and the way we tend to take bands this consistent for granted. Standouts include “Juliet Naked,” “I Don’t Know What You See in Me,” and “Give a Little Time.”

16. Hotline TNT – Cartwheel. Hotline TNT’s second album hits during shoegaze’s big moment, a revival that I’m going to mention more than a few times in this list, and they’re one of the most authentic to the original sound, which dates to the late 1980s and early 1990s in England, led by bands like My Bloody Valentine, Lush, Slowdive, and Ride. Cartwheel borrows quite a bit from those last two bands, with a little Hüsker Dü thrown in for good measure, getting that shimmering wall of distortion sound that’s intrinsic to proper shoegaze. Standouts include “I Thought You’d Change,” “Out of Town,” “Protocol,” and “Spot Me 100.”

15. The Japanese House – In the End It Always Does. Amber Mary Bain wrote much of her second album in the wake of the end of a thruple that also included Art School Girlfriend (who is now in a relationship with Bain’s ex, Marisa Hackman). Anyway, In the End It Always Does showcases Bain’s lovely voice over a substantial amount of piano and keyboard work, grounding the record to support its little experimentations into electronica, dream-pop, and folk, although it always comes back to her vocals for me. Standouts include “Boyhood,” “Sunshine Baby,” and “Sad to Breathe.”

14. Genesis Owusu – STRUGGLER. The Ghanaian-Australian singer/rapper Owusu’s second album blends-hip-hop with sounds from the earliest era of new wave when that genre had just broken away from its punk origins, with songs that are rapped, shouted, and even sung in falsetto (the ironic “See Ya There”). It’s equal parts rage-rock and dance, buoyed by Owusu’s charismatic delivery. Standouts include “Leaving the Light,” “The Roach” (complete with Kafka references), “Freak Boy,” and “Stay Blessed.”

13. Protomartyr – Formal Growth in the Desert. This is actual post-punk, sometimes labeled post-hardcore, in 2023, and I’m being a little pedantic here because I think those labels have some real utility that’s lost when people just throw “post-whatever” on anything. (As opposed to Post Malone, whose music should just be thrown in the trash.) Vocalist and Tigers fan Joe Casey wrote some of the lyrics about his late mother and his grieving process, while other songs focus on existential dread or environmental crises, all over a stark, often detuned guitar-heavy backing. Standouts include “For Tomorrow,” “Elimination Dances,” and “Fun in Hi Skool.”

12. Altin Gün – Ask. I was not familiar with Anatolian rock, which blends traditional Turkish music with psychedelic rock from the late 1960s/early 1970s, until I stumbled on this Netherlands-based outfit and their fifth album, which had a similar effect on me as Mdou Moctar’s Afrique Victime: I was mesmerized by the translation of rock guitar into totally new sounds from other musical cultures. I can’t tell you much about the lyrics, but the music, which is always anchored by interesting and complex guitarwork, is enough to keep me listening even though I don’t know what they’re singing about. Standouts include “Su Siziyor,” “Leylim Ley,” and “Rakiya Su Katamam.”

11. Billy Porter – Black Mona Lisa. I knew of Porter from his work on Pose and at least by reputation from his stellar work on Broadway, but when this album appeared a month ago, it was one of the more pleasant surprises of the year, as Porter brings both his vocal talents and outsized personality to this record that mixes effusive dance numbers with lyrical introspection. The 54-year-old Porter had released four previous albums, but this is his first foray into popular music, a 12-song exploration of much of his personal history through dance, disco, and funk tracks – and it is just a blast to listen to. Standouts include “Children” (two versions), “Funk is on the One,” and “Baby Was a Dancer.”

10. Creeper – Sanguivore. Creeper’s second album, Sex, Death & the Infinite Void, was my #2 album of 2020, and while I think this one is a little less exciting overall, it’s still a very strong effort from this gothic post-punk act that, aside from one awful track, is the rare concept album that keeps you in its thrall from start to finish. (“The Ballad of Spook and Mercy” is just embarrassing.) There’s something extremely ‘80s about the whole endeavor – the opening bars of “Teenage Sacrifice” could easily be a hair-metal band circa 1987, while elsewhere they sound like they’d be on tour with Heaven 17 and the Blow Monkeys about five years earlier. Standouts include “Sacred Blasphemy,” “Teenage Sacrifice,” and “Cry to Heaven.”

9. Yves Tumor – Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds). Sean Lee Bowie’s fifth album melds psychedelic rock and shoegaze-esque guitars with electronica and funk for a record that’s theatrical, bombastic, and utterly compelling. It’s the album everyone thinks Lil’ Yachty made. Standouts include “Lovely Sewer,” “Heaven Surrounds Us Like a Hood,” “God Is a Circle,” and “Echolalia.”

8. Corinne Bailey Rae – Black Rainbows. Rae has moved a long way from the neo-soul sound of “Put Your Records On” and her acclaimed self-titled debut album back in 2006. Black Rainbows might be the most unexpected album of the year, inspired (according to Rae) by an exhibit on Black history she saw at Chicago’s Stony Island Arts Bank. Her voice is still strong and carries songs whether she goes loud or smooth, but the music here is all over the place, even veering into punk/hardcore and electronica, rather than the jazzy soul where she’s typically resided. It’s extremely ambitious and for the most part achieves its goals. Standouts include “New York Transit Queen,” “Erasure,” and “A Spell, A Prayer.”

