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Music update, July 2018.

July seemed like a weaker month for new music than we’ve had in a while, but it’s possible that after my vacation and around some trips I missed some good new releases, too. If you can’t see the widget below, you can access the Spotify playlist here.

TVAM — These Are Not Your Memories. Joe Oxley, the producer/musician who records as TVAM, is new to me, although he’s released a few singles going back to 2015. This track, from his forthcoming debut album Psychic Data, is shoegazey and atmospheric, but with a clear, defined hook, and some bravado to it that’s generally absent in shoegaze music and its spiritual descendants.

Spirit Animal — The Truth. Another artist with whom I was unfamiliar before this song, Spirit Animal, a four-piece act from Brooklyn, produce guitar-driven rock that calls back to classic rock but with hints of funk and metal mixed in. This track has a wonderfully dark riff behind the verses, then shifts to a soaring and funk-tinged mode for the chorus.

Slash — Driving Rain (feat. Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators). Slash has been churning out memorable, heavy guitar riffs for thirty years now, but because his style of music hasn’t been cool since the late ’80s, he’s never really gotten the respect of other similarly talented guitarists. He has a clearly defined sound, evident here even through the fairly generic vocals – if you like Slash’s work, you’d probably pick this out (no pun intended) as his doing right away. It’s not “Slither” or Appetite-level work, but it’s more than just a nostalgia trip.

Greta Van Fleet — When The Curtain Falls. GVF get lots of praise for their Led Zeppelin-derived sound, but I’ve found them more akin to Kingdom Come, imitators rather than spiritual descendants, especially with the lead singer’s falsetto sounding too much like Lenny Wolf. (I’ll admit to a strange fondness for Kingdom Come’s one hit single, “Get It On,” though.) This is the best track I’ve heard from GVF so far, powered by a memorable guitar riff.

The Twilight Sad — I/m Not Here [Missing Face]. I could have sworn I included a Twilight Sad song on a playlist a few years ago but can’t find it. This Scottish (as if you couldn’t tell) duo seem to have drunk deeply from the spirit of Joy Division, early Smiths, Editors, and others in the tradition of depressing new wave-inflected music … but with more energy than they’ve shown in previous singles.

Death Cab for Cutie — I Dreamt We Spoke Again. DCFC’s ninth album, Thank You for Today, drops on August 17th; it’s their first album without guitarist Chris Walla since 1997. This is the second single and lead track, not as immediate as “Gold Rush” but very much in line with their peak output from the first decade of the 2000s.

Maisie Peters — Best I’ll Ever Sing. The now 18-year-old singer/songwriter behind last year’s “The Place We Were Made” is back with another track, this one driven by piano rather than guitar, once again showcases her sense of melody and adorable voice.

Interpol — Number 10. That’s now two promising singles ahead of Interpol’s forthcoming album Marauder, due out August 24th.

The Golden Age of TV — Television. TGATV, a five-piece indie-rock act from Leeds, has released three singles so far, this the strongest (and most rock-tinged) to date. There’s an anthemic vibe that feels like it was written to open a concert, with the lights coming on just as Bea Fletcher’s vocals kick in.

Cut Chemist — Work My Mind. Cut Chemist, formerly one of the DJs in the rap collective Jurassic 5, reunites with Chali 2Na here for the best track of CC’s latest album.

The Internet — Roll (Burbank Funk). The Internet, who may win any competition for the least google-able band name on the planet, earned a Grammy nod for their 2015 album Ego Death in the ‘urban contemporary’ category; I’m not sure what that term encompasses or excludes, but this song sounds like a modern twist on P-Funk to me and I’m good with that.

Jungle — Heavy, California. This English soul music collective, who had a hit in 2014 with “Busy Earnin'” and made my May playlist with “Happy Man,” will drop their second album, For Ever, on September 14th. They’ve released two other tracks from the album, “Cherry” and “House in L.A.,” but both are more downtempo and not my speed.

St. Lucia – Walking Away. It seems like St. Lucia’s sound is evolving further, this time in a more positive direction than their disappointing last album (aside from its lead single, “Dancing on Glass”), between this and “A Brighter Love.” The B side to that latter song, “Paradise is Waiting,” isn’t bad either, although the faux-gospel chorus is a little hackneyed for me.

Alkaline Trio — Blackbird. The Chicago punk trio veered off into more alternative territory with some of their early 2000s releases – “Help Me” is probably my favorite song of theirs, off 2008’s Agony & Irony – but they returned to their roots with their 2013 album My Shame Is True. “Blackbird” is more of the same, the lead single from their upcoming album Is This Thing Cursed?, due out on August 31st.

Mudhoney — Paranoid Core. Never change, Mark Arm. Never change.

Horrendous — Soothsayer. This Philly-based quartet is producing by far the most interesting and sophisticated music of any American death metal band going – it’s technically proficient, musically progressive, and apparently the lyrics are pretty smart too, not that I can understand a word they’re screaming. Their 2015 album Anareta was Decibel‘s top LP of that year, and Ecdysis was the same magazine’s #3 album of 2014. Idol is due out on September 28th.

Omnium Gatherum — Gods Go First. Omnium Gatherum are Finnish but hew closely to the Gothenburg school of melodic death metal, with progressive and thrash elements along with strong musicianship. Their eighth album, The Burning Cold, comes out August 31st.

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→ July 2, 2018
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Music update, June 2018.

Twenty-six songs this month, running 107 minutes if you play them all through, and that’s after I cut a half-dozen tracks that would have pushed it past two hours. There are a few welcome returns here from old favorites as well as artists I just discovered myself, some of which are new to me and some just new, period. You can access the Spotify playlist here if you can’t see the widget below.

Death Cab for Cutie – Gold Rush. Ben Gibbard’s best song since … “You Are a Tourist?” Something off Narrow Stairs? I’m pleasantly surprised after Kintsugi felt like a holding pattern, this song has a clear, strong melody, and the repetition of the song’s title gives the music a vertiginous quality that keeps me a little off balance every time I listen to it.

