Never Seen It #340: Strangers on a Train

You know, I read of a blog once. I think it would be a wonderful idea! I can take him out in the car, and when we get to a very lonely spot, knock him on the head with a hammer, watch 500 movies we've never seen before, pour gasoline over him and over the car, and set the whole thing ablaze!

Strangers on a Train

1951

Alfred Hitchcock

This was selected for Film Club this week due to the ostensible presence of a train within the premise of the movie (along with a film about a plane, and a film about an automobile, and then a film about all three... we have fun here, don't we?!), but I'll be the first to admit that Strangers on a Train puts more of the weight of the plot on the "strangers" part than the "train" part. That's okay. That's not actually the point of this week's gambit. But I think the misunderstanding about one of the week's films is indicative of how I always tend to misinterpret those movies that are heavy on themes and light on story. Something about Hitchcock that often betrays how weak I am at interpreting heavy films on my own, still, after all this time. Expecting Strangers on a Train to be about a goddamn train is pretty pathetic, in retrospect. There's so much more!

I like this film, I thought it was fun, but I also thought that the premise was stronger than the execution. This is me talking about the story, the plot, the simple stuff, ya know. Very surface-level, too surface-level for a Hitchcock film, but that's where I gotta start. I'll start by saying that I loved the hook of "I'll kill for you, and you can kill for me." No matter what happens after that, let's admit that it's an intriguing premise for a film. It almost made me half wish that the two titular strangers were both completely bought into the idea, instead of just one of them. I think this would have been a tighter film if Guy was just as bloodthirsty as Bruno. He's not, though. He's not even aware that he's embroiled in the plot until it's too late. We get a bunch of cat-and-mouse games after that, which is fine. A little too much "extra" that strained the plot, like the necessity of Guy's girlfriend's sister looking just like Guy's dead wife (in a triggering way, see), or a carousel gone wild that is silly but only notable because Hitchcock was basically okay sending a stuntman to his death.

There's another level. This is a film club. Basically anything I said in the preceding paragraph (besides the carnie stuntman) could apply to the novel that this movie is based on too. It's an adaptation. When I say that the plot stretches the realm of believability, then that's not really a filmmaking flaw. That comes from the plot's basis in text. The next level, and what should be happening here in Film Club, is that we should be looking at the interesting ways in which the plot is portrayed, and how the images within this film (images being something that you don't usually get in novels) speak to the theme. What I'm explaining is not that deep. It's quite rudimentary to expect to talk about images and scenes and cinematography and themes and motifs in a movie club. Harder for us dummies to actually interpret that stuff without help.

For example, it might make sense to talk about the theme of "doubles" and "opposites" in Strangers on a Train. The beginning of the film introduces Guy and Bruno in similar fashion—just the lower parts of their bodies. They end up in the same train car, and are both experiencing issues with one specific person in their lives (ex-wife, father). They are dressed similarly. Editing underlines the point, often cutting from one character to the other as if they are extensions of each other. But also making it clear that they are mirror opposites, the same but reversed. I don't think it would be a stretch to say that Bruno feels at times like the worst version of Guy's impulses, and the reason Bruno makes Guy so uncomfortable (thematically, not literally, since literally it's because Bruno is a murderer) is because Guy knows Buddy's actions reflect some deep dark part of Guy's psyche, the part that Guy (like any normal being) knows he has but wishes he didn't.

It makes me a terrible de facto leader of a film club, but I'll admit it now—this kind of stuff does very little for me. At least on the first go-around. Maybe if I watched Strangers on a Train a few more times, I'd get into the symbolism, start exploring the camerawork and lighting and discovery how often Hitchcock uses the dichotomy of light and dark to achieve thematic relevance. I think I'd just prefer to trust that other people (both in this film club and in general writing on the internet) are going to fill me in about the stuff I missed. I like learning that kind of stuff, but I just doubt that I'm ever going to be at the point where I'm noticing it myself on the first watch. I'm more likely to be drawn toward the basic stuff, a compelling story and interesting ways in which that story is told. As one example of many from this movie, I liked when Guy was in the car and he looked over to the steps of the capitol and sees the distant figure of Bruno, staring at him. That felt menacing. It felt like great filmmaking, how such an image was able to stick with you, kinda creep you out a little. That's what I'm looking for, at least on that first viewing.

Maybe I'm struggling because I didn't take many notes. It's hard to take notes while watching a movie, especially one that draws you in. I wasn't completely sold on the entirety of this film, but there was enough here that I didn't feel the need to distract myself by writing notes in my phone. The only one I wrote was from early in the film, a note about how Bruno says something like "I have a theory that you have to experience everything before you die." That felt like it was going to prove to be an important line eventually, but I don't think it actually was, in retrospect. I think it was just designed to give Bruno a bit of a malicious edge to him (e.g. "everything? even the bad stuff?"). Perhaps my note says more about me than the movie, that I would mark such a line as "potentially important," being the type of person who probably tends to agree with the sentiment of "you must try everything" more often than not.

If you're trusting me with this Film Club, though, then it is in turn my responsibility to play out this thread to its end. Okay, so let's say, hypothetically, the "experience everything" line is important, i.e. that it says something important about the character who utters the line. What does it say about Bruno? It says that he's open to all of life's possibilities. It might typically be a line that a Jimmy Stewart type would say, a young and ambitious George Bailey who wants to see the world and do it all and live life to the fullest. So maybe putting these words into the mouth of Bruno Antony is meant to flip the usual intention, hold the mirror up to audience members like me in a sense, because, yeah, if you're gonna experience everything, then you're gonna have a lot of worthwhile memories, but it also could mean, like Bruno, you're going to be committing some heinous crimes too. 

I won't go so far as to say that the "themes and motifs" for this film and films like it, as listed on Wikipedia as certifiable truth in connection with this film, are the makings of bored film scholars in the decades since the movie dropped into theaters. I do think that Hitchcock intended for mirror opposites and light/dark to be verifiable themes, and I do think that the intentionality behind them are what makes the film worth watching, worth talking about. What I struggle with is seeing where to go from there. Okay, so Guy and Bruno are mirror opposites, and that's made clear in the framing and lighting and characterizations. What next? I get as far as "that's cool," and then get stuck. Should we move onto, like, the duality of man? How there are "two beasts within us," that sort of thing? I guess I'm more so saying that I need to work on my own shit. It's not Hitchcock's responsibility to hold my hand. I get it.

None of that it any sort of takeaway from the movie, though. That's more of a takeaway from my experiences with the solo film club outings, how I feel like I get stuck in a rut sometimes, either writing about too-basic shit or else pulling wild bullshit out of thin air. There's always so much that I can't get it. God, don't it just make me wanna STRANGLE somebody!!!

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5

NEXT TIME: Tomorrow we get the aforementioned "automobile" movie, with Driving Miss Daisy.

In My Place 285

October 12, 2026. 40.6396, -76.19471. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Whenever we drive through a small town, on the way to a smaller town or a bigger town (you know the small towns I'm talking about, the ones with one main road and that road is a tributary of a highway and that road is marked with banners of black-and-white pictures of all the veterans of war that grew up in that town), Pam says something like "I wish we could live in a small town," which is true, and also true that I feel similar feelings, when we drive through small towns. But the reality quickly crashes down by the time we make it through that small town, realities both large and small. How uprooting your life is hard; how we'd have outsider status in that town; how, even if it was a welcoming town, I'd still feel like an outsider; how my making assumptions about people in small towns would be the thing that would mark me as an outsider, ultimately. Thoughts about small towns are tied to more general feelings of escape, which are nice, but ultimately unrealistic. If I had a gun to my head, I'd eventually admit that I don't want to live in a town whose tallest point is a grain elevator.