7. Slowdive – Everything is Alive. Slowdive were darlings in the original shoegaze movement, with their 1993 album Souvlaki one of the peaks of the genre, but after they shifted their sound for 1995’s Pygmalion just as Britpop was exploding, they lost their record deal and broke up for 17 years. They returned to recording with 2017’s Slowdive, a majestic return towards their initial sound, and now have followed it up with an even better album that I think translates 1990s shoegaze through a 2023 lens. I’ve seen at least two stories on the current shoegaze revival from Pitchfork (which includes a lot of artists that aren’t really shoegaze) and Steregum, both of which highlight Slowdive’s place and the fact that they’ve reached new commercial heights since their re-formation. Highlights include “alife,” “the slab,” and “skin in the game.”

6. Sampha – Lahai. Maybe I just missed the boat on Sampha’s debut album Process, which won him the Mercury Prize in 2017, but I am all about this album, his long-awaited follow-up, which follows a theme you’ll see a lot in my top six albums – a real sense of restraint, with simpler and even minimalist arrangements that run so counter to contemporary pop standards. Sampha’s higher-register voice might be drowned out by louder or richer accompaniments, but the electro-soul sounds across Lahai tend to highlight and elevate his vocals instead. Standouts include “Spirit 2.0,” “Only,” “Suspended,” and “Jonathan L. Seagull.”

5. Geese – 3D Country. Geese’s debut album Projector felt like these then-teenagers had been locked in a room with nothing but records by Wire, Gang of Four, and Television for several months, so their follow-up record’s turn into an experimental mélange of post-punk, space country, hillbilly rock, screamo, and more genres that musicians this age have no business knowing so well was a huge surprise. Even more of a surprise was how well it works: 3D Country could have been one big joke, but even when you can hear Geese having fun, they’re still serious musicians and the craft here is evident. They get a lot of “jam band” labels, but I think that’s more about critics who don’t know how to categorize them. Standouts include “Cowboy Nudes,” the title track, and “Mysterious Love,” although I don’t think any three tracks could give you an accurate sense of the overall sound here.

4. Arlo Parks – My Soft Machine. Parks’s follow-up to her Mercury Prize-winning debut album Collapsed in Sunbeams sees the English singer-songwriter expanding her sonic palette to include more electronic elements and richer instrumentation, but her voice and lyrics remain the heart of her music. (She even credited some surprising influences, including shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine and the 2022 album Skinty Fia by Fontaines D.C.) Standout tracks include “Impurities,” “Weightless,” “Devotion,” “Bruises,” and her cover of Jai Paul’s “Jasmine” for the album’s deluxe edition.

3. Jorja Smith – falling or flying. Jorja Smith is a god-damned treasure. The English chanteuse got a Mercury nomination with her 2018 debut album Lost & Found, then teased with an eight-song EP in 2021 called Be Right Back before returning this year with her triumphant second LP. Often miscategorized as just an R&B singer, Smith moves seamlessly across styles from soul to jazz to blues to trip-hop, but the unifying forces here are her vocals and her minimalist approach. Everything she does puts her voice front and center, and even when you know there must be myriad instrumental tracks, it sounds spare, giving the sense that you’re witnessing an intimate performance – a welcome antidote to the overproduced sounds of most popular music today. Standouts include the title track, “Little Things,” and “Try Me.”

2. Noname – Sundial. Noname appeared to have quit the music industry in November of 2019 and cancelled her sophomore album, Factory Baby, but returned to live performances in the summer of 2022 and released a new second album, Sundial, this past August. It’s a tour de force of modern hip-hop, with some of the most intelligent lyrics you’ll hear from any MC and a style that reflects the influences across rap’s fifty-year history, while the music over which she drops her rhymes ranges from R&B to jazz to alternative electronic. Standout tracks include “Oblivion” with Common and Ayoni, “Namesake,” and “Black Mirror.” I couldn’t put this album at #1, however, given the guest appearance of antisemite Jay Electronica, who even drops a reference to the Rothschilds in his verse and claims the Ukraine war is a hoax; Noname said she didn’t care what people said about his inclusion, but I don’t think there’s ever a good reason to platform someone who expresses hateful views.

1. Young Fathers – Heavy Heavy. I loved this album when it came out, then set it aside for much of the year, then revisited it for this list – and because of their stunning performance on KEXP – and fell in love with it again. It’s experimental, exuberant, explosive, and full of great hooks. “I Saw” made my top 100 songs of 2022, and would be in the top 10 this year if I hadn’t already included it last year, while “Rice,” “Geronimo,” and “Drum” are all standouts. The Scottish trio started out as primarily an alternative hip-hop act, but have expanded their sound over the past twelve years to include more elements of soul, indietronica, dance, and Afrobeat in their style. They won a Mercury Prize in 2014 for their debut album Dead, but that is now, at most, their third-best album after this and 2018’s Cocoa Sugar. Nobody sounds like Young Fathers because nobody could.

