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Music update, March 2024.

March had a slew of big album releases, even just limiting them to artists whose work I’ve liked at some point in the past: Ride, Everything Everything, Liam Gallagher/John Squire, Waxahatchee, Elbow, Kacey Musgraves, Judas Priest, Sheer Mag, Yard Act, and more. There are a few I liked, but several were just okay – not bad, but nothing that special. There were a lot of songs from upcoming albums that I’m excited for, and this playlist has tracks from four different albums due out on May 3rd, so I guess that’ll be a busy listening weekend for me. As always, you can access the playlist here if you can’t see the Spotify widget below.

Mdou Moctar – Funeral for Justice. Moctar became a global phenomenon with 2021’s Afrique Victime, bringing his blend of Touareg music and Western guitar to a much broader audience as the English-language music press began to sing his praises. (It was #5 on my top albums of 2021.) This is the title track from his follow-up album, due out May 3rd, and it’s very heavy on Moctar’s mesmerizing guitar work.

Elbow – Good Blood Mexico City. This banger from Elbow’s latest album, AUDIO VERTIGO, feels like the best song Doves never recorded. It’s fast and loud and intense, with a great hook at its heart. The album is solid and I think it’s the best new album from last month, at least of the ones I’ve listened to all the way through.

The Libertines – Oh Shit. The lads’ fourth album, All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade, is due out on Friday, a week later than originally scheduled, and the singles so far have still been rough-and-ready but definitely show a mellower side of Barât and Doherty.

Kaiser Chiefs – Reasons to Stay Alive.The Kaisers may be approaching 30 years together as a band, and their most popular record, Employment, may turn 20 next year, but their new album has two absolute bangers in this and “Beautiful Girl.” I doubt it’ll get much play outside of the U.K., given the way we dispose of bands in the U.S. music scene, but they’ve had more than a few winners even post-“Ruby.”

Kid Kapichi – Can EU Hear Me? Angry Kid Kapichi is the best Kid Kapichi, and I wish the whole album – There Goes the Neighborhood – maintained this level of righteous rage throughout. This is obviously an anti-Brexit track (“I don’t wanna live alone on this island/But they put it to a vote, and they just kept lyin’”) but like all of the best Kapichi tracks it has some incredible hooks and the indignation shows up in the furious rhythm guitar.

Liam Gallagher/John Squire – You’re Not the Only One. Yeah, well, the anticipation was fun, but the album is kind of a snoozer. I think everyone – myself included – was so excited at the potential for some real John Squire material on par with his Stone Roses output that perhaps we ignored two key facts: Squire is a terrible lyricist, and Liam hasn’t seemed engaged with any music he’s put out since Oasis’s 2005 album Don’t Believe the Truth. One track on the album is called “I’m So Bored,” and when Liam sings it, I believe him.

Mourn – Endless Looping. I thought Mourn had disbanded after 2021’s Self Worth, as they seemed to vanish from the internet, but they returned in March with The Avoider, which feels oddly muted for a trio whose songs usually burst with energy that helped power them through even when songs weren’t polished or their vocals were (deliberately) a little off key. This opening track is the best on the record, although “Could Be Friends” is solid too.

White Reaper – I Can’t Escape Myself. White Reaper released this one-off single, a cover of the opening track from UK post-punk icons The Sound’s debut album Jeopardy!, to tide fans over until there’s a new Reaper album on the way. It’s a faithful cover translated through the White Reaper sound, with more polished production than the original but still the same haunting quality.

Yard Act – A Vineyard for the North. Where’s My Utopia?, the second album from these UK post-punks, didn’t quite hit as hard as their debut album did, although I applaud the band for experimenting further with their sound rather than just resting on the plaudits from the first record. This is maybe the fifth-best song on the record, but I’ve already included “We Make Hits,” “Dream Job,” “Petroleum,” and “When the Laughter Stops” on previous playlists.

Sheer Mag – Golden Hour. Sheer Mag were lo-fi critical darlings in their early EP stages, when they were harder-edged and leaned more into garage rock and punk, even flirting with metal at times, but their new album Playing Favorites – which started out as a disco EP during the pandemic that grew into a full-length album seems to dispense with punk influences entirely. There’s a lot of 12-bar blues here and some rockabilly sounds (“Golden Hour”), with some great melodies (“Moonstruck”) but not a ton of experimentation – except on this track, which features a killer guitar solo from none other than Mdou Moctar.

Lauren Mayberry – Change Shapes. I’ve been surprised by Mayberry’s solo output so far, including this sugar-sweet pop track about how to survive in a relationship with a manipulative partner; if the lyrics didn’t have a dark edge I’d call it twee and leave it off the playlist entirely.

Richard Hawley – Two For His Heels. Hawley, formerly of the shortlived Britpop band Longpigs and then briefly of Pulp, hasn’t released anything since his 2019 album Further, but he’s back with this single (taking its title from a cribbage rule, so, hey, boardgames!) ahead of the May release of his latest album In This City They Call You Love. This track is very noirish, suiting its lyrics about a deal gone wrong.

La Luz – Strange World. Speaking of noir, La Luz doesn’t do anything other than that, and that’s fine with me. The quartet has changed by 50% since their last album in 2021, but leader Shana Cleveland is still on board. They’ll release News of the Universe on May 24th, featuring this track and the lugubrious “Poppies.”