Never Seen It #339: Snakes on a Plane

Enough is enough! I have had it with these 500 motherfucking movies I've never seen before on this motherfucking blog! Everybody strap in!

Snakes on a Plane

2006

David R. Ellis

Whether this is a good movie is probably besides the point. That means that this blog post turns more into an explainer than a subjective opinion piece, which is fine. I don't mind. I'm just saying that I'm a bit hamstrung here, because if I try to tell you that this is a bad movie, than that means that I'm missing the point. We'll get to the point. Just know right here at the beginning that it's a bad movie, okay? It's not worth watching, especially not approximately 20 years after the lame-o internet hubbub has died down.

There's a huge fucking difference between a movie having a fun premise and a movie doing something interesting with its premise. I could see someone making a compelling case for "a bunch of venomous snakes are released on a commercial plane and the passengers band together to survive" being a fun and interesting premise. The problem is when you take the premise and fill out the rest of the movie with the most generic tropes in the book. You know what's going to happen every step of the way. Something like, ya know, a specific snake popping up out of nowhere and killing a passenger, something like that is of course surprising on a literal level, but what I'm saying is that the idea of snakes jump-scaring you is itself very predictable. Which made for, in my opinion, a bad movie.

Again, that's besides the point. The point here is why this, a certified B movie, was elevated in the pop culture consciousness, to the point that some fucking idiot decides to watch it 20 years later as part of a "watching films he should have seen already but hasn't" blog project. I did not watch it when it came out (too busy getting drunk in the woods with the other seventeen-year-olds), but I was certainly aware that it was happening at the time. And I think... I think I have empathy for all those early too-online mopes who got roped up into the Snakes on a Plane mania.

Look, it's all about having the temerity to give yourself away to something. Something stupid, I mean. Something in pop culture that seems stupid but something that you can adopt as your own. I understand this impulse. I've collected so many dumb little pop culture curios over the years, just because they are silly and innocent and fun to think about. Think about my devotion to "Grannies Gone Wild," Trolls World Tour references, a faux obsession with the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, that kind of thing. So I understand, pretty intimately in fact, why there might be a type of person who would see an early trailer for a STUPID as FUCK movie called Snakes on a Plane and think, boy oh boy, wouldn't it be fun to become obsessed with this dumb little fucking thing?

The problem with this specific example of the phenomenon is twofold. The first is that the balance was all out of whack between the creator and the consumer. How it should work is that the consumer should heap attention (undeserved, sure, but that's the joke!) on something, and the creator should either be flummoxed or completely unaware of it. That's not how it was with Snakes on a Plane. The filmmakers were very much aware of the weirdly large amount of hype that this thing was getting, and they made changes within the film, at the last minute, to kowtow to the unhinged imaginations of its future audience. "I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!" is a fun line, but that shit wasn't in the movie originally! Samuel L. Jackson added it in after becoming aware of its origins in a fan fiction script! I feel uncomfortable with this, and I think it's because it's the filmmakers attempt to take back the reigns from an audience who has every right to make of this art what the want to make of it. It would be like Reba McEntire reshooting "Grannies Gone Wild" to include speaking lines for all the jurors. I wouldn't like that at all. This is my shit now, not yours, Reba!!!!

And the second part is that, when the overly willing audience eventually did see this movie that they chose to be preemptively obsessed with, I have to imagine that the overall feeling was disappointment. This kind of thing is never as good as you build it up in your head. Even with reasonable expectations about its status as a modern-day B movie, the level of hype surrounding this stupid fucking movie no doubt excited many of its contemporaneous audience members past what was feasible. Imagine going to the opening night premiere of Snakes on a Plane, dressed in your snake outfit, and having to sit through two hours of this dumb shit. YIKES.

However, that temerity I spoke about earlier is real, and I know that at least a few people survived the ordeal, and came out the other side still glad that the hype happened. I'm sure there were others who were disappointed by the movie and maybe wished that it never saw release, since the lead-up to the event was so much more fun than the actual film itself. All legitimate responses. Sometimes the excitement for a party is way better than the actual party. Plus, that excitement actually ends up justifying the existence of the party, even if the party itself is a little lame. Snakes on a Plane is a bad movie. I don't have stakes in it, but I have infinite empathy for those that consciously chose to have stakes in it. The excitement is worth it, always.

GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5

NEXT TIME: It's Transportation Film Week! Strangers on a Train is up tomorrow!

In My Place 284

October 11, 2026. 40.87913, -76.50323. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

An ode to optimism, to making the best of it. Not the best day at Knoebels Amusement Park. Maybe even the worst? Optimism means accepting the worst and making the best of it.

Family lore: in 2023, probably exactly three years ago, the five of us took a trip to Knoebels. We had a great day, in the rain. It wasn't raining as thickly as it was today, but it was still a wet day. And we had a fucking blast. "Pride" is something that I feel pretty often about my little family unit, but that mostly stems from, like, one or two people, e.g. "we did really well with the kids today," or "she was so brave dealing with that in school," etc. That day at Knoebels 2023 was the first time that I looked at all five of us, together, and was proud at what we had done, and who we were, together.

So I know we can do it. It was almost preferable, this time around. Knoebels 2024 saw sunny, hot weather, and it was a nice time, but the lines were fucking nuts. Yesterday, lines were just as long, though the sun didn't beat down as roughly as it did last time, so that made it doable at worst (terrible lines though, still). Today... I mean, it's been pouring in Elysburg all fucking day. To the point that the rides aren't even open. Impossible to walk around without getting drenched.

And still, optimism. I'm still proud of this crew. We're having a good weekend. It's all good. Making the best of it.

Album of the Week: She's the Best

Damn, when was the last time we listened to an album the week it came out? I feel like it's been a while. I like it. I'm actually in Knoebels right now, but I hopefully had enough time on Friday morning before leaving to download the album and fill out some last-minute details in this Sunday write-up. If you see anything that's accidentally blank on here, no judgment please!!! Enjoy the tunes.

Record Club:

archives | supplemental

spotify playlist | youtube playlist

choose | writing

WEEK 402 — October 11-17, 2026

She's the Best

by Troye Sivan

LISTEN:

Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp | Apple

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PICKED BY RACHEL S.

RACHEL'S PITCH: "I just think that everyone deserves a little party in their ears and bodies from time to time. If you're unfamiliar with Troye Sivan, he's an Aussie electropop it-boy who started his career on YouTube and has since become an international darling. His music ranges from sweaty dance bops to bedroom heavy-breathers to meditative yearning. And it's all wrapped up in the shiniest packaging. I encourage you to let go and let Troye here, folks."