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→ December 19, 2023
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The Ghost Map.

Our current understanding of the ways in which diseases spread goes back to a little-remembered cholera epidemic that devastated a London neighborhood in 1854, when a physician-scientist and a minister began working, first on their own and then together, to trace the outbreak’s origins. In a time of superstition and errant beliefs in “miasmas,” these two men realized through hard work, going door to door at one point to ascertain where each household obtained its water, that the agent causing the disease was spread through human waste that contaminated a particular water supply. In The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic – And How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World, author Steven Johnson tells this story in the fashion of a medical mystery – until a pointless epilogue full of speculation about the future of epidemics and treatments that has aged very poorly in the 16 years since its publication.

Cholera today is a disease of extreme poverty, and even more so of the lack of infrastructure that accompanies it; nearly all cholera outbreaks occur in desperately poor (or desperately corrupt) countries, or in those ravaged by war. Large outbreaks occurred in Syria during the early part of its civil war and Yemen during its endless civil/proxy war. In the third quarter of 2023, the hardest-hit countries, measured by cholera cases per capita, were Syria and Afghanistan, followed by Haiti, Bangladesh, and several countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The disease, caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, first emerged in India in 1817 and then spread around the world, killing over 35 million people, with multiple pandemics affecting Europe and North America, until advances in sanitation and public health helped eliminate the disease in more affluent countries. Those advances, and the lives saved, all came about because of the work of physician and scientist John Snow and Anglian priest Henry Whitehead.

Snow was an avid researcher and experimented with ether and later with chloroform, developing more reliable methods of anesthetizing patients that brought him significant renown, to the point where Queen Victoria called on him to assist her with chloroform during the birth of her eighth child, Prince Leopold. He took a general interest in cholera’s spread during the pandemic that first reached England in 1848, publishing a paper that argued that the prevailing theory that it was spread via polluted air, the “miasma” theory, was wrong. That outbreak eventually petered out, but cholera returned to England in 1854, leading to a horrific outbreak near Broad Street in London’s Soho district. Snow created a dot map to track cholera cases in the neighborhood, gaining help from Whitehead in going door to door to ask families about cases in the house – including houses where the majority of family members had died – and, after Snow’s initial research identified the Broad Street pump as a possible link between nearly all of the cases, where they got their water.

When Johnson tells this history, which takes up about 80% of the book, it’s fantastic. He balances the historical details, the science, and the biographies of the two main characters in the story well enough to maintain the interest level without ignoring the significance of the effort or the context in the history of science. He also has quite a bit of detail on some of the families destroyed by the outbreak, and on the quotidian lives of the inhabitants of this overcrowded part of what was becoming a massively overcrowded city. It’s a great, brisk history of science book.

If he’d stopped there, around page 200, I’d be raving. Unfortunately, there’s a long, tacked-on epilogue that goes well beyond the scope of the book in both its historical and scientific aims. Johnson couldn’t have known that we’d have several epidemics and one global pandemic before 20 years were up, but the larger point is that this book is about history, not predictions, and his don’t hold up particularly well. I read the epilogue wondering if an editor had asked him to add it, because it’s so out of character with the rest of the book.

That’s not a reason to skip The Ghost Map – you can always choose not to read the last bit – and the story it’s telling remains extremely relevant. The work the CDC and the WHO did to track SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, or that they’re doing right now to track current epidemics like chikungunya in Burkina Faso or Mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a direct ancestor of the work that Snow and Whitehead did in 1854. If the field of epidemiology has an origin point, it’s their efforts, and we have them to thank for all of the outbreaks of highly infectious diseases that never reach our shores.

Next up: I just finished R.F. Kuang’s Babel and started Tana French’s In the Woods.

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→ December 18, 2023
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Spider-man: Across the Spider-Verse.

I was one of the few skeptics when it came to the first Spider-verse animated film, the Oscar-winning 2018 film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which I thought got too much credit for interesting animation and some great cameos but still adhered too much to the traditional superhero fight scenes to resolve its plot. However, this year’s sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, is a banger. Not only do I think it’s going to end up the best animated film of the year*, it might be one of the best of all time.

* I haven’t seen The Boy and the Heron yet, and that’s already won some best-of-2023 awards as well.

We return to the story of Miles Morales, the Afro-Latino boy bitten by a radioactive spider, who discovers there’s a whole multitude of spiderpeople and even spideranimals throughout the multiverse, including Gwen Stacy, who we saw in the first film, along with some new characters who have formed a sort of transdimensional guild to try to maintain the various timelines and prevent the multiverse from collapsing. This film, like the first one, doesn’t worry too much about the cosmological implications and focuses on the story and characters – actually, it does better with the characters than the first film did – and plunges Miles right into a complex story that has some fight scenes but relies far more on character development. There’s a villain, The Spot, who of course has a very personal beef with the titular hero, although as the story progresses he fades somewhat into the background of the plot. If anything, it’s more of a mystery than a typical superhero plot, as something is wrong with the timelines and Miles is in a unique position to find out what’s going on.