Joy Oladokun – Sober. There’s almost nothing available about Oladokun, who calls herself a “soul singer from L.A.” and has released four songs to date but no album or EP. I’m calling it right now that someone will compare her to Tracy Chapman, for obvious if unfortunate reasons. She’s here because the chorus of this song is among the most memorable earworms I’ve heard this year and I think her voice, both literal and figurative, is incredibly distinctive.

HAERTS – New Compassion. HAERTS’ debut album came out in 2014, and since then we’ve had a handful of isolated singles, only one of which (“Animal”) was really up to the standard of their first full-length, so this powerful showcase of lead singer Nini Fabi’s voice is a welcome return for the group, now just a duo after two members left in 2015.

Stars – One Day Left. It’ll be hard for Stars to top their 2012 song “Hold On When You Get Love and Let Go When You Get It” for me, but this is their best song since then.

ZURICH – My Protocol. A big, bombastic vocal over a raw Matthew Sweet-esque guitar riff. I imagine the singer preening around the stage while he sings this even as the drums fill the room with sound.

Thrice – The Grey. Obligatory, but man do I love that minor-key guitar riff that opens up this song.

Iceage – Hurrah. I’m not a huge Iceage fan, although I think I fit their profile; this was the only song off the Danish punk-lite band’s latest album, Beyondless, that had a distinctive hook to it, reminiscent of the old Swedish act The Soundtrack of Our Lives.

Snail Mail – Golden Dream. Lindsey Jordan, just 19 years old, records as Snail Mail, and her debut album, Lush, is a surprisingly mature slice of jangle-pop, by turns delicate and potent. Her vocal style is an acquired taste, though.

St. Lucia – A Brighter Love. I thought St. Lucia’s debut album was one of the best records of the decade, but his follow-up had one great song, “Dancing on Glass,” with a lot of filler behind it. This feels promising, with a solid hook, more of the R&B flourishes that punctuated his first LP, but also a slightly more modern sound than the last record showed.

Interpol – The Rover. You pretty much know what you’re getting here, although I think the guitar riff at the opener, which appears throughout the song, gives it a poppier and brighter vibe than most Interpol songs feature.

Jealous of the Birds – Plastic Skeletons. Belfast’s Naomi Hamilton, who records as Jealous of the Birds, returns with this lead single from her upcoming EP, with a hypnotic vocal melody, thoughtful and clever lyrics, and a banging riff in the chorus.

Wild Nothing – Letting Go. This would fit well on Wild Nothing’s 2012 album Nocturne, which is a compliment after his derivative 2016 follow-up Life of Pause.

Sink Ya Teeth – Substitutes. Dark electronica from a female duo out of Norwich, with a bass-and-drum line reminiscent of early New Order. Their self-titled debut album came out on Friday.

The Charlatans – Standing Alone. I still love the Charlatans’ early output, but they fell off hard around 2001’s Wonderland and have never quite recovered their earlier verve. This track, from the four-track EP Totally Eclipsing, hints at their peak sound but never quite gets there for me.

Lokoy – Malibu. Lokoy is the bassist for Sløtface, who had one of my favorite albums of 2017, but this track – with a vocal from Norwegian teenager Girl in Red – is nothing like his regular band’s punk-pop styling, instead going trip-hoppy like early Gorillaz.

At Pavillon – Stop This War. I thought this was a Bloc Party track at first, between the music and the vocalist’s similarity to Kele Okerere. It’s a promising debut for the Austrian quartet (and, yes, their lead singer is black).

Beth Orton & the Chemical Brothers – I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain. I can’t believe “Stolen Car,” Orton’s biggest hit and one of my favorite songs of the 1990s, will be 20 years old in February. She still sounds great on this collaboration with the Chemical Brothers, with whom she first worked in 1995 on the electronic duo’s album Exit Planet Dust.

Indian Askin – BEAT24. This Dutch quartet put out a new single, “I Feel Something,” on June 1st, but I prefer what is essentially the B-side, “BEAT24,” for its driving guitar riff and an overall vibe that reminds me of Beck’s Mellow Gold.

Black Honey – I Only Hurt the Ones I Love. This British alternative quartet hasn’t really missed with any of their singles so far, and just announced their debut album, called Black Honey, will drop on September 21st.

The Joy Formidable – Dance of the Lotus. The Welsh alternative band has put out two singles already – this one and “The Wrong Side” – in advance of their latest album, Aaarth, due out September 28th.

Wooden Shjips – Golden Flower. I think at this point if I haven’t sold you on Wooden Shjips’ noodling art rock, I’m probably never going to.

Here Lies Man – That Much Closer To Nothing. All media coverage of this trio refer to their sound as “afrobeat stoner metal,” although I feel like it’s ’70s psychedelic metal with a heavy funk influence. I’m also not entirely sure what afrobeat music sounds like. This song is good, though.

Motorowl – Atlas. Motorowl’s members are in their early 20s but their sound is very 1970s, blending Sabbath/Candlemass doom elements with some faster and heavier riffing. This is the lead single from their second album, also called Atlas, due out on July 27th.

The Skull – The Endless Road Turns Dark. Fans of the 1980s/1990s doom metal and later gothic hard rock act Trouble should recognize the voice of Eric Wagner, who founded The Skull in 2012 with two former members of his earlier band. The sound is very similar to Trouble’s first two albums, Psalm 9 and The Skull, before they signed with Def American and pivoted towards more mainstream hard rock.

Leprous – Golden Prayers. Despite their name, Leprous aren’t a death-metal or goregrind act – they’re an avant-garde metal act from Norway who probably have more in common with King Crimson than King Diamond, using unusual time signatures and progressive elements along with traditional vocals that even feature harmonies. They just released a new album last August, but this surprise single appears to be a one-off for now.

Zeal & Ardor – Built On Ashes (short version). Zeal & Ardor is the brainchild of Manuel Gagneux, who decided to try to fuse Negro spiritual vocals and harmonies with the sort of fuzzed-out death metal recently popularized by Deafheaven. I also recommend “Servants” from Z&A’s latest album, Stranger Fruit.

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→ June 1, 2018
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Music update, May 2018.

I went a little overboard this month and decided not to edit it down as much as I usually do, because of the time crunch with the draft coming up. So I give you 28 songs from the pop, alternative, hip hop, and metal worlds. You can also access the Spotify playlist here.