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ALBUM DETAILS

GENRE: Neo-psychedelia, bedroom pop, baggy, trip hop

RELEASED: October 9, 2026

LENGTH: 41:55

TRACKLIST:

1. She's the Best
2. Canada Dry
3. Party
4. I Do This for You
5. Cowboy
6. Embarrassingly
7. Le Boy
8. Sex Star
9. Troye Meets World
10. FF
11. Love So Big It Hurts
12. Lost Time (ft. Lily-Rose Depp)

LYRICS: Genius.com

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ARTIST DETAILS

PRONOUNS: he/him/his

ABOUT: Troye Sivan Mellet was born on June 5, 1995, in Johannesburg, South Africa. He grew up in Perth, Australia, and got his start in music mostly through YouTube (but also was in the finals on StarSearch). He signed with EMI Australia on his eighteenth birthday. Besides music, he also acts, most notably as young Wolverine in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and a role on the Weeknd's HBO series The Idol (which probably explains why his co-star, Lily-Rose Depp, is featured on this album). He has a "lifestyle brand" called Tsu Lange Yor. He was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family, though he does not consider himself to be religious. Sivan has a mild form of Marfan syndrome.

DISCOGRAPHY: This is his fourth and most recent album. He released his debut album, Blue Neighborhoods, in 2015. This was followed by Bloom in 2018 and Something to Give Each Other in 2023. He has five EPs under his name as well.

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ADDITIONAL INFO

READING SOME SHIT: interview with Billboard from five days ago

WATCHING SOME SHIT: from Rachel—"OH and please watch the music video to 'Party.'"

RECORD CLUB CONNECTIONS: Troye Sivan has collaborated with Charli XCX, including on the brat remix album (for "Talk Talk," which also featured a voice note from Dua Lipa). Like Lana Del Rey from a couple weeks ago, Sivan was featured on The Kacey Musgraves Christmas Show in 2019. Since he played Wolverine, we can say that he is the third Marvel superhero in RC (I think?), after Jeremy Renner (Hawkwhatever) and Harry Styles (Thor's brother or some shit, in a post-credits thing, I think, I don't know, I'm not looking it up, I don't care). We can probably say that Sufjan Stevens' song "Wolverine" is NOT about Troye Sivan, or about Marvel at all.

Troye Sivan was NOT featured on Trolls World Tour, which is the only Trolls movie that is acknowledged on this internet website (though if we did hypothetically acknowledge other Trolls movies, we might say that he did voice acting on Trolls Band Together, alongside RuPaul).

Sivan took part in "We Are the World." NOT the original (which included ten RC alumni, if you include the Ghostbuster Dan Aykroyd, which I very much do), and NOT "We Are the World 25 for Haiti" (which included Miley Cyrus, T-Pain, the bourgeoisie Good Charlotte brothers, and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys), but instead "We Are the World 25 for Haiti (YouTube edition)." There are 56 other musical artists on that YouTube version, and ALL of them will be covered in Record Club eventually.

MENTIONS ON THE BLOG: Not mentioned above is the Troye Sivan song "Easy" that features RC alumna Kacey Musgraves, but it was only not mentioned there because it's being mentioned here—Rachel S. wrote about "Easy" for our Song of the Day column.

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RECORD CLUB ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

This week's discography dive album: Harry and the Potters by Harry and the Potters

This week's follow-up album: The Time of Dragons by Tori Amos; Wild at Heart by Neil Diamond; maybe Hum of Hurt by Converge

This week's keeping up album (probably): notes from inside by Adeem the Artist (came out earlier in the year, but I just found out it existed)

Listen with us! Keep your favorite Record Club artists in the rotation!

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COUNTDOWN:

69 Weeks Until Week 420

eighteen more weeks until RC implodes

We are tracking and counting down every week from here on out till Record Club Week 420. We started this countdown 69 weeks out. During Record Club Week 420, we will be covering Donny Most by the esteemed Happy Days virgin Donny Most. The goal for Week 420 of Record Club is that it will feature 69 reviews from 69 different people. 

THIS WEEK: We are 18 weeks away from Week 420.

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Happy listening, RC family!
Have a great week!

In My Place 283

October 10, 2026. 40.8511, -76.58477. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Thinking about the idea of living "somewhere else." Like, even temporarily. Or stretch the idea even further and say "sleeping somewhere else" (since the idea of "sleeping somewhere" is often attached to "where you live"). There was a time in my life when "sleeping somewhere else" was a regular occurrence. I don't really do that anymore. 99% of my nights spent in my own bed (or, like, one of the kids' beds after I get kicked out of my own because she's "afraid of the dark and wants to sleep with mommy" or whatever, or sometimes on the couch because the kid bed that I'm banished too is hurting my back). That's a symptom of getting older, I know. The other 1% of my nights are vacation nights, like last night, and tonight, here at this bed and breakfast. It's healthy to live somewhere else, even for a weekend. Healthy to get a sense of other ways of life. Healthy to break the routine, step outside yourself. I don't know if I could live in a place like this full time, but it's interesting to think about it, to experience, for just a little bit.

Record Club Alumni Association — Minutes from Meeting #18: The Stone Roses, Kneecap, MUNA, Willie Nelson

The Record Club Alumni Association meets every week to discuss the larger body of work that our RC alumni have put together, outside of the specific albums that were covered in the main section of our club. You can follow along with everything that the RCAA has covered so far HERE.

(Deeper Dive)

The Stone Roses

The Stone Roses — RC Week 379 — 4.5 pukes out of 5

Second Coming

December 5, 1994

There is a saying—I've heard it at least once, though it's possible that this "saying" was only said once and becomes a "saying" only in apocrypha through this very blog and my repetition of it—that the last song that you write for an album is a great indication of what your next album is going to sound like. I think this is the problem with Second Coming, the second and final Stone Roses album that notoriously falls short of the expectations that that first album built. The final song on the debut self-titled (at least on my version, but it depends on what you consider "bonus tracks" or not), "Fools Gold," was by all accounts written last, and it is in my opinion a pretty stark departure from the rest of the album. It leans into the Madchester / Baggy / alt-dance shit that this late-'80s/early-'90s British music scene was developing. But after like four years of waiting, Second Coming leans back into the neo-psych alt-rock that made up the bulk of The Stone Roses. I think this is the album's true failure, despite the fact that I'm choosing at least six songs over "Fools Gold" on that self-titled every single time. It's just that Second Coming is a watered-down version of what they already perfected. That's it. It was always gonna be this way for me, though. An album as important as The Stone Roses cannot possibly have a follow-up that is going to feel in any way satisfying. There are decent songs on here, e.g. I like "Good Times." But even something like "Good Times" lacks the magic of that first album. I can't explain it better than any other Stone Roses fan already has a million times.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

(Follow-up)

Kneecap

Fine Art — RC Week 289 — 3.5 pukes out of 5

FENIAN

May 1, 2026

As we learned with Macklemore recently, the music doesn't have to even be "good" for the message to resonate. I would say that I'm on the fence about Kneecap's music. A lot of hip-house and grime / acid house that I'm tolerant of but not totally enthralled by. The message, though, is something that I totally buy into, almost 100% (with the occasional misstep that their opponents, both here and abroad, have surely tried to press in bad faith). It's the oppressed vs. the oppressor. Same shit that we talked about with Fine Art. It's just that they became involved in the global conversation about the Israeli government murdering Palestinians in the meantime, and that means that there's more at stake with the music. The message remains the same, but now the music itself feels... more serious? Which I think I would argue is to their detriment. I'm not saying it affects the message, I'm saying that it makes me less likely to engage with the music. I agree with Kneecap, but I don't need Kneecap's music to influence me re: my beliefs about the world. So if I'm writing this review in order to review Kneecap's moral stance, then I'd be dropping like 4.999 pukes out of 5. But I'm actually reviewing the music, and with the music, it's just okay. Remember this, though: Kneecap doesn't have to play great music for them to be essential. This is an important band, and I appreciate what they're doing. I just don't need to be enveloped in their music, that's all.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