The animation in the first Spider-Verse film was different from that in most animated films, mixing some hand-drawn elements with CGI, dubbed “2.5D” animation because it combined the 3D style of computer animation with the 2D style of traditional hand-drawn work. The innovation didn’t go beyond that, however, and at times it became a little tiring to watch because my eyes would struggle to figure out the perspective. This film really perfects the method, though, and both enhances it to give it that comic-book-plus feel while also exploring different artistic styles – each instance of the multi-verse, and each Spider-entity that hails from it, gets its own unique look and feel, making the entire endeavor a visual feast unlike any animated film I can remember. It’s not the ultra-realism of Pixar’s computer wizardry, nor the artistic marvels of Miyazaki’s work, but a cornucopia of colors, styles, and textures that would alone make the movie worth watching.

The story, however, is miles ahead – pun intended – of its predecessor. That film set up the main character, but the plot was garden-variety superhero stuff. We’ll have to see if the writers stick the landing in the sequel, but the story here is much richer, with more complexity to Miles’ character, some more depth to Gwen’s, and a plot that doesn’t depend on beating the bad guy up – in fact, they try that and it doesn’t work terribly well. I didn’t see the ending and cliffhanger coming, although I may be unusual in that bit, and even so I don’t think it would have altered my appreciation of the plot up to that point anyway. There’s some “how will he ever get out of this?” to it, but that part is uninteresting – of course he’s getting out of it – relative to the broader stories of how they’ll repair the timeline and stop the Spot. (An aside: Jason Schwartzman voices the Spot, and might have the best performance among the voice actors in the film. On top of his strong performance in Asteroid City, he’s fighting to change the opinion I’ve held of him since turning off Rushmore 20 minutes into it.)

My daughter, who has been a big MCU fan for years (although that’s tapering off), absolutely loved this movie other than the cliffhanger and long wait for the final installment, for almost all of the same reasons I did: the clever story, the two interesting characters, and the wildly innovative animation. I assume it’s going to win the big Best Animated Feature prizes this winter, although The Boy and the Heron might get a boost as Miyazaki’s farewell film (maybe), and I can’t argue with that. It’s at least a lot more deserving of the honors than the first film.

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→ December 16, 2023
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Stick to baseball, 12/16/23.

We’re getting busy over on the hot stove front, and this week I wrote about the Shohei Ohtani signing, the Lee Jung-hoo signing (plus two Royals signings and the Yanks-Dodgers trade), the impact of the injuries to Ronny Mauricio and Endy Rodríguez, and the Tyler Glasnow trade for subscribers to the Athletic.

At Paste, I ranked the ten best new boardgames of 2023. It was a hard list to make, with probably 20 games I played this year that I liked enough to include, and at least five more I know that I would probably like enough but haven’t played yet. To give you a little more context, a game like Emerge, which I mentioned in my PAX Unplugged writeup, is absolutely fine and I think a lot of casual players would enjoy it. It didn’t stand a chance of getting on this list.

My free email newsletter is alive and well, and more than a hundred new subscribers have joined the list in the last three weeks since I switched platforms, so thank you and welcome. I’m hoping to keep this up as a weekly endeavor again.

And now, the links…

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→ December 14, 2023
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Hanamikoji.

I’ve owned the small two-player game Hanamikoji for probably seven or eight years now, and played it maybe twice when I first got it, but I set it aside and did what I unfortunately do with a lot of games I own but didn’t get as a review copy – I forgot about it. It popped up recently on Board Game Arena, so I got to play it a bunch of times, since a full game takes less than ten minutes, and I was reminded how elegant and great it is. It’s a capture-the-flag game, like Battle Line or Riftforce, with a simple scoring method and a strict set of possible actions that forces you to try to figure out what your opponent might be trying to do.

The theme of Hanamikoji isn’t that relevant except for the art, mostly by the wonderful Taiwanese artist Maisherly, who has also provided art for Walking in Burano, Realm of Sand, and Mystery of the Temples. The game itself is so simple you could make your own version with a bunch of index cards, although I would say just buy the game since it’s only about $17: The game has a deck of cards numbered 2 through 5 in seven different colors. The 2s come in purple, red, and yellow; 3s in blue and orange; 4s in green; and 5s in pink. A card’s frequency matches its value, so there are 21 cards in the deck.

Before each round, you shuffle all cards, remove one without showing it to either player, and then deal six cards to each player. The first player must draw one card and then take one of the four possible actions, which they will then not be able to take for the rest of that round. The second player does the same, and the play goes back and forth, with each player drawing one card and taking a previously unused (by them) action, until each player has had four turns.

In between the players sits a row of geisha cards, one in each color, and players will play cards to their side by the matching geisha to try to win each geisha’s favor with gifts. The four possible actions are to reserve a card to be played to the table at the end of the round (so a final, secret move); to discard two cards from your hands so they’re out of the round entirely; to present your opponent with three cards, where they choose one to play to their side, leaving two for you to play to your side; and to present your opponent with two pairs of cards, where they choose one to play and you then play the other. At the end of the round, you see who has more cards on their side of each of the geishas. Whoever has more cards on their side gains that geisha’s favor, and if the players have the same number on both sides, the favor doesn’t move. If one player gets the favor of four geishas, or gets the favor of three geishas worth a total of 11 or more (for example, the 5 and both 3s), they win.