Lemaitre featuring Betty Who – Rocket Girl. An early candidate for song of the year, certainly my song of the year so far, powered by a soaring, anthemic vocal from Ms. Who.

Jungle – Happy Man. A welcome return from the British R&B collective behind 2014’s “Busy Earnin,” a top 20 song for me that year.

Childish Gambino – This Is America. I’ve never been much for Donald Glover’s music, which I thought showed his inexperience in that realm, but this song is truly catchy, makes a serious point in its sparse lyrics, and of course has come with a provocative video addressing gun violence in America.

Young Fathers – Toy. I linked to this song’s video a few weeks but had never put it on a playlist. This Mercury Prize-winning hip-hop trio has a unique sound that combines musical influences from two members’ African roots, American trap music, and more frenetic European EDM sounds.

Kid Astray – Can’t Stop. More pop goodness from this Norwegian quintet, although I was disappointed to learn that keyboardist and sometime vocalist Elizabeth Wu left the group at some point in the last two years.

Artificial Pleasure – I Need Something More. I could do without the 30-second intro, but after that there’s a droning, throwback new-wave sort of guitar riff that powers the rest of this song from their debut album The Bitter End.

Hinds – Tester. Maybe my favorite track yet from this Barcelona quartet, who always sound like they recorded their vocals in a tin can and as if they have never done anything so fun in their lives as recording music.

Black Honey – Bad Friends. I’m hoping this darker single presages a full-length release from Black Honey, who’ve dotted my top 100 lists the last two years.

Wye Oak – Join. A little Lord Huron, a little Cocteau Twins, maybe even a little Beach House (but with a stronger melody). This is from the duo’s new album The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs.

Hatchie – Bad Guy. I think I’ve now put four of the five song’s from Hatchie’s EP Sugar and Spice on monthly or annual playlists, ebecause she’s fantastic.

bülow – Not A Love Song. Megan Bülow is a teenager from the Netherlands with a heck of a pop sensibility; this track comes from an EP she first released in Europe in late November. She doesn’t seem old enough to pack this many musical influences into one track.

Courtney Barnett – Charity. Barnett’s second solo album Tell Me How You Really Feel dropped two weeks ago and is very similar to her first album (and, fortunately, not at all similar to the record she made with Kurt Vile).

CLOVES – Wasted Time. I think it’s clear at this point that CLOVES could sing an instruction manual for a toaster oven and I’d put it on a playlist.

Cœur de Pirate – Malade. From the Quebecois singer-songwriter’s new album en cas de tempête, ce jardin sera fermé, which dropped today. The entire record is in French, unlike her previous full-length, and has a broad mix of more upbeat dance tracks like “Prémonition,” some ethereal piano ballads like “Somnambule,” and in-betweeners like this.

Okkervil River – Love Somebody. I didn’t care for most of OR’s new album, In the Rainbow Rain, in large part because Will Sheff just isn’t a very good singer, but goes beyond his range in the intros to so many tracks here. This is the best song on the record and builds very nicely to a second movement (starting around 1:40) that showcases the best of Sheff’s songwriting both in music and lyrics.

Mourn – Fun at the Geysers. The ‘other’ great young band from Barcelona also put out a new song this month, with better production value and a bit more punk rock to their vibe, as with

The Charlatans – Totally Eclipsing. The track is just fair, but the Charlatans (sometimes called Charlatans UK here) are one of my favorite bands from the 1990s, so anything they produce gets consideration for a playlist here.

Sea Girls – Too Much Fun. Radio 1 tabbed Sea Girls a band to watch for 2018, and this song, from their forthcoming EP Adored, has that potentially anthemic chorus offset by an understated vocal in the verses.

Drenge – This Dance. I loved their first album (my #4 album of 2013), didn’t like the sonic shift on their second record, and am glad to hear this song sounds much more like their debut record.

Great News – Sleep It Off. A Norwegian trio who call their music “daze-pop,” Great News were among the big hits at last month’s Great Escape music festival in London.

Vast – She Is Murder. I lost track of Vast (or V.A.S.T.) aeons ago; their song “Touched” was one of the songs I played repeatedly while I was in grad school, but I had no idea Jon Crosby was still recording under this name. Their eighth album is due this summer.

The Get Up Kids – Better This Way. Emo/indie artists the Get Up Kids, not to be confused with the geddup noise, are set to release their first album in seven years and just their second since their breakup in 2005.

Wooden Shjips – Eclipse. Wooden Shjips’ latest album, just titled V., dropped on May 25th, and it’s only seven songs long because six of the tracks clock in between five and eight minutes. There’s a lot of spacey guitar noodling here, but that’s kind of my cup of tea, innit?

Bilk – Spiked. These guys are very British, very post-punk in sound, and very, very young.

Winger – Dance Macabre. I’m shocked to hear these glam-metal stalwarts, who sort of became the poster child for the hairspray excesses of the era, come back with a … wait, this is Ghost? And the song isn’t 30 years old? Never mind.

Lucifer – California Son. Lucifer is the new project from Johanna Sadonis, who was the lead singer for the one-album project The Oath, who broke up before their record was even released. It’s a deep throwback to the kind of 1970s British metal that I absolutely adore.

Pallbearer – Dropout. The dominant doom metal band recording today, Pallbearer just released this one-off single as they headed out on tour to support last year’s Heartless.

Amorphis – The Bee. This Finnish progressive/melodic death metal band has been recording for 25 years now, and just released their 13th album, Queen of Time, two weeks ago.

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→ May 12, 2018
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Stick to baseball, 5/12/18.

This week brought the return of the redraft columns, where I go back ten years and ‘redraft’ the first round with full hindsight. This year’s edition redrafted the first round of 2008, led by Buster Posey and with several guys taken after the tenth round (one in the 42nd!) making the final 30; as well as an accompanying look at the 20 first-rounders who didn’t pan out. Both are Insider pieces, as is my column of scouting notes on Yankees, Phillies, Nats, and Royals prospects.