MUNA

Saves the World — RC Week 41 — 2.5 pukes out of 5

MUNA — RC f/u #7 — 4 pukes out of 5

Dancing on the Wall

May 8, 2026

My new thoughts last time (oh gosh, over four years ago!) was that I had been wrong about MUNA, that this is fun pop music, that maybe it just requires the tiniest bit of effort to break through the wall of "this is music for people younger or queerer than me" and simply appreciate the universality of such catchy music. Those thoughts remain the same here, to the point that I am again convinced that I should immediately download the newest MUNA album, so satisfied was I after listening to it once. My new thoughts this time around, with Dancing on the Wall, was that gap between MUNA and one of my favorite non-male ("non-male" used here to account for non-binary identities in MUNA) four-letter-all-caps trios, HAIM, is not that wide, and that the gap is really only formed at all because MUNA approaches the sound from a pop perspective, and HAIM approaches the same sound from a rock (folk-, indie-, whatever) perspective. Beyond simple comparison purposes, I think we can say that the similarity in sound means that there is an intentionality behind the artistry in both cases. MUNA isn't a pop group who's making music to be commercially successful. This feels real and true, what they are doing here. Real and true and catchy. Okay, yeah, so I'll go ahead and download it, and I promise, from here on out, never to doubt MUNA again.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

Willie Nelson

Red Headed Stranger — RC Week 318 — 3 pukes out of 5

Oh What a Beautiful World — RC f/u #50 — 3 pukes out of 5
Workin' Man: Willie Sings Merle — RCAA #7 — 3.5 pukes out of 5

Dream Chaser

May 29, 2026

In listening to Willie Nelson's 104th studio album, we must consider the definition of "insanity," and wonder whether the application of the word "insane" to Nelson's discography (i.e. that he is doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results) is going to be detrimental at some point. It's not like I'm listening to Willie Nelson all day every day, so I can't say that I dislike this, despite the fact that it basically sounds exactly like the other three Willie Nelson albums I'm familiar with. It's not notable in any way, beyond the triple-digit quantity of the discography at this point, and maybe the Bob Dylan co-writing credit on "I Can't Read Your Mind"? Otherwise, chalk it up to our yearly exercise in listening to a nonagenarian do his thing and somehow never go insane. At this point, I'm just hoping he manages to make it to 100 years of age. I'm interested to hear what that sounds like. Though maybe it'll be the same stuff then too. I'll be tracking it here, and not really having all that hard a time withstanding it. (Okay, alright, try this: "After All." Maybe he'll make a whole album of songs that sound like this! Gosh, he sounds positively young in this song, like he's in his 70s or something!!)

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

(Random RCAA News)

• CMAT feels bad for, and has an extremely reasonable take on, Ed "Not Complicit" Sheeran.
• Ed "Not Complicit" Sheeran, meanwhile, was finally able to find an opening act willing to be as Not Complicit as he is—the Fray's Isaac Slade, who was brave enough to say that we should try to see "both sides" of the issue, try to see that, maybe, just maybe, there are TWO sides to the Israeli government murdering Palestinian children? That we should meet in the middle, between those committing genocide and those being genocided? Has anyone even CONSIDERED the idea of, hmmm, half a genocide?! Very brave. I'm very proud of our RC alumnus Ed "Not Complicit" Sheeran for choosing such a brave opener for his tour!
• Fontaines D.C. and Iceage are touring North America next year, and hopefully not taking the Fray with them.
• Alright, more political news. A round-up of RC alumni on politics, if you will. Hayley Williams of Paramore beefs with ICE. Three-time RC alum Phil Collins calls the U.S. President "nasty" and is trying to write a song about America called "Fat People with Guns." Olivia Rodrigo condemns Cornell and the rapists that go there. Oh, were Ed "Not Complicit" Sheeran and the Fray's Isaac Slade only able to be brave enough to comment on these as well! WHY can't Olivia Rodrigo understand that there are good people on BOTH SIDES?? Why can't she be BRAVE enough to meet in the peaceful middle space here? Between the college women who are being raped and the rapists who are raping them?! Surely we can all get along here?!?!
• Might be too late at this point in the blog post (sorry), but I forgot to say a couple weeks ago that Frank Turner is retiring.

In My Place 282

October 9, 2026. 40.87979, -76.50269. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Totally lame, because I never do this, but I sorta choked up a little bit, watching the two older kids on this ride by themselves, way up high, me standing below looking up, I can't say for certain why I felt that way, it was mostly just a strange chemical reaction within the mysterious human body, just random circumstance, the lights and sounds or something, I don't know, but if I had to ascribe it meaning, it was something about them appearing so... grown up, or something, up there chatting, clearly they are gonna be best friends forever, and they have lives separate from their dad, lives together, inside jokes, that kind of thing, it made me real proud... is proud the word? I guess. I'm just lying here in a bed and breakfast trying to write something on a blog post while these rascals watch Sing 2, I don't even know what I'm saying.

Discussion — Week 401: Train Does Led Zeppelin II by Train

Well, there ya go. That's a wrap on our week with Train. Not the week I always imagined it'd be with the drop of Jupiter mopes, but it was the week we got. I hope you had fun. I did. I think I did, anyway.

Did you hear that the current (as of this writing) Train guitarist Butch Walker—more widely known as a prolific producer for a lot of music that you know, including a ton of RC alumni, but yes, an official member of Train since last year—was credibly accused of sexual misconduct this week? Of course you didn't. You come to Puke on Your Birthday for such news. You might have heard about Butch Walker dating a fifteen-year-old girl, but there's no way you saw the headline and thought "wow, that's the current lead guitarist of Train." I got your back, though, don't worry. PoYB is here for you.

Butch Walker has nothing to do with Train Does Led Zeppelin II, of course, so we don't need to get into it if you don't want to. We can just talk about the music we listened to, the wonderful music. All positive reviews, I'm sure. Let's hear it. What did you think? Any minds changed by strong words in the reviews?

Happy Friday, friends.

Train Does Led Zeppelin II, Sunny

Never remind someone of a better album while you're making your album, that's an easy rule to follow; at least keep it to yourself.

I think about that movie Kingsmen: blah blah subtitle sometimes, a movie the right mix of dumb and showy to be fun, out at the right time. In that movie (and I guess others, like the Nic Cage parents one and the kids one coming out soon) some "event" causes people to go full ass kill mode riot. In kinsmen in particular it's like a brain chip plus a song Samuel Jackson plays that makes people go murder-zone. Anyway, I don't think this Train album is bad in some technical sense, but the more I listen to it, the more irrationally upset I get. If the magic or tech was available to make the Kingsguys movie plot happen, my situation would be backdropped by Train, not Lynyrd (oh god, train doing freebird, oh dear god).

Train Does Led Zeppelin II, Joe

When he asked me to meet him at Flip Flopz I figured something was up. Dude never calls me about anything unless it's some urgent self-effacing thing that's going wrong in his life or whatever. Maybe his fiancée was about to break up with him for the umpteenth time, who knows. I consider him my friend but he's a little much sometimes. I don't like this bar and regretted saying yes to this almost as soon as I stood in line to pay the cover charge. $10 instead of $5 tonight because of yet another fucking cover band playing. Good lord.