If, as is most common, you complete the first round and neither player wins, the start player switches and you play a new round, but you retain the favor you won in the previous round, so if, say, you had the favor of the purple 2 geisha, and each player plays a purple card to the table, you would keep her favor. Play continues until someone meets either victory condition. If both conditions are achieved in the same round, the player with the 11+ points is the winner.

There are two tremendous strategic bits to Hanamikoji – when to use which actions, and predicting what your opponent might do. The order of your actions is entirely up to you, and in some sense depends on the cards you get. You may want to save the discard action until second or third, when you might already know some cards are worthless to you either way (e.g., the blue 3 geisha is already decided either way with two cards on one side, so the last card won’t change anything), but saving it till last might cause you to discard a card that would help you. Many players like to use the three-card action with three cards of the same color, since no matter what you get two and your opponent gets one, but that cedes the possibility of gaining control of two geishas rather than just one. The little decisions here go on and on in a way I find incredibly satisfying – like chess, but on a smaller scale.

Anticipating your opponent’s choices is, of course, inherent in lots of games with direct interaction, and here it comes into play in two ways. One is just trying to infer what geishas they might be trying to win, so you can choose where to parry and where to put cards to win your own geishas. You also need to understand their thinking, or at least try to do so, when choosing which cards to present to them in the three-card and two-pair actions, so that they’ll choose what you want them to choose. You can’t do this perfectly, since the card draws are random and you don’t see the cards they reserve or discard, but you can at least think about the odds of different scenarios. I love this part of the game, because, again, it’s a bit like chess, but with smaller trees of possible outcomes and a little randomness to help balance out small gaps in skill levels.

I’m due to revise my list of my favorite two-player games, and I have at least two newish ones in the basement to try (The Hunt & Broken and Beautiful, both from 2023) before I do so, but I think Hanamikoji has earned its way (back) on to the list. It’s so easy to teach, highly portable, has lovely art, and seems to be highly replayable, everything I’d want in a true two-player experience.

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→ December 13, 2023
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Nashville eats, 2023 edition.

Lyra was by far the best meal I had on the trip, serving “modern Middle Eastern” food along with a solid menu of wines and cocktails. I followed my server’s suggestions and ordered the hummus with roasted jalapeños, the octopus with big-ass white beans (not the actual name) in tomato broth, and the cabbage fattoush. The hummus was actually the best dish, in part because it came with a very warm, soft pitta that I carefully parceled out so that I wouldn’t end up with either pitta or hummus left over at the end. The octopus itself was perfectly cooked and had that flavor of the grill top that I think octopus is uniquely able to capture, but the astringent broth didn’t work well with it and the beans were just unnecessary. (I realized I just don’t love shellfish with tomato sauces or broths. They fight each other too much.) The cabbage fattoush was excellent, served with a date vinaigrette, feta, caraway seeds, and walnuts, a cold dish that worked well with its balance of saltiness, acidity, and a little sweetness in the dressing, although the toasted pitta on top of it, which you crush into the dish, never softened because there was just enough dressing for the vegetables. It’s located right next to the Pharmacy and across from Mas Tacos, two of my other Nashville favorites.

Joyland is a fast food-inspired spot from Sean Brock of Husk and Audrey, serving burgers and fries in a sack along with breakfast sandwiches on massive, buttery biscuits. I did indeed get a breakfast sandwich, which came with some sweet/peppery bacon and a brick of eggs scrambled with cheese that stood out as the one part of the sandwich that wasn’t freshly cooked. I’d go back for the biscuits, though.

I went with a basic tuna salad sandwich from Eastwood Deli, as this trip promised to have me eating about twice as much meat/poultry as I usually would, and it was … a solid tuna sandwich, just on very good sourdough bread. It’s in a whole complex of restaurants and such where you’ll also find the great izakaya Two Ten Jack and an outpost of Jeni’s Ice Cream.

HiFi Cookies has two locations, serving a handful of large cookies with interesting ingredients and flavor combinations, named after legends of rock, soul, and jazz. I went with the Etta, a peanut butter cookie with peanut butter chips and Cap’n Crunch peanut brittle; and the Johnny, a fudgy cookie with dark chocolate chips and a Cocoa Krispies/cacao nibs topping. These are good, rich cookies, and both screamed their core flavors; I think in the end I’d pick the Etta, because it was more than just a peanut butter cookie in flavor and texture, while the Johnny was just a chocolate chocolate chip cookie with crunchy but flavorless stuff on top.

Zulema’s Kitchen is buried among office buildings and hotels quite close to the airport, but does a perfectly cromulent lunch, although I would concede that here it was much more about taste than anything more hifalutin – I got a “chipotle chicken” sandwich that had chopped, grilled chicken, grilled peppers and onions, and a mildly spicy mayo on ciabatta bread. I don’t know what cuisine it was supposed to be, and maybe I was just famished after the flight but it was delicious – just the right amount of salty and spicy. I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat here, but if I worked in one of those buildings I’d be there pretty often.