My review of the new Civilization board game is up at Paste this week. Civilization: A New Dawn takes the theme of the legendary Sid Meier video game franchise and simplifies it to play in about an hour to an hour and a half, but I felt like some of the better world-building aspects were lost in the streamlining.

Smart Baseball is now out in paperback! I’ll be at DC’s famed bookstore Politics & Prose on July 14th to flaunt the fruits of noble birth and, perhaps, sign copies of the book. I’m also working on a signing in greater Boston for later that month, so stay tuned for details. Also, please consider signing up for my free email newsletter.

I also wanted to mention a few new baseball books by folks I know that have come out in the last six weeks: Russell Carleton’s The Shift: The Next Evolution in Baseball Thinking, which I think goes well with my own book without covering much of the same ground; and two books on the Dodgers, Michael Schiavone’s The Dodgers: 60 Years in Los Angeles and Jon Weisman’s Brothers in Arms: Koufax, Kershaw, and the Dodgers’ Extraordinary Pitching Tradition, even though Jon liked the movie Moneyball and therefore was wrong about it.

And now, the links…

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→ May 11, 2018
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Not Dead Yet.

I came of age as a music fan right around 1980, thanks in part to some of those old K-Tel pop hits collections (on vinyl!) that my parents bought me as gifts, one of which included Genesis’ hit “Abacab.” I loved the song right away, despite having no idea what it was about (still don’t), and it made me a quick fan of Genesis, and, by extension, Phil Collins’ solo material, which at that point already included “In the Air Tonight.” I’d say I continued as a fan of both until the early 1990s, when Genesis released their self-immolating We Can’t Dance (an atrocious, boring pop record) and Collins’ own solo work became similarly formulaic and dull. It was only well after the fact that I heard any of the first phase of Genesis, where Peter Gabriel was still in the band and their music was progressive art rock that featured adventurous writing and technical proficiency.

Collins’ memoir, Not Dead Yet, details the history of the band through his eyes as well as a look at his solo career and his tangled personal life, some of which made tabloid headlines, leading up to his inadvertent effort at drinking himself to death just a few years ago. The book seems open about many aspects of Collins’ life, including mistreatment of his three wives and his children (mostly by choosing work over his familial duties) and his refusal to accept that he had a substance-abuse problem, but there’s also a strain of self-justification for much of his behavior that I found offputting.

From a narrative sense, the book’s high point is too close to the beginning: When Collins was just starting out in the English music scene, his path intersected with numerous musicians who’d later become superstars and some of whom would be his friends and/or writing partners later in life, including Eric Clapton, Robert Plant, and George Harrison. The Sing Street-ish feel to those chapters is so charming I wondered how much was really accurate, but Collins does at least depict himself as a star struck kid encountering some of his heroes while he’s still learning his craft as a drummer. I also didn’t know Collins was a child actor, even taking a few significant stage roles in London, before his voice broke and he switched to music as a full-time vocation.

The Genesis chapters feel a little Behind the Music, but they’re fairly cordial overall – Collins doesn’t dish on his ex-mates and if anything seems at pains to depict Gabriel as a good bandmate and friend whose vision happened to grow beyond what the band was willing or able to achieve. It’s the stuff on Collins’ personal life that really starts to grate: He talks about being a terrible husband and father, but there’s enough equivocation in his writing (often quite erudite, even though he didn’t finish high school) to suggest that he isn’t taking full responsibility for his actions. He cheated on two wives, he ignored their wishes that he devote more time to his family, and he seems to have harassed the woman half his age (he was 44, she 22) who became his third wife and mother of the last two of his five kids.

It’s also hard to reconcile Collins’ comments on his own songwriting, both on solo records and in later word for Disney films and Broadway shows, with the inferior quality of most of his lyrics. Collins’ strengths were his voice, his sense of melody, and of course his work on the drums. His lyrics often left a lot to be desired, and their quality, never high, merely declined as he became more popular. Even his last #1 song in the U.S., “Another Day in Paradise,” is a mawkish take on the same subject covered more sensitively in “The Way It Is” and a dozen other songs on visible poverty in a developed, wealthy economy.

Since that’s all I have to say on the book, I’ll tell one random Collins-related story. When I was in high school, MTV briefly had an afternoon show called the Heavy Metal Half-Hour, which they later retitled the Hard 30. It was hair metal, so not really very heavy by an objective standard, but harder rock than what they played the rest of the time. One day during the Hard 30 run, they played … Phil Collins’ cover of “You Can’t Hurry Love.” I’m convinced this wasn’t an accident, but a test to see if anyone was watching. The show was cancelled a few weeks later.

Next up: I’m about halfway through Peter Carey’s Booker Prize-winning novel Oscar and Lucinda, later turned into a movie with a very young Voldemort and Queen Elizabeth.

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→ May 4, 2018
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Music update, April 2018.

This month’s playlist is a little shorter than the last few because I’ve been traveling so much the last few weeks, but that should slow down now as we approach the draft, so I’ll get to spend more time hunting down new tracks. I’ve also broken with tradition and opened this month’s playlist with a metal track, although after that it’s back to normal, with two more metal tracks at the end. As always, you can access the Spotify playlist directly here if you can’t see the widget below.

Ghost — Rats. Ghost’s marketing shtick is that they’re a black metal band from Norway (of course) and no one knows the band members’ identities. The black metal stuff is stupid, the identity thing is tired, but they have turned out to be a rather adept creator of new heavy metal tracks that sound very much like peak New Wave of British Heavy Metal artists like Iron Maiden or Judas Priest. Some of their songs have gone too far with the Satanic theme – which feels to me like patronizing the audience – but this one is just a straight-up rocker.

DMA’s — Break Me. The Aussie band’s early Britpop vibe, still more Oasis than Blur, continues throughout their new album For Now.

Hatchie — Sugar & Spice. The first of two songs from this Australian singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist on this playlist, although both of them have the same early Cranberries-meet-shoegaze vibe. Harriette Pilbeam doesn’t have Dolores O’Riordan’s pipes but she has the late Irish band’s sense of melody.

Ring the Bells — Johnnyswim with Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors. Johnnyswim is a folk duo from Nashville comprising Donna Summer’s daughter Amanda Sudano and Sudano’s husband Abner Ramirez. I freely admit I’d never heard them before this song, which is a sort of folk-rock banger, if there is such a thing.