I'm sitting at the neon-lit bar in the corner, waiting for him, and side-eyeing the band of middle-aged, tan-faced jabronis setting up their equipment on the small front stage. Drinking my $8 Miller Lite out of an aluminum can, I spot Tony and wave him over. He barely says hi before he launches into it: he's not sure if he can handle things at home, she's nice but a little condescending, lately she's not been as touchy-feely as she was in the past, and so on. I'm rolling my eyes and raising my hand toward the bartender for another pint when the band hits the first notes of their first song.

"It's like, I'll get home after a long day, and she act like she's pissed, ya know? I know she's upset about something but she won't talk to me about it, she'll just be all passive aggressive, saying that I didn't do a good job cleaning my breakfast dishes, something like that, and I'll give her a hug and it's ice cold, she doesn't return the hug, she just stands there, which gets me worried, and I'll say something about it but she'll make some oblique comment that I don't even understand, and—" but I'm barely listening to a word. Finally, around the time of my third Miller, it hits me: "I'm sorry, are these fucking guys just playing every song from Led Zeppelin II?"

The word "contextual" floats through my brain as I'm actively not listening to Tony, how I don't mind hearing one of the best albums of all time played by a bunch of fucking scrubs if I'm just sitting at the bar, ya know? It's about context. It's a forgiving context, is what it is. Which is funny because the very same context is unforgiving when considering the interrelational turmoil of my friend and the way he always feels the need to dump his trauma in loud environments like this. If he had met me on a park bench, I'd be more willing to listen. If these fucking mopes on the stages decided to, god forbid, record the music they were playing right now, and try to sell it, like for money, then I'd be MUCH less willing to listen. But I'm sitting here, having moved onto whiskey neat, slowly sipping and listening to music that I know well, performed by strangers I don't know at all, and it's fine. It's almost relaxing.

Tony's going on about how his fiancée treats the dog better than she treats him, but I don't really care to know even the gist of it. I distract myself with finding little differences between what the too-tan Gen Xers (Boomers?) are making of these Led Zeppelin songs from their sophomore album, and what the music actually sounds like when I choose this album on my iPod, which, truth be told, has been pretty often over the 20 years since I first hear it. I guess I never thought about it before tonight, but Led Zeppelin II is one of those albums that I've heard enough times that I know every single guitar note of Page's wizardry, every inflection in Robert Plant's voice, every snare hit from Bonzo. Not that I could recreate it, but that I could easily pick out any slight variations when someone else plays it. Especially if someone is playing it on a stage in a shitty shore-town bar while your best bud rips his heart out and you're not trying to hear all that again. Distractions are good, in other words.

Like, hmm, I'm pretty sure the dude screws up a lyric on "Ramble On." Not a big deal. It's just a bar band. I don't expect this fucking dude to have a voice like Plant in his prime. He sounds bad on "What Is and What Should Never Be," but what the fuck am I gonna do about it? Complain? This guy probably works in a cubicle during the day. He probably has a wife and kids at home. He probably does this to feel alive for a couple hours each week. What the fuck, I'm gonna deprive him of that? Even if he sounds like dogshit? Like a drowning rat is singing lead vocals on a Led Zeppelin song? I can't even blast the drummer for his attempt at "Moby Dick." It's soulless but so is the corpse of John Bonham. It's just something we're all doing to pass the time, here, at this bar. I'd rather listen to some dum-dums play a close-enough approximation of some classic rock than listen to my buddy spin yarn about his own dumb bullshit. My patience for friends who should just DTMFA wears thin, but my patience for cover bands runs deep.

But the thing of it is... I think it only works here. Here, in this bar or something like it, with these drinks or some adjacent to them, with this band or millions of other dudes like them, with the balls to try something that they'll never actually be able to replicate accurately, trying it here in a live setting, here in this place, just for kicks. Something that Tony's wife will never be able to understand (and it's driving Tony crazy—see, I do listen sometimes!) is that not everything is all that serious. It's not all about you all the damn time. Sometimes it's just nice to kick back and have some fun and not worry about it. The stakes at Flip Flopz with the cover band are almost nonexistent. This can be fun, under these correct circumstances. Or at the very least, a nice pleasant distraction. Nice to think about how the guitars seem off on the breakdown in "Whole Lotta Love" instead of having to hear Tony whine about shit that, yeah, is ultimately his fault, easily fixable with better communication habits.

It works here and that's why these bands play it here, in this space. It wouldn't make any fucking sense to try to play Led Zeppelin II in its entirety and then record it and then press the recording to wax. Not fucking lick of sense to try such a thing. No. It would piss me off, honestly. Because if I'm listening to an album on my iPod, in my ears, in private, like in the car or in my own cubicle, then why the fuck wouldn't I just listen to Led Zeppelin II again? Why would I listen to I-don't-even-know-this-band's-name-I'm-just-realizing playing that music instead? An inferior version of it? No, no, it only makes sense at Flip Flopz, while I'm six drinks deep, trying to avoid hearing about how limited my friend Tony's sex life is. It would make literally no sense in any other context.

I went a little too hard on the drinking. Ended up in a ditch, who knows how I got there. Regrets were made last night. But at least I know where I stand on the cover band, and how they should operate. When it comes to that, well, I know full well what is and what should never be.

GRADE: 1 puke out of 5

In My Place 281

October 8, 2026. 40.0732, -75.06921. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

she said, "i love that smell"

and i do too

nature v nurture

i don't know why i love it

it's in my bones

she loves it because she is growing up here

it's all she's ever known

it will one day remind her of home

maybe that's the same for me

i smelled it here when we opened the car door

to see the house for the first time

and maybe we live here now

because it smells like home

to me too

Never Seen It #338: Bodies Bodies Bodies

"My mom has a blog." "Oh, my god. I'm so sorry, that's really serious. Mental health is a really serious issue. I mean I've never actually said this to anyone but... I am watching 500 movies I've never seen before." "Oh, my god! Shut the fuck up!"

Bodies Bodies Bodies

2022

Halina Reijn

Thanks to all those who watched a movie and wrote about it! See our thoughts on this most recent movie below.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kait

I don't have too much to say about this movie other than I enjoyed it. I liked the fun twist on a classic whodunnit. There was some satire and jokes that made me laugh out loud. I particularly enjoyed them grilling Alice about her two-week "boyfriend" and how they all assumed "vet" meant war veteran. I did find myself a bit bored at times, and I don't know much about Gen Z or all the chatter about different generations, but I imagine this movie was saying things about that. Overall, good fun.  

Oh, and then I found this trivia on IMDB and had to share because I think this pretty perfectly sums up the movie: 

Amandla Stenberg (who played Sophie) sent a direct message to New York Times film critic Lena Wilson via social media following the publication of Wilson's review for Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022). The message responded to Wilson's characterization of the film as a "95-minute advertisement for cleavage." Amandla Stenberg wrote, "Ur review was great, maybe if you had gotten your eyes off my tits you could've watched the movie."