I went to Hattie B’s for the second time and went with Hot, which I think might be my limit. I’m ¾ Italian and the rest is Irish and English, none of them cuisines known for our heavy use of capsicum. I think it’s an achievement that I’ve gotten this far. Damn Hot! might be beyond my capabilities.

Two duds from the trip: Sky Blue showed up on some list of the best breakfast spots in Nashville, but it was kind of a big disappointment; the home fries I got were cold and the “omelette” was nothing more than a scrambled egg folded over some barely cooked fillings. I also grabbed take-out on the first night of the meetings from a Thai place called Bit-a-Bite that was similarly underwhelming, as the pad see ew didn’t have a lot of flavor and came with more carrots than anything green (broccoli or gai lan would have worked, or even bok choy).

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→ December 12, 2023
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The House of Silk.

I’ve loved much of the work of Anthony Horowitz, who created Foyle’s War, one of my favorite TV series of all time, and wrote the book Magpie Murders and the authorized James Bond novel Forever and a Day. He’s also written two authorized Sherlock Holmes novels – Moriarty, which was well-written but relied too much on a gimmick; and The House of Silk, which, unlike Moriarty, actually features Holmes as the main character. It’s also well-written, and moves along well, but falls into the trap of so many authorized continuations, where the author is trying so hard to be true to or respectful of the characters/settings that the story itself ends up suffering.

The House of Silk builds slowly to the first of multiple murders that all seem to tie to some mysterious entity by that title, although it’s unclear to whom or what it refers. Holmes enters at the behest of an art dealer whose shipment of paintings was destroyed by Irish gang members and whose client is later found murdered. When Holmes uses his Baker Street Irregulars to look for evidence, one of them ends up murdered himself, spurring the detective to continue his investigations even when others, including his brother Mycroft, warn him away from anything involving the House of Silk. Holmes finds himself framed for murder, and Watson has to find a way to spring him before they can solve the case.

Horowitz’s Holmes is the one you expect. He repeats his catchphrase “The game is afoot!” which actually comes from Shakespeare’s Henry V and just made me roll my eyes for its obviousness here. He does his parlor trick of glancing at a person and immediately coming up with a lengthy biographical sketch or a rundown of everything that person might have done that day, which has very little to do with the actual mystery here and didn’t happen nearly as often in the original Conan Doyle works because nearly all of them were short stories. He’s actually less disdainful towards Watson and the police in The House of Silk, where authenticity ends up lost to make him a kinder, gentler Holmes, and nobody asked for that. Watson, meanwhile, is even more of a cipher of a character here than he is in the original stories, retreating mostly to observer and chronicler status outside of the scenes while Holmes is in prison.

That’s one of my two main problems with The House of Silk – the characters are just not very interesting, including the man we all know and love. If you enjoy this sort of fiction, you likely have a favorite detective character; I’m a Hercule Poirot fan, and never enjoy the Miss Marple stories as much because she’s just not as interesting to me. Horowitz’s Holmes feels flat on the page, and none of the side characters are anything more than stock figures, some there because the reader might expect them (Lestrade, Mycroft), some there for the new plot, but none memorable at all once they leave the page.

The other is that the resolution to the story here is exceptionally lurid, and thus out of character with any of the original stories. Such things do happen in the real world, and did during the era of the novel, but putting Holmes into such a story is not only a break with the novel’s otherwise overzealous effort to stay authentic to the original material but requires a huge tonal shift for the character that the author can’t manage. It’s jarring in the wrong way, and Horowitz shows he’s a better craftsman than artist, able to frame and write the story but not to give it the panache or appeal of Conan Doyle’s works.

Next up: I’m currently about a third of the way through R.F. Kuang’s Babel, the most recent winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel.

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→ December 9, 2023
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Stick to baseball, 12/9/23.

Five new pieces for subscribers to the Athletic this week, breaking down the Jarred Kelenic trade, the Alex Verdugo trade, the Juan Soto trade, the Eduardo Rodríguez/Jeimer Candelario/Craig Kimbrel signings, and the Tyler O’Neill trade.

At Paste, I recapped everything I played at this year’s PAX Unplugged board game convention here in Philly. My time there was a little shorter than normal for various reasons, but I still sneaked in a whole bunch of great new games. I also got Apiary to the table here last night.

My free email newsletter has moved over to Substack. If you got an issue from me on Monday, then you’re all set. Mailchimp is sunsetting their free Tinyletter product, so I had to move it to a different site.

And now, the links…

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→ December 5, 2023
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Music update, November 2023.

November is usually the last big month for new music, and this year’s didn’t disappoint, between some of the year’s best albums and a lot of songs teasing 2024 releases. This month’s playlist probably has the most genres of any I’ve posted, which I think speaks to how strong the month was for new tracks. As always, if you can’t see the Spotify widget below you can access the playlist here.

Billy Porter – Children. Billy Porter’s a Broadway superstar and an Emmy winner for his portrayal of Pray Tell on the groundbreaking show Pose, but his fifth album, Black Mona Lisa, is his first full-length foray into any part of popular music – and it’s a blast. This track is my favorite so far for the incredible earworm in the chorus, “Gotta let these children know what time it is,” but so much of the album is so ebullient that even when Porter’s lyrics turn serious you’re still glued to the music. The LP closes with another version of this song that also features Lady Blackbird.

Megan Thee Stallion – Cobra. The lead single from her upcoming third album has MTS rapping about depression, betrayal, and the hangers-on who didn’t seem to care or notice when she was struggling. It also concludes with a brief guitar solo that’s one of the best of the year. Just listen for that one half-note change in the riff and hear how it changes the entire tenor of the solo.

Consensus feat. Moses Boyd – Out of this World. Consensus is a British rapper who’s obsessed with physics, especially particle physics; his 2017 debut album, ConCERNED, was inspired by a trip to the CERN laboratory on the Swiss-French border, with songs like “Antimatter,” “Higgs,” and “Standard Model.” His second album, Original Conscience, is more inspired by the origins of the universe and its lyrics are a little more metaphorical, although he does have a track about the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment just called “D.U.N.E. (Deep Underground).” This track includes the incredible jazz drummer Moses Boyd, giving it the best beat on the record.

BEAM – FU. A cover, sort of, of “True Fu-Schnick” – BEAM, a Jamaican-American rapper, loved the fast-rap style of The Fu-Schnickens, and here drops new verses over the same beat along with the original chorus. It’s part of an upcoming EP to celebrate hip-hop’s 50th anniversary where artists will reimagine tracks from rap’s golden era.

Brittany Howard – Red Flags. Two singles in and I can’t wait for Howard’s sophomore album, What Now, due out on February 2nd. This track is all over the place, from psychedelic rock to gospel to electronica, all anchored by Howard’s powerful vocals.

CVC – The Remortgage Anthem. This Welsh band reworked their own track “The Mortgage Anthem” with a disco influence and a hint of ‘70s funk, and it works extremely well for an upbeat working-class anthem that gets you moving while the anticapitalist lyrics seep into your head.

Egyptian Blue – A Living Commodity. The title track from this English post-punk band’s debut album is both one of the LP’s best and also shows that they’re a good bit more than the post-punk label might apply, combining some of the abrasiveness of early Gang of Four or Television with very early new wave sounds like U2 circa Boy or October. They’re definitely a band to watch.

Weakened Friends – Awkward. I absolutely thought this was Sleater-Kinney or at least Corin Tucker when I first heard it, but it’s this Maine trio, with their first new single since 2021’s Quitter. It’s probably more like Sleater-Kinney meets jangle-pop, now that I know who’s actually behind the track.

Cloud Nothings – Final Summer. This was Cloud Nothings’ first new track since their EP titled July 2021, the release date of which I’ll let you work out, and their first for Pure Noise Records, so I presume it’s a harbinger of a new album at some point next year. Their production values have improved over time but their sound really hasn’t changed and I for one am very happy with that.

Peace – Happy Cars. Peace have been around for over a decade, so I’m a bit ashamed to admit this was the first track I’d ever heard from the band, who are now a duo after releasing three albums as a quartet. Their fourth record, Utopia, got a full release in November and features this shimmering Britpop-like track that reminded me a ton of the ‘90s act Geneva.

Heartworms – May I Comply. Heartworms is Jojo Orme, although it’s more than just a one-woman show here – it’s a whole character, named for The Shins’ 2017 album, replete with military imagery and gothic styling, melding post-punk, hard rock, and darkwave.

Pip Blom – Not Tonight. A Dutch pop band who first came to my attention with their collaboration with Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, “Is This Love,” Pip Blom have another banger here with this bouncy pop-rock track with what seem to be nonsense lyrics. (At least, I hope they are.)

Kid Kapichi – Tamagotchi. I’m not a big fan of rock singers trying to rap, and I don’t think it goes especially well here, but there’s a great guitar riff here and both the bridge and chorus – which have actual singing – are up to the high Kid Kapichi standard, so I’ll tolerate a little cringe to get to it.

Courting – Throw. Courting’s second album, New Last Name, comes out January 26th, and based on the first two singles (this and “Flex”) it’ll be more guitar-focused but every bit as raucous.

Momma – Sunday. Momma and Narrow Head, a post-hardcore band from Texas, trade covers on this split single, with Momma covering Narrow Head’s “Sunday” while Narrow Head took on Momma’s “Medicine.” I’m not wild about Narrow Head’s vocals, so I prefer Momma’s versions of both songs.

Suede – The Sadness in You, the Sadness in Me. Suede (yes, the London Suede, sue me) are planning a massive deluxe edition of last year’s LP Autofiction, including this track, which really should have been on the record because it’s pretty much peak Suede for me. The song also previously appeared on the 2022 EP She Still Leads Me On, which was only available for a week, so don’t feel bad if you missed it.

flowerovlove – a girl like me. flowerovlove might be the next Griff, who first burst on the scene as a teenager with a sophisticated take on modern pop music. flowerovlove’s sound is different, a little more light with vocals that recall beabadoobee (and who also eschews capitalization), but with the same sense of “how does someone so young have such a strong grasp on pop history?”