Cœur de Pirate — Somnambule. I just adore Béatrice Martin’s voice, so I’m going to tell people she’s my girlfriend, and when they ask why she isn’t here with me, I can truthfully tell them, “She lives in Canada.”

Janelle Monáe featuring Grimes — Pynk. I’m still unpacking Dirty Computer, Monáe’s new album; so much of her music seems to demand repeated listens to pick up all her ideas. This isn’t as good as “Venus Fly,” the collaboration between these two women on Grimes’ Art Angels, but it’s a totally different kind of song, and there’s a lot of very suggestive wordplay here that wasn’t there on the Grimes-led track.

Hundred Waters — Mushroom Cloud. This spare, devastating new single from the Gainesville, Florida trio comes amidst rumors that the band might be breaking up, but it finds singer Nicole Miglis at her soaring, commanding best.

Snail Mail — Heat Wave. The second solid single from the Baltimore singer/guitarist starts slow, literally and figuratively, but wait for the guitar to come in before you pass judgment.

Wooden Shjips — Red Line. This San Francisco band, who always sound like they’re midway through a set at Altamont, just released this lead single from their forthcoming album V, their first new music in five years. All hail the Hammond organ.

Courtney Barnett — City Looks Pretty. I’m on record as preferring Barnett’s material when she picks up the tempo; her lyrics are always strong, but because her vocal style is kind of flat and talky by design, it doesn’t meld well with slower tracks. This one moves at a quick enough pace to work with her laconic singing.

Gang of Four — Ivanka (Things You Can’t Have). Gang of Four have always been political, but this has to be their most direct attack on a target in … ever? Of course, Go4 aren’t what they used to be, in a literal sense: guitarist and primary songwriter Andy Gill is the only one of the original Gang still in the band, and their sound is a lot more modern and less post-punk than it once was. It does still work, though, and Gill’s righteous anger is well-placed on this EP, titled Complicit.

Soft Science — Undone. This Sacramento outfit calls itself a dream-pop/shoegaze act, so it’s not surprising that this song’s main riff is at least similar to My Bloody Valentine’s “I Only Said,” from Loveless, long considered one of the seminal records of the shoegaze movement. At least here I can understand what the singer is saying, though.

Hatchie — Sleep. Pilbeam’s accent comes through a bit more here, but what really draws me to this track is the staccato, off-beat percussion.

Kid Astray — Are You Here? I wonder if this Norwegian outfit is just too weird to get much airplay here, but it’s a shame – they continue to churn out great hooks and there really isn’t anyone else who sounds like them at all. This five-minute track seems to keep folding in on itself and back out again into new shapes, like a musical hexaflexagon.

Speedy Ortiz — Buck Me Off. The lead track from the group’s third album, Twerp Verse, which I can say off one listen so far is really damn good.

Lord Huron — Never Ever. Huron’s new album, Vide Noir, feels like a big step forward, as they were caught in purgatory between folk-lite bands like Mumford & Sons and the rock mainstream, where bands like the Avett Brothers draw on folk but aren’t afraid to air it out a little. This record definitely airs it out, as on this track and on the two-part “Ancient Names.”

Johnny Marr — The Tracers. While Moz continues to milkshake duck himself with racist and bigoted commentary, Johnny Marr keeps making guitar-driven alternative rock, less charming than Smiths material but still bringing the hooks.

Lizzy Borden — My Midnight Things. File this one under “I had no idea this band was still recording and has been for the last thirty years.” I know Lizzy Borden (the band) from its occasional appearances on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball, which was always a little light on the head banging and heavy on the hair metal. The original singer, who has always gone by the name Lizzy Borden, and drummer are still in the band, and I don’t think their sound has changed that much from what I remember of their 1980s output. This wouldn’t be out of place on a reboot of the aforementioned TV show.

Khemmis — Isolation. Desolation, the third album from this Colorado heavy metal outfit, arrives June 22nd; they have elements of doom, but this track is positively uptempo for that genre, and I appreciate the totally clean vocals in a space that generally looks down on guys who can actually sing.

League of Starz ft. Freddy Gibbs, G Perico, & Mozzy — Colors. A collaborative rap track dominated by Gibbs’ verse, as he’s one of the few MCs today whose style and technical skill rival the stars of the Golden Age of Hip-Hop.

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→ April 5, 2018
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New music update, March 2018.

Twenty-seven songs on this month’s playlist, which is a lot, but they’re almost all from artists I’ve listed somewhere here before. As always, you can access the Spotify playlist here if you can’t see the widget below.

Everything Everything – Breadwinner. This is one of four tracks on the British art-rockers’ recent EP, A Deeper Sea, one left on the cutting room floor from their 2017 album A Fever Dream. The EP opens with “The Mariana,” a slow, melancholy meditation on societal ideas of masculinity and the high suicide rates for young males.

DMA’S – For Now. Huge, soaring guitars, mixing electric and acoustic, with a memorable hook in the chorus … yeah, I’m all in. Take all my money.

Post Animal – Ralphie. A fun, bouncy rock track from a new band from Chicago that includes one of the actors from Stranger Things, Joe Keery.

Gang Of Four – Lucky. Gang of Four have always been overtly political, but their forthcoming EP, Complicit, is about as direct an attack as they’ve ever brought on a sitting politician. The EP’s cover is a photo of Ivanka Trump, and the EP’s title is repeated in Russian.

Sunflower Bean – Oh No, Bye Bye. The Brooklyn trio released their second album, Twentytwo in Blue, last week, and it’s filled with sunny, folk-tinged indie rock and great melodies; it feels to me like the album a band makes before they release the album that takes over the world.

The Men – Rose on Top of the World. This is very acoustic War on Drugs-ish, kind of surprising given The Men’s history of harder, punk-tinged songs.

Ride – Keep It Surreal. The second track from the shoegazers’ new EP, Tomorrow’s Shore, which also includes “Pulsar.”

Courtney Barnett – Need A Little Time. The second single in advance of the Australian singer/songwriter’s second solo album Tell Me How You Really Feel.

??????•?)?? ?? ??????? ?? – ? ? ? ?.·??? ? ? ? ? ?.·??? ? ? ? ? ?.·??? ? ? ? ? ?.·??? ? ? ? ? ?.·??? ? ? ? ? ?.·??? ? ? ? ? ?.·??? ?. That’s not a problem with your browser; it’s the actual name of the new project by Four Tet, a very dark, moody, instrumental track that was good enough to get me to copy and paste this ridiculous name, which is pronounced “I’m an asshole.”

The Decemberists – Once In My Life. Never a huge fan of the Decemberists, in part because Colin Meloy’s delivery always teeters on the brink of twee-pop, but it’s weird that they paired one of their best melodies ever with some of their weakest lyrics (a pale imitation of “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want”).

Preoccupations – Disarray. This Canadian band’s latest album, cleverly titled New Material, came out on March 23rd; their sound, from reverbed guitars to production that dampens the vocals, gives everything they do a gloomy tinge while harkening back to everyone from Joy Division to Lotion to Mercury Rev. “Decompose” is another great track from the album, with an offbeat percussion line that keeps you off balance for the entire song.

Speedy Ortiz – Lean In When I Suffer. The noise-pop quartet led by Sadie Dupuis will release its third album, Twerp Verse, on April 27th.

Prides – Say It Again. These Scottish pop-rockers first showed up on my radar with 2015’s “The Seeds You Sow,” but they haven’t quite hit that level of hook in anything since … until this song, definitely my favorite track since that debut. Their better songs have reminded me of better Bastille stuff with a little early Coldplay (before they became just pop nonsense).

Artificial Pleasure – On a Saturday Night. It’s a bit slower than their first hit “I’ll Make It Worth Your While” or the track that made my top 100 from last year, “Wound Up Tight,” but I like the glam-rock stylings here even as they get away from the dance floor, with a song that sounds inspired by ’70s new wave (or even Bowie, apparently a hero of theirs) without coming off as derivative.

Young Fathers – Fee Fi. The 2014 Mercury Prize winners released their third album, Cocoa Sugar, on March 9th; as with their previous two, their tracks feature a lot of world-music percussion with less rapping than is typical of that genre.

Snail Mail – Pristine. Snail Mail is Lindsey Jordan, a Baltimorebased singer-songwriter, and her sound is sparse and also reminds me of Lotion – really, I don’t think I’ve mentioned that group in years, now they’re here twice in one playlist – whose voice and sound is way beyond her 18 years. She should tour with Speedy Ortiz.

Belly – Stars Align. That little opening guitar riff feels like a secret message to Belly fans from the ’90s that everything’s OK, Tanya’s here, although what comes after doesn’t have the same energy as King or Star, and I get the sense that Dove, their first album in 23 years, will be Belly-ish, but mellower.

The Districts – Nighttime Girls. The Districts feel like a mixture of Preoccupations (see above) and the Hold Steady, with the former’s general sound and style (including echoing vocals) with the dry delivery of the latter.

The Horrors – Fire Escape. The Horrors’ new single includes this song and “Water Drop,” with one of the keyboard loops repeated throughout both songs; this track has more of an identity, like an actual single rather than a B-side or deleted scene. I love the heavy guitar/drum break around the 1:10 mark that introduces the vocals.

Starcrawler – Different Angles. This LA glam-rock act released its debut album, produced by Ryan Adams, in January, with a good sound but not enough good hooks to sustain a full record. This was my favorite track, which, like most on the album, comes in well under three minutes.

Turbowolf – Cheap Magic. I wasn’t familiar with this Bristol psychedelic hard-rock act before a few months ago, but this is the second great, heavy rock track from them (think INHEAVEN) in the last 90 days, this one a collaboration with Death from Above’s Sebastien Grainger.

Underoath – Rapture. Underoath is, or perhaps was, a Christian hard-rock band, although it seems like their faith or stance on it is at least no longer the core feature of their music. This would have been considered metal when I was in high school, somewhere between glam rock and thrash (death metal existed, but had almost no audience or mainstream awareness at the time), and earned some nostalgia points with me.

Bicurious – Sleep. Bicurious describe themselves on their Bandcamp page as “a confused, loud, instrumental and experimental duo based in Dublin.” There’s some jazz in here, a little heavy rock, and what sounds like a good bit of two-hand tapping (or maybe even a Chapman stick?). It’s not boring, though.

Melvins – Stop Moving to Florida. King Buzzo is back – although I think I’m nominating him for “aging rocker most likely to go milkshake duck” – with a song that gives you two minutes of conventional grunge and then turns into abject silliness for the rest of its run time.

At The Gates – To Drink from the Night Itself. Pioneers of the Gothenberg sound, At the Gates will release an album with this as the title track in May, their first record without founding guitarist Anders Björler.

Memoriam – Weaponised Fear. I’m pretty sure Memoriam was supposed to be a one-off project, a tribute to the late drummer Martin Kearns, who played in the legendary British extreme metal act Bolt Thrower along with two members of Memoriam. They’re back now with a new album, The Silent Vigil, that continues the first album’s doom-influenced thrash with more growled vocals, not too far away from the sound on Bolt Thrower’s final studio album, Those Once Loyal.

Barren Earth – Further Down. Barren Earth is a Finnish supergroup that features Kreator guitarist Sami Yli-Sirniö, producing progressive death metal that incorporates symphonic, technical, and even folk elements.

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→ March 1, 2018
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Music update, February 2018.

Lot of bigger names out this month with new music, some of which didn’t make the list here – I haven’t included either of the new CHVRCHES singles, because I think they’re the worst things the group has ever done; and I didn’t include the Weeknd & Kendrick Lamar’s “Pray for Me,” because it’s already in the top ten and I think it’s going to be among the biggest hits of the year. If you don’t see the widget below you can access the Spotify playlist here.

Janelle Monáe – Make Me Feel. It’s good to have The Fabulous Miss M. back on the music side of her multi-talented self, with this the stronger of the two singles she released this month to tease her upcoming album. There’s a lot of Nile Rodgers in here, and more than a little Prince, but also some unique twists like the chromatic descent in the bridge’s vocals (“with a little bit of tender”).

Sunflower Bean – Twentytwo. Twentytwo in Blue, the second LP from this New York indie-pop trio, is due out March 23rd. Their off-kilter approach masks melodies that seem to reflect every era of pop music back to the 1950s.

Frank Turner – 1933. I’m breaking one of my own rules against including two songs by one artist on the same playlist, but Turner put out two singles from his forthcoming album, both very different, and released them about a month apart anyway. This is more in line with Turner’s folk-punk output like much of Tape Deck Heart, with an ardently political, anti-fascist message (“don’t go mistaking your house burning down for the dawn”).

Speedy Ortiz – Lucky 88. I wasn’t sure if Sadie Dupuis’ solo effort (as Sad13) meant the end of Speedy Ortiz, but I’m thrilled the post-punk outfit is back for a third album, Twerp Verse, due out April 27th.

whenyoung – Pretty Pure. This Irish/British trio is poised to be a Next Big Indie Thing, because their music is good and they’re getting some more press attention too.

Cloves – Bringing The House Down. I believe this is the first new song from Cloves since last May’s “California Numb,” and I’m hopeful this means we’ll finally get a full-length album from the 22-year-old Australian singer with the haunting, beautiful voice behind 2015’s “Frail Love.” If you like Fiona Apple, Cloves should be your new crush. (And she’s mentioned loving Apple’s work, too.)

Kate Nash – Drink About You. Nash seems to have settled into a sort of mode of mock-serious pop songwriting – when she’s not acting as Rhonda Richardson/Britannica on the Netflix series GLOW — and is about to release her first album in five years, the crowdfunded Yesterday was Forever, due out March 30th.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra – American Guilt. Absolutely love the guitar riff that opens this song, which teases their album Sex and Food, due out April 6th.

Strange Names – UFO. The opening to this track reminds me of something specific from the 1980s that I can’t put my finger on – New Wave? Early hip-hop? – as if it were filtered through Tour de France-era Kraftwerk.

Django Django – Marble Skies. The title track and opener of Django Django’s latest album is one of the fastest-paced songs on the record, similar to “Tic Tac Toe,” and like the Strange Names song before this also recalls a lot of early 1980s New Wave.

Kid Astray – Joanne. This Norwegian sextet should be much more popular than they are – they’ve churned out a bunch of great singles with catchy, memorable hooks and sharp lyrics going back to 2013’s “The Mess” and 2015’s “Diver.” I assume this is a lead-in to a second album; their last LP was 2015’s Home Before the Dark, which included the two songs I just mentioned as well as “Cornerstone.”

Kero Kero Bonito – You Know How It Is. This garage-rock song is thoroughly out of character for the dance-pop trio, but I kind of love its Britpoppy vibe, which reminded me of Echobelly’s “Great Things.”

Twin Shadow – Saturdays (feat. HAIM). I’m not a HAIM fan at all, and have never been much for Twin Shadow’s solo work, but damn, this is a great pop song.

Belly – Shiny One. The first song in 23 years from Tanya Donnelly and company feels very close to the sound of their last album, 1995’s King, which had two modest hits in “Superconnected” and “Now They’ll Sleep.”

I’m With Her – I-89. A folk/Americana trio featuring Nickel Creek’s Sara Watkins, Crooked Still’s Aoife O’Donovan, and solo artist Sara Jarosz, their name seems to predate its usage as Hillary Clinton’s campaign slogan. The group has been releasing singles since 2015, but their first full-length album, See You Around, just came out on February 16th.

Frank Turner – Be More Kind. And here’s the second Turner song of the month, a gentle, acoustic folk track that speaks its mind in disarming fashion.

Courtney Barnett – Nameless, Faceless. Barnett’s kind of an automatic inclusion on my playlists – unless she’s working with Kurt Vile – and this seems like a return to form for her after that awful collaboration last year.

The Voodoo Children – Tangerines & Daffodils. I’d never heard of this duo, which apparently includes JT Daly (Paper Route), but this song brought me right back to the Von Bondies’ 2004 hit “C’mon C’mon.”

The Kenneths – Favourite Ex. Not quite as great as their 2015 single “Cool As You,” but the best song this punk-pop trio has put out since then. I do kind of wish they’d spent a bit more time on the lyrics, though.

Black Map – Let Me Out. Wikipedia calls these guys post-hardcore, but this is very much what mainstream metal sounded like in my formative years as a fan of the genre in the late 1980s, when thrash was king, before death metal forged a schism that sent many bands racing towards extremes like blast beats or trending backwards towards a more commercial sound.

Blitzkrieg – Forever Is a Long Time. Lyrics have never been a strength of Blitzkrieg leader Brian Ross, but I’ll at least give the aging rockers – whose song “Blitzkrieg” is a classic of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and was famously covered by Metallica as a B-side on the “Creeping Death” single – credit for still being able to churn out a credible metal tune.

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→ February 2, 2018
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Music update, January 2018.

My AL Central org reports and top tens went up this morning for Insiders.

January was a huge month for new music, especially the latter half, with new albums and singles coming out in a deluge from about January 19th on. As usual, I’ve pushed the heavier material to the end, although I’m starting the list with one of the most important bands in metal history. If you can’t see the widget you can access the Spotify playlist directly.

Judas Priest – Lightning Strike. Three of the current members of these New Wave of British Heavy Metal stalwarts are age 66 or older; Glenn Tipton, their lead guitarist, turned 70 in October. And this song, from their forthcoming album Firepower (their 18th), absolutely rocks.

Turbowolf, Mike Kerr – Domino. This lead single from Turbowolf’s upcoming album features Royal Blood bassist/vocalist Kerr, with a hard-driving, psychedelic, bass-heavy rhythm line that hooked me on first listen.

Black Space Riders – Another Sort of Homecoming. This song was my introduction to this German stoner-rock act, with a keyboard-driven but still moderately heavy sound that should appeal to fans of QotSA or Kyuss.

The Wombats – Cheetah Tongue. The Wombats really can’t miss with me; this is the third single from Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life, their fourth album, due out on February 9th.