3 pukes

~~~~~~~~~~~

Sam

Sorry, I'm trying to get this on paper quickly because I forgot about it. Getting to Joe after deadline won't make it any more coherent, but I want to finish this up before I have to put my child to bed. (I also want to included in the review.) 

In general, I tend to cut artists around the same age as me more slack. I usually get their references, I understand the cultural background in which they are commenting upon, and our senses of humor align. Additionally, I really like murder mysteries. Those two elements should have pushed this over the top and created an all-time Sam-pleasing movie. 

And it was not the case! I guess I'm slightly older than the people in this film, so the difference between me and them created enough of a chasm for me to be annoyed rather than relate to the jokes at their expense. I also didn't quite care enough about the final girl to root her on. 

That said, the twist did really work on me. It might've even justified and excused the plotting and irrational actions of the characters. Maybe that would shine through more clearly on a rewatch. 

3 pukes 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Allison

A dark horror comedy written and directed by women where all the men die in the first 30 minutes? I can't explain how badly I needed this. The movie is fun, and I had fun watching it. I'm not a huge horror fan; I like spooky, but I don't like jump scares, and Bodies Bodies Bodies struck a nice balance.

Other thoughts:

• That cast was good, but are we done with Pete Davidson now? Can we be? I would have liked more Lee Pace.
• The use of light was very effective, with most of the film lit by ambient light and cell phones. The film plays up that feeling that you get when you shut the lights off and have to run up the stairs before something gets you.
• The film keeps you guessing like a drug-fueled Agatha Christie novel. It remains clever while telling you exactly what it's doing. "Playing Bodies Bodies Bodies [the game] is a bad idea, because we always end up crying."
• I don't know why Circle Slap was a part of the game, but I'm glad it was. Sometimes I miss my twenties.
• I know Azealia Banks is pretty problematic, but my god, "212" is such a great track. Sometimes I really miss my twenties.
• A few issues: Everyone's phone was charged enough to last the night? Jordan has a headlamp, Greg has a go-bag, but they don't have enough handheld flashlights? Was that little mirror light really enough to drain the car battery?
• The reveal at the end, showing Pete Davidson dying in the most Pete Davidson way, is silly and satisfying. It is truly the only logical explanation. These friends were toxic backstabbers, but not literally. Until, you know, they were...

4/5 Bodies

~~~~~~~~~~~

Gary

This movie proves that TikTok will kill us all. 

And Then There Were None is my favorite book. I've read it probably a dozen times. And I can't help but think that this movie was based off the same concept. 

SPOILERS AHEAD.  

I want to start at the end. As someone who is obsessed with horror movies, this was an ending I actually didn't see coming. I always have a running theory that the person in most horror movies that the audience is supposed to see as the victim is really the killer. So I fully expected that to be the case. 

The acting in this is probably the worst part. Maybe the writing. Wait. Definitely the writing. As I said, the ending was surprisingly spectacular. But there were so many things that just didn't add up. And I probably just overanalyzed an absolutely bonkers horror/comedy. But things just didn't make sense. 

Why were they so trusting of certain people and not of people they knew for years and years? The fact that multiple times when someone died, who they supposedly knew for years, some of them didn't even care. The fact that Pete Davidson may somehow have been the best actor of everyone. And that's saying something. How much drugs and alcohol can someone take in one day and not pass out? 

To that last point, Jesus Christ. I get it. Everyone, outside of the guy, is supposed to be in their mid-to-late 20s. But they just KEEP doing shots and lines. And everyone just kind of walks around like everything is cool. Xanax for shits and giggles after ten shots and a few lines? Why not? 

I know. That's not the point. But it was pretty ridiculous that the only result of any of this was really just Pete Davidson biting his girlfriend's lips. 

Obviously, paranoia came into play. But it just felt a little nuts. 

Having said all that, I surprisingly loved this movie. It's like a crunch wrap supreme. A fantastic idea, great execution, awful acting, and terrible writing. 

3.5 likes and subscribes out of 5

Helpful hint: if you enjoyed this movie in any way, highly suggest watching It's What's Inside on Netflix.

~~~~~~~~~

Joe

This was one of the funniest movies I've seen in a while, which is NOT the reaction I would've expected. In fact, we originally queued it up because Pam was itching to watch a scary movie ('tis the season), and, without knowing anything about this movie (besides Slayyyter's place on the soundtrack, more on this in a second), I would've totally assumed it was a horror movie. It's more of a murder mystery, but even that mystery has a punchline that I was delighted that I did not see coming. Interesting to watch this back-to-back with In the Heat of the Night, since I walk away from both with the same takeaway: though there is a murder and people are trying to solve it, the murder and its solving are so totally besides the point.

Okay, so what was "the point"? I was originally saying that the point was that it was a who-done-it with a twist, that they spent the movie trying to figure out who the killer was and it ended up that there wasn't a killer at all. But I read that this was a late change in the script, and originally there was a killer, so I'm hesitant to say that this was the point. Though it is cool, I'll admit. It says something about how we are so conditioned to believe that there are nefarious forces outside of our control that are motivated to bring about our downfall, but in reality, it's really our own flaws and our own choices that will bring about our own demise. Either that, or it was just really fucking satisfying to see Punchable Face Pete Davidson cut his own throat with a samurai sword.

No, I think the "point" is more to poke fun at a certain type of person. I don't want to say "Gen Z" because it's not that simple. I think it's more accurate to say "terminally online people." I understand that the Venn diagram between the two sets of the population has a very large overlapping middle section, but it would be unfair to leave out my millennial peers, who are often just as "online" as people younger. It's something to do with an age thing regardless, because of the humor involved here. It moves quickly, the comedy, which I'd classify as a "newer comedy" or "younger comedy" thing. The punchlines are zippy, and many of them have to do with themes that feel younger. Like this quip, as an example: "David was a dick, but his politics check out." Something felt very true (and thus hilarious) about the idea that, even in the midst of a supposed murder mystery, someone would be concerned about a peer's politics.

I'm not saying that Bodies Bodies Bodies is reinventing the wheel here. There are comparisons to be made to other movies from recently or from long ago—my favorite was Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a classic in the genre of "get people in a room together and let 'em verbally duke it out." What this specific film brings to the table is sense of style (fascinating to spend so much of this movie without the lights on) and sense of place (only people my age and younger could come up with an idea as dumb as "hurricane party"—yes, I've been to one before). And an extremely sharp sense of humor.

As sort of a postscript: what to make of how we got here? I don't think I would've heard of this movie (nor subsequently placed it on a list of films I've never seen before) had it not been for the pinpointing of Slayyyter as part of this film's world. I think if the hook is gonna be "kids these days!", then there's really no better choice than Slayyyter. As I said above, it's not that Bodies Bodies Bodies is a fresh idea, it's more that it takes existing ideas and blends them up in extremely novel ways. That's basically what Slayyyter does too. She's taking all the sounds that you might (credibly or not) describe as "iPod music" from whatever time period that is (mid-to-late-aughts, I guess?), and making them feel fresh and new. There is no such thing as completely original at this point, but if you twist something skillfully enough, you can make something that feels original anyway. I am convinced enough to call Bodies Bodies Bodies one of the more original movies I've seen in quite some time.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

~~~~~~~~~~

GROUP AVERAGE GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5

Video record yourself attempting to cut open a champagne bottle with a sword in the comments below!

(NEXT TIME: We do a quick little week full of movies that share a theme of "transportation," starting with the immortal Snakes on a Plane.)

In My Place 280

October 7, 2026. 39.95408, -75.16687. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

Something about, I don't know, submerging into the depths of the city, a cement cavern that will take me away to parts unknown, something like that, I really don't know. I'm not a poetry guy. That feels like a task for other people. Choosing the right words carefully to describe a particular feeling. I feel like I can get the same outcome from prose, or maybe I'm just lazy. I keep saying that this is all practice for something, except I don't know what. Practice for the next thing I write, which will be the real thing; this is just practice. It doesn't count. Go read poetry if you want the real stuff. This is just some fake bullshit about the stairs into the concourse into the tunnel for my train home. There's something there, but not here, because I'm still practicing.