Sampha – Suspended. Lahai, Sampha’s sophomore album, is one of the best new records of the year and I think a step forward from his Mercury Prize-winning debut, with lusher arrangements and better use of his unique higher-register voice.

NIJI – Somewhere in the Middle. The title track from Niji Adeleye’s new EP, his first under the NIJI moniker, is a piano-and-horns jazz piece with a strong hook from the brass section, while the EP as a whole has more influence from the music of Nigeria, where his parents were born.

Arlo Parks – Jasmine. The deluxe edition of Parks’ sophomore album My Soft Machine includes this cover of Jai Paul’s obscure but highly influential single “Jasmine,” starting out with a sparse arrangement of mostly synths and drum machine but building to a layered finish that brings in more guitar and bass while staying authentic to the original’s soft, reverbed vocals. Apparently Jai Paul even gave his approval to the cover.

Mary Timony – Dominoes. Timony, the lead singer and guitarist for Helium back in the 1990s and Ex Hex in the 2010s, returns with her first solo album in 15 years, Untame the Tiger, due out February 23rd. This lead single has none of the dissonance or harder edges from her prior work, but don’t we all mellow out as we get older?

Brigitte Calls Me Baby – Impressively Average. This Chicago band’s music would sound like a lot of other alternative acts if singer/songwriter Wes Leavins didn’t have such a distinctive vocal style, which I’ve seen compared to Morrissey, Roy Orbison, and Elvis by various critics. His voice has a real personality, and it’s definitely something you don’t hear much in any genre of music right now; in an earlier era he would have been a crooner, and maybe that’ll be his second act in twenty years. This is the best track from the band’s latest EP, This House Is Made of Corners.

Vince Clarke – White Rabbit. Yep, that Vince Clarke, of Erasure and previously of Depeche Mode and Yaz, releasing his first solo album at age 63. It’s not a synth-pop record, as you might expect, but an experimental electronic one, with each track focused around a single note, often held through the entire song. I would have expected such music to sound monotonous, but “White Rabbit” is anything but – it’s a whole soundscape, with shifting moods and tones that are only held together by that slender core of the original tone.

Floating Points – Birth4000. Dr. Samuel Shepherd returns to his EDM roots after the 2021 album Promises, recorded with saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders not long before the latter died at age 81. This track has a slow build before the main hook comes in around the one-minute mark, and Shepherd layers his sounds beautifully for an immersive track that’s as accessible as anything he’s done.

Sen Morimoto – If the Answer Isn’t Love. Morimoto’s some sort of musical genius, I think, with music that ignores all attempts to categorize it (you could call it jazz, but that’s neither fair to Morimoto or actual jazz) … but I also don’t hear a lot of hooks on his album Diagnosis. This was the most compelling track and I think shows off what he does well as a songwriter and guitarist in particular.

SPRINTS – Shadow of a Doubt. SPRINTS put out an EP in November that includes this track, “Up and Comer,” and “Adore Adore Adore,” the last two of which have appeared on my playlists already this year. “Shadow” actually starts out slow and quiet, but you can hear the tension in Karla Chubb’s vocals, and you know the explosion of punk guitars is just around the bend. When it arrives, it flips the whole track upside down.

Sheer Mag – Playing Favorites. I actually thought Sheer Mag might have called it quits, as they hadn’t released any new music since 2019’s A Distant Call, but they put out a new track in August and then this one, the title track from their upcoming album due out March 1st, which sounds like this punk revival band never left us at all.

Wayfarer – Reaper on the Oilfields. Wayfarer combines death-doom with traditional country music sounds – not modern country, but country music from 70+ years ago – in a sound I have never heard anywhere before. Encyclopedia Metallum calls it “atmospheric black/folk metal,” and, sure, that works too. Their latest album, American Gothic, would easily be my metal album of the year if they didn’t resort so often to deep, guttural death growls that too often overshadow the fascinating musical blend that makes them unique. This track has very little of that, so perhaps you can better appreciate what they’re doing without that distraction.

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→ December 2, 2023
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Stick to baseball, 12/2/23.

I had one new post for subscribers to The Athletic this week, looking at the free-agent signings of Sonny Gray and Kenta Maeda plus some thoughts on what the Twins might do next. Some readers got very mad that I don’t think Chris Paddack will be a mid-rotation starter when he hasn’t been anything close to that since 2019.

Over at Paste, I ran through eight new board games that would be great stocking stuffers. I’ll do my year-end post for them the week of December 11th. Also, here on the dish, I updated my ranking of my top 100 games all-time.

On the Keith Law Show this week, I spoke with Nik Sharma, author of the new cookbook Veg-Table and the also wonderful cookbooks Season and The Flavor Equation. You can listen and subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My free email newsletter is moving from Tinyletter (which Mailchimp is shutting down) to Substack. If you already subscribed as of Tuesday of this past week, you’re fine – I was able to export the subscriber list and import it to Substack with no issues.

And now, the links…

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