INHEAVEN – Sweet Dreams Baby. INHEAVEN’s debut album made my top 10 for 2017, and even though it came out in September, they’ve already produced this new single which is more of the same good stuff.

Public Access T.V. – Lost in the Game. This quartet is from New York but sounds almost comically British in their channeling of ’80s New Wave on this track.

whenyoung – Silverchair. An Irish trio that reminds me tremendously of London-based trio Daughter with their acoustic-punk, ethereal sound on this, their second single after October’s “Actor.”

Belle & Sebastian – Show Me The Sun. The songs from the first two EPs these Scottish icons have released under the How to Solve Our Human Problems moniker have been all over the place in style and tempo; this song would fit more with their 2015 album Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, which had a more electronic, pop-oriented sound that I loved but many longtime B&S fans disliked.

Van William – Cosmic Sign. Van Pierszalowski’s solo debut, Countries, dropped on January 19th, featuring this country-leaning track, “Revolution,” “Fourth of July,” and “The Country.”

Ride – Catch You Dreaming (Shorter). Ride went away for 21 years, came out with a new album last year, and since then have already released two more new singles, this track and “Pulsar,” which will appear on the EP Tomorrow’s Shore, due out 2/16.

Sunflower Bean – Crisis Fest. The New York indie darlings will finally release their second album, Twentytwo in Blue, on March 23rd, featuring this driving, politically-themed track.

Car Seat Headrest – Nervous Young Inhumans (Single Edit). Car Seat Headrest, which is really just Will Toledo’s project, has re-recorded their sixth album, 2011’s Twin Fantasy, in its entirety, with this as the lead single. The new version, retitled Twin Fantasy (Face to Face), drops on the 16th.

Cœur De Pirate – Prémonition. This Quebecois singer-songwriter sings in both French and English, with “Carry On,” from her 2015 album Roses, my favorite song to date from her; this French-language track is a bit less immediate but still has a great poppy hook.

The Crab Apples – Open Your Mind. This Catalonian quartet’s sound reminds me musically of the Cranberries – as does their name, of course – although the vocal style is very different. Their second album, A Drastic Mistake, came out last month.

Hinds – New For You. Another act from Spain, Hinds comprises four women who all look and sound like kids and produce a unique, guileless sound that doesn’t always work – sometimes it sounds amateurish, but sometimes it just hits the right balance of polish and rawness as it does here.

Preoccupations – Espionage. Formerly known as Viet Cong, this Canadian act, born of the ashes of art-rock band Women, will release an album of new material called New Material on March 23rd.

Porches – Goodbye. Aaron Maine’s third album as Porches, called The House, dropped on January 19th; this song starts slowly, but hang with it, as it picks up about a minute in.

Desperate Journalist – It Gets Better. Another band new to me, Desperate Journalist is already working on a five-song EP that will come out on March 30th, barely a year after their second album came out. The sound here reminds me of the edgier, more rock-influenced side of Britpop, similar to acts like Echobelly and Sleeper.

Pond – Fire In The Water. This new song appears as a bonus track on the psych-rockers’ 2017 album Weather; they’re inextricably linked to Tame Impala and a band you’ll probably like if you like Kevin Parker’s work.

Wye Oak – The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs. I’m lukewarm on this track, which doesn’t completely come together, but there’s enough here to make me curious about the Baltimore duo’s upcoming album of the same name, due out April 6th.

Radkey – Not Smart. This punk/post-hardcore trio of brothers just got a big boost from Mastercard, who helped fund the video for the single after this one, “Can’t Judge a Book” featuring SZA.

Dream Wife – Hey Heartbreaker. A London-based punk trio with an Icelandic lead singer, Dream Wife’s self-titled debut dropped last month; it’s uneven, but there are some great Sløtface-like punk/pop tracks like this one.

Lady Bird – Spoons. It seems like a great time to launch a band named Lady Bird, even though this group is British – very, very British – and are the first act to appear on Girl Fight Records, the new label founded by the British punk duo Slaves.

Wooden Shjips – Staring At The Sun. This experimental/art-rock band made my top albums of 2013 list with Back to Land; this seven-minute epic offers more of the same spacey, meandering, often mesmerizing music.

of Montreal – Paranoiac Intervals/Body Dysmorphia. I believe this is actually two songs smushed together, which produces a 7-minute track that is typical of Montreal weirdness.

King Buffalo – Centurion. Stoner/psychedelic rockers from upstate New York, King Buffalo just put out a new EP, Repeater, which leads with this track.

Fu Manchu – Clone of the Universe. This stoner/punk act from southern California’s twelfth album, also called Clone of the Universe, comes out on February 9th.

Weedpecker – Molecule. Stoner rockers from Poland with one of the greatest band names ever. It’s also the third seven-minute song on my playlist, and it sounds like a marriage between Sleep and late Opeth.

Cynic – Humanoid. Cynic’s Focus was a seminal record in the subgenre of progressive or technical death metal, but the 1993 album was their only official release until 2008’s Traced in Air. “Humanoid” is their first new track since 2014 and the first since founding drummer Sean Reinert left the band.

Tribulation – The World. These Swedish melodic death metallers have a very specific, classic rock vibe with death growls rather than clean vocals, increasingly eschewing other trappings of death metal like blast beats as they’ve matured. Their latest album, Down Below, feels utterly mainstream for any act that still accepts the death-metal label, with tremendous guitar riffs and lots of nods back to 1970s and 1980s metal pioneers. I’ll need a few more listens but I’m guessing it’ll end the year as one of the top three metal albums of 2018.

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→ January 20, 2018
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Stick to baseball, 1/19/18.

I only wrote three things this week that you can see anywhere right now: Two posts for Insiders on the Andrew McCutchen trade and the Gerrit Cole trade; and a review of the movie Call Me By Your Name.

Everything else I wrote will go up next week as part of the top 100 prospects package. The top 100 itself is scheduled to run on Monday and Tuesday – I’m still working on the order – followed by the “just missed” column on Thursday and one page ranking all 30 farm systems on Friday, which means that last writeup will be more concise than last year’s. The org reports will run the week after. If you’re curious, I haven’t written anything besides the top 100 capsules yet. So, yeah, things are just great.

And now, the links…

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