A Year of Blind Spots: Recovering the Satellites

Joe is working through a list of albums that he considers "blind spots," i.e. albums that he's never heard but feels like he should.

There's a music genre called "big music." I think I've written about it before on the blog (though, unfortunately, its generic name makes it impossible to adequately use the search engine to find), probably in the context of the Waterboys, whose Mike Scott coined the term originally. It refers to a specific type of rock music that is explicitly built to sound "grandiose" and "stadium-ready." Specifically, it is used in the framework of '80s British rock bands who sang songs you could reasonably call "anthemic." The Waterboys, Big Country, and U2 are the bands most likely to be cited when talking about this niche genre. But the influence juts out in both directions, into and away. You could say that Springsteen's heartland rock fed into what "big music" could sound like; you could say that Arcade Fire's indie rock heyday was the reincarnation of "big music" as we understood it years later.

Personally, "big music" as a definition is the closest explanation I've ever had for why music is important to me, why it makes me feel the way I feel. I want my music to be grandiose and anthemic. It's the easiest and best way to hit me square in the heart. Consider those aforementioned '80s British rock bands to be the only "big music" bands feels reductive to me. No, I think about big music whenever I listen to an artist whose music feels big. Even when they are '90s American alt-folk-pop-rock band. Even when they are Counting Crows.

A lot has changed since I covered Counting Crows' debut album, August and Everything After, in this column. Back in August (I know) 2022, I was saying how you needed to understand that this is lyrics-forward music to get into this band's sound. Is that true of the debut? Maybe. Such an argument, though, totally ignores the fact that "Mr. Jones" is one of the greatest, most anthemic songs of the entire decade. Earlier this year, for personal reasons, I checked out their third album too, This Desert Life, and I will say that this is when Counting Crows (non-"Mr. Jones") clicked for me. The music felt fucking BIG.

I feel the same way here, on Recovering the Satellites. Like, to the point that I think Counting Crows are probably one of the best bands of the 1990s, any genre. This is not such a revelatory thing to say, I guess, since they've sold 20 million records and are, in some respects, a household name. However, I'd argue that it's revelatory in the context of this blog, or at the very least for me personally. I was familiar with the hits on the radio, they faded to the background like so many rock hits from minivan stereos in my youth, and now it's only in middle adulthood that I'm waking up and looking around and feeling shocked to discover that I can dive deep into this band and come away thinking that this is an offshoot of Big Music, my favorite.

It probably comes down to Adam Duritz, if we're being honest. His vocals are unabashedly balls to the wall on every song. During their heyday, which was peak Gen X and peak irony, I'm sure Duritz's quality of singing heart-on-sleeve was the source of mockery. But as I try to push the sins of my ancestors to the side and approach art honestly and irony-free, I am finding that Duritz's vocals are what drives my immense feelings about Counting Crows' music. Some of the songs on here dip into alt-rock, some of them are more in line with the folky roots rock that you'd expect them to cover, but regardless of what the production sounds like, Duritz singlehandedly makes everything feel big.

"Angels of the Silences" and "Children in Bloom" goes hardest for me. Apparently the former was a big radio hit for these guys? I didn't remember ever hearing it before now. Regardless, these are the ones that feel the "hardest," as in "hard rock." Adam Duritz is up for the task! I legitimately forget that Shrek 2 even exists when I listen to these songs! And then you have something like "Have You Seen Me Lately?" coming immediately after "Children in Bloom" that keeps the tempo up. They don't keep the pace the whole time, like maybe something like "Another Horsedreamer's Blues," but see, this is what I'm talking about. Even when they are ROCKING, Counting Crows sounds like "big music." It sounds important, essential. There's something in the sauce, and it's tasting really good.

The song that has been getting the most play on the internet and the blogs over the past couple years is "A Long December." I remember Nike Stratis pushing hard for this song somewhat recently. Maybe a little too hard, because now I'm seeing it pop up in conversations of "is this a Christmas song?" You know the answer to that (it's always "no" if you even have to ask the fucking question in the first place), but still, interesting to see Counting Crows reenter the conversation in the 2020s in a niche interest sort of way. The whole thing makes me maybe not take the song as seriously, but even this proves my point. "A Long December," even if overrated due to circumstances beyond my control, is a fucking BIG song. Big mostly because it's deep in its sadness and wistfulness, which is big in its own specific way.

I suppose there's a chance that you are reading all this assuming that I am exaggerating. I am not. That's just what happens when I try to describe "big music" as a genre. It sounds too big to be true. But it's not! As for you: it's not too late. You too can fall (accidentally) in love with Counting Crows, the Biggest of the '90s alt-whatever bands. I have, and it feels good. Blind Spot filled, now time to explore the rest.

Listen to the whole album here:

In My Place 279

October 6, 2026. 40.07896, -75.08157. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.

I would love the shade

but I would be afraid of

the day the trees fall

Would that they'd stand forever

Would if I died before them

Tramps like Us: High Hopes

A complete run-through of Bruce Springsteen's discography, written every once in a while by Joe.

I'm a big fan of second chances in art. There is literally nothing stopping anyone from creating something and then creating it again but better this time. The idea attached to such an act is something akin to redemption. I know I can do better... so how about this?

On High Hopes, Bruce Springsteen takes two songs previously released—at least one that we have already covered in this very column—and "reimagines" them. I don't think he would describe it as "making them better," but that's really what it is, when you get down to it. "The Ghost of Tom Joad" was, as we talked about when we reached that album, a song that was forever thematically relevant, but musically lacking. So here, Springsteen keeps its relevance intact, and simply makes the song musically better.

He gets a do-over. That's what High Hopes is all about. "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and "American Skin (41 Shots)" (originally a pre-9/11 single) are here in muscled-up form. There are also a bunch of songs that were outtakes from previous recording sessions, including the title track, which was on a random EP from the mid-'90s. And then there are two cover songs, including "Dream Baby Dream" by Suicide (which is, on a personal note, probably going to signal my own do-over, when I have to rectify my callous dismissal of that band from the throes of alcoholism).

The question might then be: does Bruce Springsteen need a do-over, an opportunity to make previous works of art better? This is Bruce Springsteen we're talking about, so the answer is probably no. But that's from a present-day perspective. We're now officially over 25 years into his bonafide "resurgence" period, when he recovered from whatever the '90s were and hooked back up with the E Street Band and went on a tear the likes of which your modern-day classic rock artist has rarely seen. He survived the threat of becoming a has-been and instead became a certified legend. So it's easy to say now that he didn't need do-overs, that he was just fine getting through the wilderness and coming out the other side.

But I think that's harder to stay if you're staring down the barrel of the gun around 9/11, even after The Rising kick-started the revival. And even a decade-plus after that, when you spend the entirety of the '00s and early '10s suddenly becoming prolific, and you take a breather collecting some odds and ends, I think even then, it's easy to worry that the chinks in the armor are going to grow and take over the otherwise sterling legacy. You might enter the 2010s starting to think: fuck, dude, what the hell was up with that Bruce's '90s output? Is Tom Joad even listenable at this point? And that's frustrating as fuck, for reasons we've explained already. Tom Joad is crucial to understanding Springsteen's outlook on life, but it is egregiously inessential to understanding Springsteen's musical output. So here's where he mends.