Khruangbin – Pon Pón. A LA SALA, their first album of new material since 2020’s Mordechai, arrives this Friday; I loved Mordechai but it didn’t land with critics the way their earlier work had. This and “A Love International” are both standouts already, ahead of the slower (and non-instrumental) “May Ninth” of the three singles they’ve released from the album.

Kamasi Washington – Prologue. The acclaimed jazz saxophonist will release his latest album, Fearless Movement, on May 3rd, and this track is actually the last one on the record, despite the title. Nobody is the new John Coltrane, but Washington’s work does remind me a bit of the GOAT.

Kacey Musgraves – Cardinal. I guess I’m a Kacey Musgraves fan now.

Waxahatchee – 3 Sisters. I still haven’t listened all the way through Tigers Blood, and I think part of it is that I thought Saint Cloud (her last album, released almost exactly four years before this one) was so good that I can’t imagine this will live up to it. I don’t think there’s a “Lilacs” or an “Under the Rock” here, at least not yet, but this song is quite lovely, especially the harmonies in the chorus.

Parsnip – Turn to Love. I wouldn’t rate this above the Aussie’ quartet’s previous single, the incredible power-pop gem “The Light,” but if you hang on here until the chorus you’ll hear what they’re capable of. Their sophomore album Behold drops on April 26th.

Love Fame Tragedy – My Head’s in a Hurricane. LFT is Matthew Murphy, lead singer-songwriter for the Wombats, and his second solo album under that moniker, Life is a Killer, actually feels like a really good Wombats album – more than his solo debut did, certainly.

Courting – Battle. Courting’s New Last Name might be my top album of 2024 so far, and this extra track from those recording sessions has the same jangly, alt-poppy vibe as much of the LP did.

Blushing – Tamagotchi. The second song with this title to appear on one of my playlists this year, oddly enough, this “Tamagotchi” comes from a shoegaze band from Austin who’ve released two albums already, one co-produced by Mark Gardener of Ride. Their sound is very similar to early Lush, and indeed they covered “Out of Control” on an early release. Blushing’s third full-length album Sugarcoat comes out May 3rd.

Ride – Portland Rocks. Speaking of Ride, their latest album Interplay came out last month, and it’s a solid grade-B record: exactly what you would want and expect from Ride, nothing more, nothing too novel, but nothing amiss, either. They came back from hiatus at the same time as slowdive, so the comparisons are a little too easy, but where slowdive has leaned more into their shoegaze roots and are riding the wave of the genre’s revival, Ride have reemerged in a softer form, closer to dream-pop than shoegaze, with Interplay harkening back more to British new wave than the original shoegaze movement that Ride helped pioneer.

The Jesus and Mary Chain – Venal Eyes. The Guardian called the Reid brothers’ second comeback album “three-quarters of a good record” by way of praise; I might put the ratio closer to half. (Their real comeback album was 2017’s Damage and Joy, coming after a 19-year layoff; the wait this time was just seven years.) TJ&MC were always more shoegaze-adjacent to me, with more noise-rock elements and I think a pretty clear intent to create some chaos on record. This song does all of that, and does it well.

Drop Nineteens – Nest. Concluding the shoegaze portion of the playlist we have perhaps the only American band associated with the genre’s original heyday. Drop Nineteens put out a new album, Hard Light, in November of 2023, their first album in 30 years; this song didn’t make the album but came out of the same sessions.

Wheel – Empire. One of my favorite progressive metal bands going, Wheel has put out two singles from their forthcoming album Charismatic Leaders, this and the seven-minute “Porcelain.” The new album drops May 3rd and will be their first as a trio after bassist Aki Virta left the band amicably last July.

Ministry – New Religion. Al Jourgensen is 65 years old now and as pissed-off as ever, with Ministry’s new album HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES, which he’s hinted might be their last, a furious tirade against incels, white nationalists, right-wing grifters, and Trump himself.

Judas Priest – Invincible Shield. Then we have Judas Priest, with three members in their 1970s, still shredding like in their peak, but definitely with a way more uplifting message than I’d expect from the folks behind “Breaking the Law” and “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming.”

Pallbearer – Where the Light Fades. The kings of American doom metal will release their fifth album Mind Burns Alive on May 17th, their first new music since 2020’s Forgotten Days.

Ufomammut – Leeched. An Italian doom metal band who’ve been around for almost a quarter-century now, Ufomammut just crossed my radar for the first time about a week ago; this is some seriously heavy stuff, with menacing vocals to go along with it.

Messiah – Sikhote Alin. Messiah were part of the Swiss metal vanguard in the 1980s along with Celtic Frost and Coroner, then broke up in the mid-1990s and, as far as I knew, were done for good. They actually returned in 2020 with their first new album in 26 years, and just released their second post-reunion album, Christus Hypercubus, last month. Their music is still heavily rooted in thrash, with shouted vocals that are a little less abrasive than the typical death-metal style. This isn’t totally my cup of tea, but old-school thrash riffing will always appeal to me on some level.

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→ April 3, 2024
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Perfect Days.

Perfect Days is a beautiful, lyrical slice-of-life story from veteran director Wim Wenders, making his first film in Japanese, with a superb performance from K?ji Yakusho as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo who seems to find happiness in the simplicity of his daily routine. It earned Wenders his best reviews since his signature film, Wings of Desire, came out in 1987. I just wish it wasn’t so monotonous and inert, even with such a fantastic lead. (You can rent it on iTunes, Amazon, etc.)

Yakusho plays Hirayama, who cleans public toilets in a fancy neighborhood of Tokyo and lives a spartan life built around reading, eating, and listening to music. He’s a solitary person and seems to want it that way, barely talking to anyone through his daily route – especially not his incredibly annoying co-worker, Takashi – and visiting the same few restaurants and the same used bookstore and the same park to eat lunch, and while he’s driving he listens to the same small set of cassette tapes of music from the 1960s and 1970s. He takes tremendous pride in his job, using a tiny mirror like a dentist’s to make sure the undersides of fixtures are clean, and appears to have his route and work timed to the minute. His routine is interrupted a few times throughout the movie – his whiny, arrested-development coworker Takashi, who barely cleans anything, cadges money and a ride off him; his teenaged niece shows up, having run away from home – but he’s mostly stoic throughout. That is, he’s stoic until two encounters shake him enough to get him to show some real emotion: a visit from his sister, whose appearance makes it clear that Hirayama has chosen to live this somewhat ascetic existence; and an incident where he sees the restauarant owner who seems to flirt with him whenever he comes in hugging another man, which leads to a very surprising meeting that I thought was the film’s strongest scene.

In many ways, Perfect Days should be right up my alley: It’s small in scope and story, with a modest character list, and the emotions it generates in the viewer are real and well-earned. The script has a ton of heart and respects its protagonist. But after seeing Hirayama get up and go through his morning routine for the fifth or sixth time, my attention started flagging. The film may very well be asking you to ask whether this is a man who’s found happiness in a simpler existence or whether there’s something pathetic about someone who has chosen to partake so little in the modern world or enjoy the company of others. If so, it doesn’t push hard enough in that direction, even with the two scenes at the end that should at least give the script a chance to explore more of Hirayama’s character; instead, all we get is seeing him cry, the first time he shows any real emotions other than annoyance or mild pleasure in the entire film.

The film has few side characters, and the one with the most screen time, Takashi, is the most annoying character I saw in any movie other than maybe May December. He’s ridiculous, but not in a funny way. He exists just to give Hirayama something more to do than eat, sleep, and read, but he wears out his welcome before his first scene is over – and then he comes back multiple times. Hirayama’s niece has the opposite problem – she’s almost a cipher, with very little personality of her own. There’s the hint that perhaps she’s more like her uncle than she is like her own mother, but the film doesn’t explore that angle before she returns home.

Perfect Days does have a great soundtrack, comprising mostly the songs that Hirayama listens to in his van, with tracks from The Animals, The Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, The Kinks, and Nina Simone. There’s nothing in the film from later than about 1979, so we can infer that Hirayama has no interest in newer music and prefers the music of his youth – perhaps feeling that those songs are enough for him, or perhaps because he just has no interest in anything more modern. There are ideas in here, certainly, but the script doesn’t show the curiosity to learn more about its main character. Takusho’s strong turn is largely wasted here in a film that looks beautiful but never fully engages with its subject. I had high expectations for Perfect Days, but in the end, it just couldn’t hold my attention all the way through.

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→ April 1, 2024
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Knoxville eats.

This was just my second trip to Knoxville, ever, since the Volunteers weren’t that relevant for a huge portion of my career, and it’s not as easy to get to some of the other SEC schools. The first time I went was a barely 24-hour trip in 2022, too short for a writeup, and the one meal I had on that trip was at a restaurant that closed last year (Olibea). So this is my first-ever Knoxville post.

Last time through, I wanted to try A Dopo Sourdough Pizza, but couldn’t make the timing work around the game, so this time I was determined to give myself two shots to go but got in after the Friday game, possibly with the last dough of the evening. It is Neopolitan-style pizza in the baking and the thickness, but the dough is different – it is noticeably tangy, clearly made from a sourdough starter rather than commercial yeast as most Neapolitan doughs are. I went with the margherita and added mushrooms, because their white pizzas all have a sauce of mascarpone & cream on them, and that’s more lactose than I really need; the tomatoes were out of sight, blasted with sweetness and just a little acidity, while the mushrooms were mixed wild mushrooms rather than just cremini. I didn’t quite finish it because the menu demanded that I save room for gelato, and I do listen to orders, at least at restaurants. The dark chocolate gelato was not dark in the least, but the texture was excellent. I probably should have ordered the pistachio instead.

Last trip, I tried Remedy, a local coffee shop that served Intelligentsia beans, so I planned to try another coffee shop this year after going for breakfast … and then I went to Paysan, a bagel/bakery window that, I realized as I pulled up, is right next to Remedy. This turned out to be a bit of serendipity, as Remedy now uses Rowan Coffee from Asheville, NC, so I got a chance to try a new roaster. Their Peru San Juan Pueblo Libre was on pour-over, with some raw cocoa and caramel notes. The Remedy space is really great – it was busy but not noisy, there’s plenty of light and seating, and it’s not as sparse as a lot of coffee shops (with no subway tiles). Paysan’s bagel was very good – it’s probably an average New York bagel, maybe a high 45, but on the non-NY scale it’s at least a 55. I actually was more disappointed in the egg on the sandwich, which was a square of scrambled egg that had no taste and a texture that was oddly homogenous. I’d just get something else on a bagel next time.

The best thing at Sweet P’s Barbecue is actually the “greens n’ things,” which is slow-cooked collard greens sauteed with black-eyed peas, carrots, celery, and bacon, although I barely saw any of that last thing. I like collard greens, and if they’re made well I love collard greens, but they almost always have a little bitterness left in them. These had none. It was all of the good of collards, without that bitter note, and because they were cooked and then sauteed they were really tender. The pork ribs were fine, with good bark and a nice salty-sweet rub, although they weren’t as tender as they should have been, and the cole slaw is vinegar-based so it’s a good complement to the meat. It’s fine as Q goes, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for it.

My least meal was downtown at Vida, a cocktail bar and Latin American restaurant, and I am afraid I just ordered the wrong things. I was debating between just getting ceviche and getting two smaller plates; I ended up with the latter because it meant more things to write about, but those smaller plates are definitely better for eating with a group because even two of them didn’t really add up to a meal. I ordered the panko-breaded shrimp and the corn croquettes, each of which was fine on its own, but it was too heavy as meal in total. The shrimp were in a combination of two sauces – a smoky adobo aioli and a sesame-sambal vinaigrette – with what they called a daikon and carrot “kim chi” that I think was just pickled with vinegar. The plus side was that it had a ton of flavor and it all worked well together, with smoky, salty, sour, and sweet elements, and if there’d been more umami from fermentation it would have been even better. It also needed more of the kim chi/slaw, but that’s part of my mistake in getting small plates rather than a more complete meal. The croquettes were extremely soft inside, tasting mostly of Manchego and the cilantro-lime crema underneath with just a hint of corn, and some ‘marinated avocado’ (I’m not even sure how that works, what on earth is absorbing the marinade here?) on top. The food was just okay, but the cocktail I tried was kickass; I asked another served who was picking up drinks next to my seat – sitting at that end of the bar can be great because you can ask servers what they like – what I should get as a rum drinker, and she said the Trinidad circuit race was her favorite. It contains two Trinidadian ingredients – Scarlet Ibis rum, a blend of column-stilled rums from 3 to 8 years old; and amaro di Angostura, a dark, potable bitter liqueur with strong notes of cinnamon and clove, a little like a fancy root beer. These are finished with passionfruit and lemon juices for the fruity Caribbean punch flavor profile, but without the cloying sweetness of more common mixers like pineapple juice or coconut or straight-up sugar in simple syrup or Grenadine. I’d really like to try Vida again and either just get the ahi ceviche or go with a group and try a bunch of smaller things. I’ll get the same drink, though.

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→ March 30, 2024
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Stick to baseball, 3/30/24.

I had two new posts for subscribers to the Athletic this week, my annual season predictions post and scouting notes on the Nationals’ Futures Game at Nats Park. I wanted to do a chat, but about 20 minutes before I was going to do it, our Internet went down for four hours. Good times.

Over at Paste, I reviewed Wyrmspan, the new standalone sequel/spinoff to Wingspan, adding a few rules changes to make it more complex while also replacing the birds with dragons.

I spoke to my friend Tim Grierson this week for RogerEbert.com about baseball movies, good, bad, and horrendous. I also appeared on WGN-TV to talk Cubs/White Sox.

I did indeed send around another issue of my free email newsletter, which you should definitely subscribe to if you enjoy my ramblings.

And now, the links…

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→ March 27, 2024
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Prophet Song.

Taking his cues from the devastating civil war in Syria, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the rise of populist authoritarian movements in the West, Paul Lynch has crafted a terrifyingly personal dystopian vision in his newest novel, Prophet Song. Winner of the 2023 Booker Prize, the book follows the decline into tyranny and civil war of the Republic of Ireland through the eyes of Eilish, a mother of four who tries desperately to hold her family and herself together even as the world around her crumbles.

The story begins in the not-too-distant future, where an unidentified party has taken control in Ireland and turned the national police (the gardai) into state security, choosing labor unions – especially the teachers’ union – as their first targets. Larry, Eilish’s husband, is a leader in the teacher’s union himself and after one interrogation finds himself arrested by the national government, disappearing into the state’s growing apparatus for political prisoners and leaving Eilish alone with four kids, ranging from the teenager Mark to the still-nursing Ben. The state gradually increases its authority and rounds up more and more dissidents, even firing on protestors, leading to a near-total breakdown in the social order, food and water shortages along with bread lines, neighbors denouncing neighbors, and the inevitable rise of a ragtag rebel army. All the while, Eilish is trying to keep her family safe, including her father, who is in the early stages of dementia and only half understands what’s happening. Eilish can access some foreign news sources, such as the BBC, to get an outside view of the conflict, and the ubiquity of cell phones changes some of the dynamics of survival, but none of this changes the more fundamental needs to get food, shelter, and medical care, all of which become critical as Eilish has to decide whether to stay or make a dangerous bid to cross the border with Great Britain and join her sister Aine in Canada.

There’s something very It Can’t Happen Here about Prophet Song; this is the kind of collapse we associate with countries where the populace is mostly non-white – Syria, Somalia, Yemen, the D.R. Congo, and now Haiti. Lynch’s Ireland goes from an affluent, stable democracy to a police state that resembles the early U.S.S.R. but with the weaponry and technology of modern conflicts. A staid middle-class life sits on a shaky foundation of civil society that, as we’ve seen in the U.S., depends in large part on people not losing their minds and voting for would-be fascists. (Lynch never identifies the party in power by name or ideology, but they are at the least anti-labor; their specific policies aren’t relevant to Eilish’s story and he doesn’t waste time on them.) Hungary had a functioning democracy for a short while, but its people voted in an irredentist autocrat who has gone after two of the most common targets for authoritarian regimes – Jews and LGBTQ+ people. Venezuela and El Salvador have slid from democracy to dictatorship, with the former’s economy collapsing after its first strongman died. It can happen, but we never dream that it will until it’s too late, often by our own hand.

The real power of Lynch’s work is that he focuses exclusively on one family, and one person, rather than telling the story of the collapse of a country. In that way it’s more in the vein of survivalist or post-apocalyptic fiction, like Testament, In a Perfect World, and The Road than the standard dystopian novel. The leaders of the country are never named; in fact, no one in any position of authority, not even a police officer, gets a name in Prophet Song. Names are reserved for the ordinary people – Eilish, her family, a few neighbors. This choice makes the book more intensely personal, and becomes its own form of psychological horror – will Eilish’s family survive another day, and what calamity might lurk around the corner? You can experience the terrors of the police state from the most granular level, where the lights don’t stay on and food is scarce, where you can’t get across town to see your ailing father and you have to worry one of your kids will be arrested or shot for being out past curfew.

Lynch doesn’t shy away from the inevitable tragedies of his setting; Eilish is fighting a losing battle but refuses to admit it. Even the ending leaves some questions unanswered, and Eilish still isn’t certain if she’s made the right choices for her family, because in that situation you will never have that certainty. Instead, Lynch makes the smart choice to lean into the crises, but move us quickly in and out of them, so the story is never lurid, never ogling Eilish’s misery for the reader’s pleasure. It’s a masterful blending of the dystopian novel, the political thriller, and an exaltation of the power of one person – of one mother – to carry the weight of two different generations and somehow make it through.

Next up: Ann Patchett’s essay collection This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage.

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→ March 23, 2024
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Stick to baseball, 3/23/24.

At the Athletic, I wrote about a bunch of prospects I saw in the Cactus League, including two Breakout games; plus a list of six breakout candidates for 2024; as well as a Q&A with our fantasy expert Nando di Fino.

At Vulture, I wrote about the surge in cooperative tabletop games that started with Pandemic and then picked up during the … pandemic, really, along with a list of 14 of the best.

Now that this post is up I’ll begin the next edition of my free email newsletter.

And now, the links…

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→ March 22, 2024
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Arizona eats, March 2024.

So the most interesting meal I had on the trip wasn’t because of the food, but because two days after I ate at Cocina Madrigal, a kitchen fire broke out and closed the restaurant indefinitely. There were no injuries, and the structure was intact, so I’m hoping they won’t be closed for long. It’s a taqueria and tequileria that just does what it does exceptionally well – scratch tacos, enchiladas, and a few other items with very high-quality inputs. The tropical fish tacos came with a roasted salsa, a slaw of coconut, cabbage, and mango; and a mild chipotle aioli, and the fish was grilled, not fried, so I stumbled into the most healthful meal I had all week. I think the fish was mahi-mahi, but they didn’t identify it on the menu; it was very fresh, whatever it was, as were all of the vegetables, and the corn tortillas were some of the best I’ve had. Nana in Durham has long held that particular crown for fresh corn tortillas, but they have some competition here – these were still soft and tender even with some browning from the grill. I’m not even sure I’d even try anything else on the menu. Good luck to Chef Leo Madrigal in reopening soon.

Cocina Chiwas is the new full-service restaurant from Nadia Holguin and Armando Hernandez, the owners of the wildly successful Tacos Chiwas mini-chain in the Valley, and this rivals Bacanora and Barrio Café as the best high-end Mexican restaurant in the Valley. I went there with a pair of friends, so I tried quite a few dishes, with zero misses in the group. The elote is straightforward, but also a perfect exemplar of the popular grilled-corn dish. The asado de puerco (pork spare ribs) come with a rich, earthy chile colorado sauce along with beans, rice, and tortillas, but honestly I would put that sauce on anything. The oysters come with a jamaica and habanero mignonette, less spicy than you’d expect, more like a strong red wine vinaigrette because the astringency of the hibiscus. The “chile con queso” was not what I expected – it was roasted peppers, tomatoes, and onions with a topping of two mild white Mexican cheeses, and even as someone who’s not a huge fan of cow’s-milk cheese, I was all over this because the vegetables were so good and the cheese was an accent rather than the dominant flavor. And the carrot-cake tres leches with candied pecans and a berry compote was superb – by that point, I’d had enough to eat and drink that I needed a dessert with some punch to get through, and this offered it with plenty of sweetness plus some tang from the berries and bitterness from the cajeta (caramel) sauce. If I have a nit to pick, I didn’t love either cocktail I tried – their takes on a Manhattan and an Old-fashioned, both of which were fine but didn’t improve on the originals. Both drinks had a smoky flavor that overtook the rest of the ingredients.

Espiritu Mesa is the new East Valley outpost from the folks behind Bacanora, which might be the best restaurant in the Valley based on locals’ opinions plus my one time eating there. The drinks here were well ahead of the food, for better or worse. Their ceviche changes often, so what I got may not be what you get if you go this week, but I will vouch for the freshness of the fish and a tangy soy-lime base; it came with sliced radish and a lot of cilantro. The aguacate was just a big ol’ thing of guacamole, served with enormous chicharrones that were really hard to break or chew. I’d either skip that or ask for tortilla chips. You could have made a coat out of all of the pig’s skin on that plate. You’re really here for the drinks – you get a little book of their various signature cocktails, with lists of ingredients, descriptions of the flavors, and ratings by bitterness, booziness, sourness, and sweetness. I had two cocktails, the Maduro and the Desu Notu. The Maduro has charanda (a white rum from Mexico), reposado tequila, crème de banana, cocchi Americano (a bitter aperitif), and blackstrap and chocolate bitters. The Desu Noto (Death note) also has charanda and crème de banana, along with bacanora, an agave-based spirit similar to mezcal, along with palm sugar and chocolate bitters. I preferred the Desu Noto, which wasn’t as sweet and let the flavors of the two liquors come through more, although I’d gladly have either again.

Vecina calls its cuisine “Modern American, Latin-inspired,” and I have no idea what that even means, but the food was good so they can call themselves Tralfamadorian for all I care. This was my last meal before departing, so I was trying to keep it light after eating and drinking too much all week. The ceviche was classic Peruvian-style, marinated in leche de tigre (lime, garlic, onion, chile, fish stock) and tossed with some grilled pineapple and other veg, served with tortilla chips. I’m an easy mark for ceviche as long as the fish is fresh, and this was. The charred broccoli with cashew crema, fermented honey, and Thai sauce (again, not sure what that means other than that there was definitely fish sauce involved) was a new way of serving what is probably my favorite vegetable to cook at home, something I’ll try to adapt for the family. The broccolini were indeed lightly charred, but the combination of the other elements made for a sauce that was sweet, tangy, heavy on umami, and slightly fatty to cut any bitterness in the brassica itself. I had debated that versus the shaved Brussels sprouts, but that dish had dates and I have had two very odd allergic reactions to date syrup so I’m a little wary of them. I made a good call here. One note – parking is scarce and you may end up in a nearby lot.

Hodori is in a Mesa strip mall that’s a sort of ASEAN of food – there’s a Thai place, a Chinese place, two Japanese places, as well as this bare-bones Korean restaurant that serves various bulgogi and soft-tofu dishes. I went with some friends and we shared four dishes – a kimchi pancake, a seafood-scallion pancake, pork bulgogi, and seafood bibimbap. The seafood-scallion pancake won out for me, primarily because the kimchi pancake was so tangy and didn’t have enough to balance out the spice and the sourness. The pork bulgogi was also pretty spicy but the sauce had enough sweetness and umami (there’s usually soy sauce and some fermented product like gochujang in bulgogi) that the heat didn’t overtake the dish, and the pork was extremely tender. The total tab for all three of us, including some shoju and beer, was about $70 before tip.

I’m loyal to my breakfast spots – the Hillside Spot, Crepe Bar, and Matt’s Big Breakfast, all of which I hit while in Phoenix – but did try one new one in Ollie Vaughn’s, meeting my longtime friend (literally – I think we’ve been friends for 15+ years now) Nick Piecoro there. Their sausage and biscuit sandwich, with egg, cheese, and jalapeño marmalade on a buttermilk biscuit is a tremendous amount of food, and the biscuit just fell apart by the time I was halfway through it, but I have zero regrets. They use Schreiner’s sausage, the best sausage vendor in the Valley that I know.

Lom Wong was the one mildly disappointing meal of the trip, although it’s more about my palate than the food at this acclaimed northern Thai restaurant, where many of the recipes come from the chef’s extended family across Thailand. The green mango salad was pretty incredible, better than any similar dish (usually green papaya) I’ve ever had, with fried shallots, toasted coconuts and peanuts, a dressing of coconut milk, lime, and fish sauce, and “hand-torn” shrimp, which, well, I hope they were dead first? I ordered the arai kodai, in which the server picks dishes for you based on what you indicate you do/don’t like and your spice tolerance, but even after saying mine was pretty low, I ended up with a chicken dish that had just been added to the menu, very similar to larb gai, that tasted only of chile pepper and a little of cumin, which gave it the overall vibe of spicy dirt. I did enjoy the Three Kings cocktail, with dark rum, dry curaçao, fernet (an Italian amaro that’s very herbal), guava, palm sugar, and what I assume is a bitters from Som, founded by the chef-owner of Portland’s legendary Thai restaurant Pok Pok. It’s reminiscent of Caribbean rum cocktails, but far less sweet and cloying.

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→ March 16, 2024
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Stick to baseball, 3/16/24.

For subscribers to the Athletic this week, I wrote up the players I saw in the Reds-Rangers Breakout Game plus a few other notes from Arizona, broke down the Dylan Cease trade, and posted a ranking of the top 20 prospects for likely impact in 2024, and offered a draft scouting notebook from the Wake Forest-Duke series. I’ll have some more Breakout game reports after the weekend, but unfortunately the two games I hoped to hit on Friday were both washed out by rain.

I sent out a new edition of my free email newsletter earlier this week. 

And now, the links…

  • Longreads first: Judd Blevins is a white nationalist. The town of Enid, Oklahoma, voted him on to their city council, but there’s a fight brewing now to remove him. Blevins refuses to address his history with Identity Evropa, a major white nationalist organization, instead hiding behind “God” and religion.
  • Oregon moved to recriminalize possession of hard drugs, notably fentanyl and heroin, three years after decriminalizing it. Note that several quotes here are from Republican representatives talking about fentanyl (a popular GOP talking point) and Portland (which they do not represent).
  • This year’s FAFSA roll-out and the new rules that led to the changes in the federal student-aid forms have all been a huge disaster that may force some schools to delay enrollment deadlines.
  • Allowing kids to get the measles, the mumps, or rubella just to satisfy some lunatic’s political goals is needlessly cruel, but the cruelty is the point, isn’t it?
  • Medici is one of Reiner Knizia’s most acclaimed games, part of his so-called Auction Trilogy with Ra and Modern Art, but it’s been out of print for several years now. Steamforged announced they’re taking pre-orders for a new edition coming out this year.

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→ March 13, 2024
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Filterworld.

In his new book Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture, journalist Kyle Chayka details the myriad ways in which we are thrust towards homogeneity in music, television, movies, books, and even architecture and travel because, in his view, of the tyranny of the algorithm. The book is more of a polemic than a work of research, filled with personal anecdotes and quotes from philosophers as well as observers of culture, and while Chayka is somewhat correct in that a small number of companies are now determining what people watch, listen to, and read, that’s always been true – it’s just happening now by algorithm when technology was supposed to democratize access to culture.

Chayka’s premise is sound on its surface: Major tech companies now depend on maintaining your attention to hold or increase revenues, and they do that via algorithm. Netflix’s algorithm keeps recommending movies and shows it believes you’ll watch – not that you will like, but that you will watch, or at least not turn off – thus keeping you as a customer. Spotify’s auto-generated playlists largely serve you artists and songs that are similar to ones you’ve already liked, or at least have already listened to, as I’ve learned recently because I listened to one song by the rapper Werdperfect that a friend sent me and now Spotify puts Werdperfect on every god damned playlist it makes for me. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, and their ilk all use algorithms to show you what will keep you engaged, not what you asked to see via your following list. Amazon’s recommendations are more straightforward, giving you products its algorithm thinks you’ll buy based on other things you’ve bought.

Chayka goes one further, though, arguing that algorithmic tyranny extends into meatspace, using it to explain the ubiquity of Brooklyn-style coffee shops, with sparse décor, subway tiles, exposed wood, and industrial lighting. He uses it to explain homogeneity in Airbnb listings, arguing that property owners must determine what the algorithm wants and optimize their spaces to maximize their earnings. He is ultimately arguing that we will all look the same, sound the same, wear the same clothes, live in the same spaces, drink the same expensive lattes, and so on, because of the algorithms.

To this I say: No shit. It’s called capitalism, and the algorithm itself is not the disease, but a symptom.

Businesses exist to make money, and in a competitive marketplace, that’s generally a good thing – it drives innovation and forces individual companies to respond to customer demand or lose market share to competitors. These market forces led to the advent of mass production over a century ago, a process that depended on relatively uniform tastes across a broad spectrum of consumers, because mass-producing anything economically depends on that uniformity. You can’t mass-produce custom clothes, by definition. Companies that have invested heavily in capital to mass produce their widgets will then work to further expand their customer base by encouraging homogeneity in tastes – thus the push for certain fashions to be “in” this year (as they were twenty years prior), or the marketing put behind specific books or songs or movies to try to gain mass adoption. Coffee shops adopt similar looks because customers like that familiarity, for the same reason that McDonald’s became a global giant – you walk into any McDonald’s in the world and you by and large know what to expect, from how it looks to what’s on the menu. This isn’t new. In fact, the idea of the algorithm isn’t even new; it is the technology that is new, as companies can implement their algorithms at a speed and scale that was unthinkable two decades earlier.

Furthermore, we are living in a time of limited competition, closer to what our forefathers faced in the trust era than what our parents faced in the 1980s. There is no comparably-sized competitor to Amazon. Spotify dominates music streaming. Each social media entity I listed earlier has no direct competition; they compete with each other, but each serves a different need or desire from consumers. The decline of U.S. antitrust enforcement since the Reagan era has exacerbated the problem. Fewer producers will indeed produce less variety in products.

However, the same technology that Chayka decries throughout Filterworld has flattened more than culture – it has flattened the hierarchy that led to homogeneity in culture from the 1950s through the 1990s. Music was forced, kicking and screaming, to give up its bundling practice, where you could purchase only a few individual songs but otherwise had to purchase entire albums to hear specific titles, by Napster and other file-sharing software products. Now, through streaming services, not only can any artist bypass the traditional record-label gatekeepers, but would-be “curators” can find, identify, and recommend these artists and their songs, the way that only DJs at truly independent radio stations could do in earlier eras. (And yes, I hope that I am one of those curators. My monthly playlists are the product of endless exploration on my own, with a little help from the Spotify algorithm on the Release Radar playlists, but mostly just me messing around and looking for new music.) Goodreads is a hot mess, owned by Amazon and boosting the Colleen Hoovers of the world, but it’s also really easy to find people who read a lot of books and can recommend the ones they like. (Cough.) Movies, food, travel, television, and so on are all now easier to consume, and if you are overwhelmed by the number and variety of choices, it’s easier to find people who can guide you through it. I try to be that type of guide for you when it comes to music and books and board games, and to some extent to restaurants. When it comes to television, I read Alan Sepinwall. When it comes to movies, I listen to Will Leitch & Tim Grierson, and I read Christy Lemire, and I bother Chris Crawford. I also just talk to my friends and see what they like. I have book friends, movie friends, game friends, coffee friends, rum friends, and so on. The algorithms, and the companies that deploy them, don’t decide for me because I made the very easy choice to decide for myself.

So I didn’t really buy Chayka’s conclusions in Filterworld, even though I thought the premise was sound and deserved this sort of exploration. I also found the writing in the book to be dull, unfortunately, with the sort of dry quality of academic writing without the sort of rigor that you might see in a research paper. I could have lived with that if he’d sold me better on his arguments, but he gives too little attention to points that might truly matter, such as privacy regulations in the E.U. and the lack thereof in the U.S., and too much weight to algorithms that will only affect your life if you let them.

Next up: Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop.

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→ March 12, 2024
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Amerikatsi.

Michael Goorjian’s Amerikatsi is a dramatic farce that explores two dark periods in Armenia’s history through the eyes of one man who manages to maintain a sense of hope even when his fellow man is cruel to him and fate is crueler. It’s a testament to our humanity and our ability to survive even in awful conditions, and an indictment of the systems and the people that make these conditions possible. It’s a beautiful, funny, heartfelt movie that deserves a much wider audience. (You can rent it on amazon, iTunes, etc.)

Charlie (played by Goorjian, who also wrote and directed the film) escapes the Armenian genocide of 1918 when his grandmother hides him in a cart, allowing him to escape execution at the hands of the Turks. Then just four years old, he ends up in the United States, but after World War II, when Josef Stalin called for Armenian expatriates to return home to held rebuild the country, Charlie does so, only to end up wrongly accused of being either an American spy or a capitalist pig or both, after which he’s sentenced to hard labor. From his cold prison cell, he can see into a nearby apartment, and he watches their lives as if it’s his daily soap opera, becoming invested in their relationship and in the man’s secret passion for art, leading Charlie to reach out and try to make a connection across an impossible boundary.

Much of what happens around Charlie is absurdist comedy, part Kafka, part Iannucci, and you have to just accept that he’s going to end up in prison despite the ridiculous circumstances that land him there. He barely speaks Armenian when he returns to the Caucasus and speaks no Russian, so any attempts to save himself after he’s arrested go nowhere, and he’s the butt of many jokes among the guards and even fellow prisoners, at least at first. He’s even thrown in the “icebox,” a storage room that’s especially cold in winter, yet over time he makes it his own space, at least, and jury-rigs contraptions like a clothesline or a way to sit at the high window and eat his meals while watching his neighbors, even writing down some of their customs like the order of the toasts after a big dinner. (Apparently, one of them is to Mount Ararat, a volcano in easternmost Turkey that is a symbol of Armenian culture and heritage.)

Charlie is an optimist, but not a fool, which is key to making this character work. He has hope, and it appears that nothing can truly extinguish it, but he isn’t blind to his situation; he hopes that there’s something better to come, not that someone will come save him from his current state. Goorjian plays him with such an earnestness that it’s easy to believe in the character, that Charlie could still find joy in small things, and that he’d take the risks he does take to get a message to his neighbor – who turns out to be a more important person than Charlie realizes – just to help another human. The guards call him “Charlie Chaplin,” an overt nod to the tramp-like qualities of the character, with Goorjian occasionally mimicking Chaplin’s walk in the film. The Tramp can be childlike and credulous, but his heart and his ingenuity win the day, which is a good summary of how this Charlie wins out in the end as well.

The score for Amerikatsi, by Armenian composer Andranik Berberyan,is exceptional, with folk music mixed with ambient music to provide some depth and color to what could otherwise have been very bland and grey scenes of Charlie in his prison. There’s also a familiar name in the credits, as the movie was executive produced by Serj Tankian of System of a Down, who also is listed under “additional music.”

Amerikatsi was Armenia’s entry for this year’s Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, and became the first Armenian film to make the shortlist, although it didn’t make the final cut of five nominees. I can’t say it deserved a nod, as I haven’t seen any of the five yet, but if they’re all better than this one, then 2023 might have been the best year in film history. Amerikatsi tells a simple if ridiculous story, and in so doing it gives us glimpses into Armenian history and epitomizes the strength of a people who’ve been victims of their neighboring aggressors for over a hundred years.

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