Cherishing the purpose and mission of High Hopes does enough for me to temper the mild disappointment in the actual songs. I would say that maybe 50% of the songs here are good (some great), while 50% of the songs are not good (some terrible). Even the bad ones, though, are all part of the process. If this column is designed to tell the entire story of Bruce Springsteen through the music only, then hearing what he has to offer in this odds-and-sods collection is mandatory. I love what he's trying to do by telling his story in this particular way. That the music is occasionally lackluster is mostly besides the point.

Probably worth going over the songs I don't like, even though, again, my dislike of individual songs is not disqualifying for the album. "Harry's Place" is interesting in the way it acts as a dark mirror image of "Mary's Place" on The Rising. I also might liken it to "Outlaw Pete" from Working on a Dream, in that Springsteen was playacting in the cowboy western genre for that one, and he switches to playacting in the gritty noire genre for this one. And, like "Outlaw Pete," it's sort of lame, sort of embarrassing. I will also cop to disliking "Hunter of Invisible Game" a lot. Yes, I watched the whole ten-minute "short film" that acts as the music video for this one, and sure, it's artsy and interesting, but the film could be 100 goddamn minutes and that wouldn't change the fact that it's a dumb song.

Those two songs actually hearken back to something we were talking about with... ah gosh, which one was it again... I guess it was Human Touch. It was during my time listening to that album that I realized that there were a fair number of Springsteen songs whose choruses were just a phrase (which incorporated the title) repeated over and over. I don't mean that to be a blanket criticism, despite the fact that it was first articulated in the blog column entry for what is most likely known as Springsteen's worst album (not sure if I agree at this point, but that's not the purpose of me bringing it up now). I think it's a tic that exposes a bad song, but otherwise fits just fine into good songs. Like, you don't hear me complaining that the main hook on "Thunder Road" is "oooh ooh ooh oooh Thunder Road, oh Thunder Road, oh Thunder Road."

That's where I land in my criticism of the two aforementioned bad songs, "Hunter of Invisible Game" and "Harry's Place." I would probably include "Just Like Fire Would" in this category, if it wasn't already a cover. It's actually not a bad song, per se. I think I just tend to not take it as seriously because of the homonym (I always hear "just like firewood," which is even dumber). We can talk about bad songs all we want, but let's not forget the overarching point of this album we're talking about here: redemption. Who knows when "Harry Place" could make a comeback. Maybe the E Street Band is elevating it during their tour right now! Probably not, but ya never know! It's possible!

Wouldn't it be funny if Rage Against the Machine reunited and ended up being the ones to reinvent "Hunter of Invisible Game"? That's basically what happened with "The Ghost of Tom Joad," after all. Rage was playing that shit in concert, having connected with its message, and thus doing some requisite upgrading to make it fit the patented Rage sound. And then, when Little Steven was off doing his Sopranos-esque Lilyhammer, Rage guitarist Tom Morello filled in on tour, and then eventually played guitar on a bunch of High Hopes songs.

"The Ghost of Tom Joad" made it clear before the two rock legends made it official: these were kindred spirits, politically speaking. In fact, Springsteen played Morello's "Power to the People Fest" literally three days ago as of this publishing, where they performed "The Ghost of Tom Joad" together, and where Morello confessed that he did not vote for Kamala Harris, which is... not something were gonna get into here. I'm not saying these guys are the same people, and make the exact same decisions politically, but I do see them as being on the same side of the political fence, their music both framed in the tradition of the proletariat, the working class. It makes sense that their music would intertwine here, and stay intertwined until the present day.

Even if Morello wasn't here, we'd be talking about politics, with "American Skin (41 Shots)" seeming like a pretty important piece of Springsteen's beliefs and values system. I think maybe I was hit a little harder by this song than I might have been otherwise because it was already on my mind when watching In the Heat of the Night in the same week. It really is interesting, though, to hear through song the incident that radicalized Springsteen about this sort of thing. Amadou Diallo was murdered by police in 1999. I felt this way in 2016, when Philando Castile was murdered by police. This song makes sense to me on that level, even if senseless murders like these will never make sense.

In terms of reinvention and redemption, I think it's fascinating that this song was originally released in the early months of 2001, and we are hearing the first studio version of this song, released thirteen years later. It's fascinating because of what happened in between. It was NYPD that murdered Amadou Diallo; it was the NYPD FOP president that called Springsteen the f-slur in response to the song. Sweaty NY mayor Rudy Giuliani condemned Springsteen too (somehow managing to not say the f-slur). And then 9/11 happened, and then The Rising happened. Springsteen's career trajectory swerved.

So let's think for a moment about what might have happened to Springsteen's career if the Twin Towers were still standing on 9/12/01, if some well-meaning New Yorker hadn't yelled "we need you now, Bruce!" out of his car window as NYFD sifted through the rubble at Ground Zero. Would he have continued to press the points made on "American Skin"? Without the wildfire patriotism that irrevocable altered art in the earliest years of the 21st century, I think that Bruce Springsteen would have continued to push boundaries, would've dug deeper, and either imploded like his would-be peers Rage Against the Machine or became more of a niche legend. Think about all the Republicans like Chris Christie who were able to forget about "American Skin" because of September 11th. Might not have been so easy to forget if "American Skin" became the first of many progressive anthems for this artist, and those anthems were heard in a vacuum and not in the shadows of a terrorist attack on American soil.

That's why I'm pressing this point, here in our piece about High Hopes. The studio recording of "American Skin (41 Shots)" on this album serves a few important purposes. Yes, it finally puts to tape the official version of one of Springsteen's most passionate political credos. But it's place here, on the album that explicitly revisits previous statement pieces, and upgrades their music while keeping the message intact, is what counts. Let's gently wipe away the jingoism that sprung up post-9/11 and affected—whether intentional or not, probably not—the artistic purpose of even the comparatively progressive Bruce Springsteen's work, and let's now recall that this is the important stuff. Always was, even fifteen years after Amadou Diallo is murdered. Always will be, even two years before Philando Castile is murdered. The reinvention of this song serves as a reminder.

I like High Hopes a lot because it's got heavy songs like that, but also has dopey throwback songs like "Frankie Fell in Love." Not every reinvention signals redemption. I couldn't find too much info from cursory research (i.e. scrolling through Wikipedia) on where this song is from. I wouldn't be surprised if it was pulled from a demo from The River or something (though we do have other demos from The River coming up eventually, so maybe I'll get answers for us then). What I'm saying is that I don't mean to make it seem like High Hopes is too heavy. There's a lot of Springsteen locked into the classic rock 'n' roll songs that he's been playing this whole time. "American Skin" is important for everyone, but "Frankie Fell in Love" is important for Springsteen fans too.

There was a possibility that High Hopes was going to seem slight in the context of this discography, being a collection of B-sides and one-offs re-recorded, but I don't think it ended up being that way. Even beyond the fact that some of the songs collected here are legitimately important for post-textual reasons, I just think the idea of "clearing the slate" is a crucial one in understanding High Hopes' place in the pantheon. If everything that Springsteen does in the first fifteen years of the 21st century is a reaction to how he spent the last ten years of the 20th century, then High Hopes finds him back at zero. He's exactly even, karmically speaking. It provides some semblance of a fresh start for everything that will come afterward. And when we finally make it through Springsteen's discography proper (only three more albums, holy shit!), we'll get an opportunity to really see what "clearing the slate" looks like, with a bonkers number of archival releases.

Song for the "Tramps like Us" mixtape: "Heaven's Wall"

Stream the whole album below: