"Why do you want this? To watch 500 movies you've never seen before?" "To be acknowledged for who and what I am, no more, no less. Not for acclaim, not for approval, but, the simple truth of that recognition. This has been the elemental drive of my blog, and it must be achieved, if I am to live or die with dignity."
Bicentennial Man
1999
Chris Columbus
Thanks to Sean E. for picking his Already Seen It film for this quarter, and sending a prompt on how I should respond to it. Now powering up Sean-Bot 2000:
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I just rewatched the movie. I first saw it during an E**** Family Friday movie night. We rented the movie from Toms River Video, not that corporate giant Blockbuster!
A few thoughts for you to respond to (in no particular order):
In futuristic movies, it is always hysterical to see what new technology exists and what old technology persists. Credit cards are now credit discs, but there are still paper checks! They have walking, talking androids, but people still drive their own cars!
Many companies, especially in China, are now producing humanoid robots. The big AI companies keep saying we are close to generalized artificial intelligence (what I assume Andrew has). Do you think we are close to the world in the film, or do you think all these "new" technologies are more hype than science fiction come to life?
What does it mean to think and how is this different from what generative AI does (i.e. predict)?
Why don't you think this movie did better when it came out?
Did you know that this movie is based on a novelette by Issac Asimov (book club alum)? He also wrote I, Robot. Interestingly, Bicentennial Man and I, Robot exist in the same universe... Thoughts on a remake of both movies?
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I think what I worry about—this is Joe, doing the human thinking and human typing—is that someone could watch this movie in 2026 and wish that something like ChatGPT or Claude could be like Andrew in Bicentennial Man. Or that someone might misinterpret what generative AI does, thinking that the predictive text in the "chat" is actual intelligence. "It's possible! Look at Andrew Martin!" I don't think I'm making things up here, I'm being serious. There are people like this. They walk among us.
But that's creating a villain out of nothing. Actually, hold up, was there a villain in this movie? I like that there wasn't. There were roadblocks that our protagonist had to overcome, but there wasn't any one person who was facing off with Andrew. Bureaucracy is the closest we get to a villain, I guess? But even then, it was right for the government to question whether Andrew was human. They didn't have the benefit of seeing his growth throughout the centuries. The world leaders were basically asking another version of the question Sean asks above: what does it mean to think? That's a different question then "what makes us human?" I believe that something like a pigeon has the ability to think, but not make decisions based on higher levels of functioning, i.e. morality... I guess? I'm just thinking out loud here. That pigeon argument could be applied to someone like, uh, our current president. I believe that he has the ability to think, but I don't believe trump to be human.
There's a version of this story, of course, that has the android Andrew Martin learn to think and feel and it amounts to him being an evil fascist or something. That's a vastly different movie, and I'm glad we got this one. A robot who knows how to think and gradually becomes more human is a more unique story. It's so easy for me to hate on AI, and I believe in the depths of my soul that it is evil and that it is a pox on society. It's harder for me to imagine the fictional scenario in which artificial intelligence discovers his own soul and becomes one of us. But this is a nice family-friendly Chris Columbus movie, which makes it easy, and pleasant, and fun.
Is the opposite version of this story what I, Robot is about? I saw that Will Smith movie years ago, can't really remember much. I know that I recognized the three laws of robotics when Andrew spouting them off here, and that's probably from I, Robot. I remember that Smith's character hated robots because they followed those rules and it resulted in his kid drowning or something. I remember Shia LaBeouf beating the shit out of a horde of robots with a baseball bat, and it's this final memory that makes me think that I, Robot probably had robots turning evil. They learned to think and feel and that's why they were subjugating humanity, right? That feels like an easier story. A more satisfying one, sure—this is probably the only time in my life I wish I was Shia LeBeouf, so much would I love to bash a robot with a baseball bat—but a less challenging one. I like movies that challenge my beliefs. Feels like a more worthy endeavor.
I don't think you'd be able to remake either movie without addressing the AI thing. I'd like to think that my own view on the subject is pretty representative of the "common man's view." I will unfortunately also report that I believe that I am a fucking moron, willfully undereducated on AI and what the fuck it even is, an extreme reactionary on the subject (for good reasons and bad). Would I trust a Chris Columbus type to make a Bicentennial Man that appropriately and intelligently addresses this very real concern, without being smirking or winking about it? No, I do not.
We can just be happy with what we have here. A nice, pleasant, optimistic look at the future from the perspective of the late-20th century. It's an engaging film. It moves with finesse through the different eras of Andrew's life. I never thought anything felt forced, not even Andrew falling in love with his old master's granddaughter. I also thought that it was cool to see Robin Williams in non-manic mode. He's not as annoying as, like, Jim Carrey when he's going off-the-wall chattering. I'd choose Genie over Ace any day of the week. But I liked another view of his range. If the whole point is that this robot has depth, then you need an actor who can portray that, and I thought Williams did a great job.
As to why it didn't do well, commercially or critically, at the time of its release... this isn't really a new theory for me, but I think that the '90s were too hip and cynical, Gen X too invested in irony, that they weren't really interested in a heart-on-sleeve story about a corny-ass robot. It's "lame" to ask big questions, to follow a protagonist who is kind, to allow a story to reach its natural Hallmark greeting card conclusion. I would like to think that there is less time for putting up walls like that, here in in 2026, and that we as a society (or at least me as a person) are more willing to engage in stories that just make us feel good. I can never love this movie, because it is lame, but I like it a lot, again, because it is lame. I'm comfortable feeling good about myself and about my world. It's not high art, but I don't need high art every single outing. Feeling good can feel good too.
Then again, it's harder to feel good as "artificial intelligence" becomes a ubiquitous part of our culture. It will never reach the level that Andrew reached here, but the fact that there are people even trying, and the fact that society seems to be obsessed with that particular fool's errand, to all of our detriment, means that Bicentennial Man managed to catch us at the very last moment that we could ever feel good about any of this shit. I appreciate the film for its timing more than anything.
GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5
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NEXT TIME: Group outing with After Hours, make sure you get in those surveys if you want to join us in October!
September 7, 2026. 39.97166, -75.19625. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
If you zoom in, you're gonna need this: NSFW.
This is the reason that Blogger makes these photos such low quality, because they knew some fucking dude who still uses Blogger would make a photo-of-the-day project and post a picture every day and at some point in the first 250 days post an image of two monkeys fucking on top of a climbing tower at the zoo. So they started reducing the quality of the photographs, to make you really work for the sight of those two monkeys fucking.
But they're there, if that's your thing.
I don't know how much the kids comprehended about what was happening. Willow used the phrase "they're kissing," and it's possible the Catholic school schoolyard whispers have taught her more than that, I don't know. I tried saying "they're probably fighting," but I don't know if any of the kids bought it; that bit is pulled from a deep memory from Shelbourne Street when two stray cats were fucking in the backyard and my sister started crying and saying "mommy they're fighting!" I don't know how old I was at the time, but I recall thinking that the cats were fucking and that my sister had hilariously mistaken the situation.
I'm not, like, concerned about any of this. It was actually pretty hilarious. Jokes were made that would really push this blog post into NSFW territory, so I'll stop while I'm behind.
Enjoy the pic!
Oh and this one too. The monkey put in some hard work and collapsed on the floor in exhaustion, while his monkey pal high-fived him. No lie.
The name of this mixtape is an inside joke for two people who have never read, and probably never will read, this blog. The week before my wedding, I realized the band we hired wouldn't have enough playing time for the entire event. So I made a playlist, and it was all like Motown/R&B. Then I gave my cousin access, who's very much a sorority-girl personality, and she added American pop. Then I gave access to my spouse's cousin, and she added Punjabi pop. It was a great playlist. I honestly don't think that a wedding DJ would have done a better job, because we had people dancing the whole night. Both of these songs made it on the playlist, and neither of the other two playlist contributors had any idea who the Chi-Lites were, but they both loved Beyoncé. —Gloria
"Let Me Clear My Throat" by DJ Kool
from Let Me Clear My Throat, 1996
"Hollywood Swinging" by Kool & the Gang
from Wild and Peaceful, 1973
"The 900 Number" by the 45 King
from The 900 Number EP, 1992
"Unwind Yourself" by Marva Whitney
from It's My Thing, 1969
I used to think that sampling was lesser art, but in my adult life, I've been fully converted. I love it. I love the way that sampling can tell its own story, and that you can trace a sound's history through the various ways it was used. There was a soul singer in the '60s, and she hired someone to play saxophone on one of her songs, and a dude in the '90s took that sax part and made a whole hip hop instrumental, and then later on that decade a dude in Philly took that sax sample, combined it with the intro to a song from a funk band in the '70s, and used them to rap over and hype up a crowd in Philly, in a warehouse club that I used to bike past the remains of in the 2010s, and that song in that warehouse was recorded, and played, over and over, in so many firehalls and block parties. You listen to "Let Me Clear My Throat" and you hear the ghost of Marva Whitney and the 45 King and Kool & the Gang and DJ Kool and the Delaware Ave. of classic Philly and the Shelbourne Street summers of my youth, all at the same time, thanks to those samples. —Joe
"Bad Things" by mgk and Camila Cabello
from Bloom, 2016
"Out of My Head" by Fastball
from All the Pain Money Can Buy, 1998
I first heard this song (both of them) on the radio. A few years ago, senior PoYB writer Sam pointed out that songs today were sampling songs that were big during our adolescence, referring to the Cabello section in particular. That insight has stuck with me. mgk is an artist that's, like, okay the first time you hear any particular single of his, but then each listen thereafter has rapid, rapid deteriorating value. Even though this isn't a sample or a cover exactly, all you're thinking about is fastball. —Sunny
This is the song pairing from my submission where I like each song and artist featured equally. Treats came out when I was in undergrad. Still, the album cover, with its cheerleader pyramid, makes me feel nostalgic for the start of the year in high school and being at every single football game because of marching band (and also not watching a single one of those games). I don't remember this at all, it wasn't an outstanding memory to me, but my sister says that when I came home from the first football game, I told her and my mom, "It was great! But I must not have been paying attention because I looked up and the scoreboard said that we had six points. I missed them getting the first five." And like, I 100% believe this story because I just had to Google how many points a touchdown was worth—I couldn't remember if it was four or six. So clearly the next four years of school did nothing to increase my knowledge of the most boring game in existence. —Gloria
"Fantasy" by Mariah Carey
from Daydream, 1995
"Big Energy" by Latto
from 777, 2022
"Genius of Love" by Tom Tom Club
from Tom Tom Club, 1981
"What are you going to do when you get out of jail? I'm gonna have some fun!" I'm watching Orange Is the New Black for the first time. Does Piper get better? Does she get any redeeming character development? She's easily the most dislikable character. Everyone else seems to have saving traits but her. I don't know. I just started Season 4, if that helps give context. I also know that I'm like thirteen years too late to be starting this series. —Gloria
ADDENDUM RE: "BIG ENERGY" — I'm at the gym and the guy next to me is playing this on his phone's speaker, which is kind of annoying, but it seems like kismet for this mxitape, so I guess I need to add it now. —Gloria
"Maple Leaves" by Jens Lekman
from Oh You're So Silent Jens, 2005
"Do You Wanna Dance" by the Mamas and the Papas
from If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears, 1966
If you're listening on Spotify, you're gonna get the newer version of this Lekman jam, which includes the violin part lifted from the Mamas/Papas song, but not a direct sample. If you're on YouTube, you'll hear the sample. There are multiple versions of this song. The version that I know and love is from the compilation album Oh You're So Silent Jens, which I received for Christmas one year in high school, and remains one of my favorites ("Black Cab" can be found there as well). But there were "too many clearance issues" by the time we as a society moved to streaming services, and that album and the next one lingered in limbo for a long time, to the point that Jens would be playing something like "Maple Leaves" in concert and younger fans would be like "oh shit, I liked that new song you played!" So what he did was rerecord those two albums, fixing any of those pesky legalities, and so now they exist in altered form on Spotify et al. But I have an iPod, and I still have the old versions, and YouTube occasionally lets fan uploads slip through the cracks, and so here we are. Switch over to YouTube if you wanna hear a vastly superior version of this great Jens Lekman song. —Joe
"Lady (Hear Me Tonight)" by Modjo
from Modjo, 2001
"Soup for One" by Chic
from Soup for One (soundtrack), 1982
I sing this song every time I make soup. Even if I am making soup for more than one person. I am making šaltibarščiai today, which I feel like I talked about on the blog before, but it is like a cold borscht. It's made with beets, sour cream, cucumbers, and dill. You can even have it with a hard-boiled egg or a potato if you want something more special. It's great, and was a summer favorite when I was growing up. —Gloria
"My Name Is" by Eminem
from The Slim Shady LP, 1999
"I Got The..." by Labi Siffre
from Remember My Song, 1975
Kelsey and I were driving somewhere the other week and her phone had control over the Spotify (i.e. we weren't listening to whatever RC was for the week). This came on, and she said "Do you recognize this song?", and I said "no," and then around two minutes I say, "oh, they're sampling rapper songwriter Eminem?" to which she replies "this song is from 1975." That really shook the snowglobe of my brain. —Sunny
"Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" by Daft Punk
from Discovery, 2001
"Cola Bottle Baby" by Edwin Birdsong
from Edwin Birdsong, 1979
Apparently, Daft Punk found "Cola Bottle Baby" while digging through bins of vinyl records, and it just popped out. There's something more romantic about that than stumbling across a sample in some kind of digital archive. I think vinyl sampling is such a cool, hands-on creative process, one that really lets you rework and physically reshape sound. But maybe that's just me; I tend to gravitate toward analog over digital in general. —Gloria
"Big Poppa" by the Notorious B.I.G.
from Ready to Die, 1994
"Between the Sheets" by the Isley Brothers
from Between the Sheets, 1983
Man, I thought that I was done writing things for this mixtape, but I went to two very different bars on two different days this weekend, and this Biggie song played both times. That seems like too much of a coincidence not to include it on this mixtape. —Gloria
"Niños de Infiernos (Hell Boys)" by Charles Hamilton
from It's Charles Hamilton, 2008
"Straight to Hell" by the Clash
from Combat Rock, 1982
A Year of Blind Spots will be covering Combat Rock in a couple days, but in the meantime, you get to hear "Straight to Hell," a pretty decent song from that album, and before it, the ONLY song that has ever sampled "Straight to Hell." I don't know Charles Hamilton all that well. He's a favorite on RYM, that's where I recognize him from, and I've heard some of his stuff based on recommendations from that site. The song is fine too, probably just fine and okay in the same way "Straight to Hell" is just fine and okay. Charles Hamilton, as far as I know, is not a wacko antivaxxer or pals with Alex Jones, so I'm cool with saying that "Niños de Infiernos (Hell Boys)" is the only song that I know of that samples "Straight to Hell" by the Clash. —Joe
"Change in Speak" by De La Soul
from 3 Feet High and Rising, 1989
"Bra" by Cymande
from Cymande, 1972
There are multiple stages with a lot of overlapping sets at Newport Jazz Fest. Last year, I left Cymande's set when they were playing "Bra" toward the end to catch De La Soul, and when I got to the other stage, they were playing this song that sampled it! It was surreal. And I think a big part of this mixtape, for me, is how fun it is to explore the different influences and inspiration artists take from each other and build on one another. Inspiration is everywhere. —Gloria
NEXT MONTH: TBA for the next MMM on Monday, October 5th!
September 6, 2026. 40.07694, -75.08513. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
How infinitesimally small we are in the grand scope of things, just a blip in human history. No one will remember this day, or what I did. It won't matter. Do you think the person or people who sold this building in 17xx ever thought that it would one day be a sushi restaurant? They didn't even know what sushi was, how could they? The thing that I haven't decided yet is whether this idea, this truth, is helpful or harmful. How can I live in the here and now if the here and now isn't real? But how can I give up the chance to be an exception, however miniscule that chance is?
It's the return of the RC Algorithm! Check it out HERE!
You remember this, from approximately 200 weeks ago, right? I made an Excel spreadsheet, and I read through every RC review over the past 200 weeks, marking down every non-RC artist that was mentioned in each review. The algorithm then uses those counts to choose an album for us. The list is reproduced three times, each in a different order—one grouped by artists mentioned, one grouped by author who made mentions, and one grouped by albums that elicited the mention of another artist. For shits and giggles, the fourth group is a full list of all the artist mentions from the past 400 weeks.
During Weeks 399 and 400, we'll be covering the two artists that were mentioned those most since circa Thanksgiving 2022 (Eminem and Lana Del Rey, respectively). Like last time, I didn't include any artist who has already been covered or has since been covered by Record Club (or the Beatles, who aren't eligible until Week 500). I didn't include any artist who was involved in the making of that album (a feature, a backing musician, a production or writing credit, etc.). And I didn't include anyone who I'd just rather not involve in this club for "cancel culture" related reasons (which is not a rule, but a suggestion, and since I was making the damn Excel spreadsheet, I took my own suggestion).
For Weeks 397 and 398, I had our two most consistent Record Club members (Sunny and Nate) choose artists from the Algorithm, and then pick an album from that artist. Which, true, isn't in the spirit of what an "algorithm" is supposed to do, but I'd argue that algorithms can suck my fucking dick, and fuck any algorithm when it's involved in making music choices. You think I'm gonna enjoy reviewing a fucking Lana Del Rey album in three weeks? Fuck no. So for a couple weeks, let's take the power back, and let the people choose the albums.
Anyways, this is just a fun little way to get some Record Club picks in here, especially in the aftermath of our RC Summer Homework project. Hope you enjoy the tunes, and as always, please let us know what you think.
NATE'S PITCH: "Have you not enjoyed the experience of driving around this town? Would you not like to take a spin down Allison Road? I don't know about the second one because I don't think it's on this album. You found about me, as it were. Anyway, listen to it."
JOE'S RESPONSE: "Am I going crazy, or did you pick the Streets album? And Sunny picked Gin Blossoms? I choose to view everything you do as a bit."
NATE'S PITCH, REVISED: "Nah, I probably didn't read it right. Keep this all in. Anyway: the Streets! Perhaps the worst 'great' album I've ever heard, in that its sum so far outstrips its parts. Perfect small story in that it can become an entire worldview. Let us pray."
THE ALGORITHM EXPLANATION: I asked Nate and Sunny to choose an artist (and an eligible album from that artist) from the RC Algorithm, but limited it to artists that were only mentioned once in the last 200 weeks of RC reviews. I also asked that they refrain from choosing artists that were mentioned in a Joe review or a Nate review or a Sunny review, but this was too high of an ask, so we're getting an artist that I (Joe) mentioned in my review for Famoe's 16Bars Rap-Blog EP. It's good to add Famoe back into the fold, I wonder what he's up to? Though this "review" was actually my annual year-end ranking of that year's RC albums, and the Streets were offhandedly mentioned in the blurb about Jamie T's Panic Prevention. (For how I got to be writing about the Streets in the first place, see "Mentions on the Blog" below.)
ABOUT: The Streets is the moniker of Mike Skinner, who was born on November 27, 1978, in Barnet, London, England. The Streets is one of those music projects/bands that consists solely of one member. I suppose you could use plural pronouns for the Streets, even though it's mostly one person. Plus, there are contributors, as there would be on any rap album. But the Streets is basically just Mike Skinner. He started the project in his teens, but started releasing music in the early aughts. The Streets were commercially successful in the UK (and not in the U.S., for the most part), with five songs that hit the UK Top 40 (two from this album), including one number one ("Dry Your Eyes," also from this album). The Streets is considered an artist that greatly shaped the idea of UK rap, and his first two albums especially have been highly influential within the hip hop, garage (pronounced "GAR-idge"), and grime music genres. Mike Skinner retired the moniker in 2011, but brought it back in 2017, and is ostensibly working under the moniker currently.
DISCOGRAPHY: The Streets have six albums total. This is their second. The first was Original Pirate Material. 2011's Computer and Blues was the last one before the hiatus, but after coming back, they have released one more album, 2023's The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light. This doesn't include three mixtapes, and two EPs (a 2022 EP is called Brexit at Tiffany's).
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ADDITIONAL INFO
READING SOME SHIT: a 2020 retrospective that includes some details about the story within this album
WATCHING SOME SHIT:"Empty Cans" live, earlier this year
RECORD CLUB CONNECTIONS: Are we considering this album a hip hop opera? ("Hip-hopera" nope nope, can't say it, too cringe.) Somewhere along the line, we'll have to distinguish between a "[genre] opera" and a "concept album." Feels like a square/rectangle thing. A concept album has a shtick, all the songs are related thematically in some way, and an opera has a shtick, and that shtick is that the album tells one cohesive story over the course of the entire tracklist. I haven't done a good job of keeping track of "concept albums" over RC's history, but I think we can safely say that this is the fourth "opera," unless I'm forgetting something (usually am—it's been seven and a half years!). This album follows The Family Tree: The Roots, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, and Year of the Goat.
I saw that Tame Impala was on one of the Streets' mixtapes at one point. Most of the other collaborators in this discography are UK artists I've never heard of, though. Even on the list of UK number-one hits, the songs topping the charts around the time "Dry Your Eyes" did is a healthy mix of artists that everyone knows and artists that only British people know. Britney Spears was the only RC alumnus to hit #1 in 2004 too (though the 2004 version of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" hit #1 at the end of that year, and that single involves contributions from Gorillaz and Radiohead).
MENTIONS ON THE BLOG: When I search for "streets" using the Blogger search tool, I get 235 results. It's possible that more than one of those is referring the UK hip hop artist the Streets. The only one that I can think of off the top of my head as actually about this artist, though, is Fisher's selection of a Streets song for Summer Song Challenge on Day 59. At the end of that week, I said that I liked the song enough that I wanted to explore this artist, which eventually led me to Original Pirate Material. That album made it to my Top Non-2023 Albums I Heard for the First Time list in 2023 (that's a bangin' list, all hits back in 2023, goddamn). But I never moved past that album, so I'm excited for the opportunity to do so this week!
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RECORD CLUB ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
This week's discography dive album: Remember by Rusted Root
This week's follow-up album:The Mountain by Gorillaz and Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally by Harry Styles, maybe more
This week's keeping up album (probably): Still nothing I'm too interested in downloading, so I'll keep the focus on the follow-up albums, at least until the new Carly Rae Jepsen drops in a couple weeks.
Listen with us! Keep your favorite Record Club artists in the rotation!
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COUNTDOWN:
69 Weeks Until Week 420
about to cross the STREET
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.
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.
They were noted, during those first few weeks of this here Record Club, at least by a few people who aren't necessarily "into music" in a way that some of us are, that CHAI were "weird" or whatever. That misconception has been put to bed continuously over the past seven years. CHAI are, in fact, really fucking cool. Their first album (and last new-to-me album of theirs ever, since they broke up in 2024) proves it unequivocally. Cool as fuck. That breakdown on "N.E.O." feels like something that they could've explored more as the years went on, but I'm glad they were at least having that level of fun here at the beginning. The high pitch of the vocals is not really a concern anymore, now that I've been listening to this band for so long. It sounds natural. It sounds fun. I have trouble telling some of the songs apart, but only because the YouTube embed that I listened to had Japanese language titles. Generally, you don't really need to tell them apart. They are all high energy, and that's what makes them cool. Fuck, I love this band. They will always have a special place in my heart, and I'm proud to say I'm familiar with their whole discography now. PINK feels like it might be their best! Maybe that's just recency bias, or maybe my love has grown for this band enough that the closest album to my ears sounds like their best. Not sure. Right now, PINK is the closest.
Just because something exceeds expectations doesn't mean it's good. You have to first consider where the expectations were in the first place. If I thought that this album was going to be an unmitigated disaster and in reality it was pretty serviceable pop music, then that doesn't mean I liked it. It was fine, it was bearable. I'd rather listen to Hilary Duff coo her way through whatever her and her musician husband slapped together then listen to boring-ass "serious" singer-songwriter croon something that isn't even trying to be fun. Duff's husband did, in fact, work with (and also date, for a bit) Carly Rae Jepsen, so you can use that as a reasonable comparison. The comparison I also felt was Mandy Moore, who is also a middle-aged actress who is making serviceable pop-adjacent music with her musician husband. The cracks show with Duff's product, though, and the cracks are deep. The cracks betray that this is all a performance. It doesn't feel real. I know that's what pop music is, a performance, but I'd like to think the best pop music helps me forget that. The best pop music, for example, would not need to kowtow to our nostalgia-obsessed generation by covering a blink-182 song. Nor would it have lyrics as boilerplate and TikTok-verbiage-informed as this. But that's how it goes here, and as I said, it could have been sooooooo much worse. (P.S. Yo Duff, I know you're out here hamming it up with your vampiric music-industry-destroying ex-boyfriend, stop that shit right now!)
GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5
Jack Harlow
Thats What They All Say — RC Week 171 — 0.5 pukes out of 5
Saying that this is the best Jackman Harlowman album I've ever heard is like being thankful that you got the most treatable cancer. It's still a cancer. It sounds like I'm saying the same thing about Monica that I am about the Hilary Duff album above, but I'm not. That was always gonna be pop music, it was just a coin flip as to which flavor. Harlowman switches up genres completely on us, here on his newest album. I was originally going to say "this fucker set me up and purposefully moved into my least favorite genre!" However, I thought about it some more, and yeah, while I do indeed typically come down hard on R&B in my life, I think I would take R&B over cringey white-boy hip-pop every single time. Jackman Harlowman is taking himself very seriously here, hiring some very serious beret'd Black jazz musicians to play softly while Harlowman mumbles his way though some '90s R&B lyrics (but, like, the basement version of them, e.g. "I wish I could trade places with that lamppost / I like the way you lean on that damn post"). If I HAD to say something optimistic—and I really, really don't, but I will anyway—I'd say that there is credit due for at least trying something different. Sometimes I prefer to be enraged over being bored, but something about Jackman Harlowman gives me palpitations, so to protect my fragile heart, I'll choose being bored today, and I'll be thankful for it.
GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5
Footballhead
Overthinking Everything — RC Week 266 — 3 pukes out of 5
Weight of the Truth
March 20, 2026
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Footballhead is operating in a slightly different genre than they were before too, right? Unlike Jackman Harlowman, Footballhead moved slightly in a direction that I might not have preferred them to move, but that's okay. It's not like Footballhead was making a huge impact on me with their alt-rock jumble the first time around, so why the fuck not add some metal/alt-metal/nü-metal into the mix? I'm not in love with this sound, but like I said above, trying something new is usually enough to hold my interest. This sounds like blink-182 attempting to do Linkin Park sometimes. The latter is a symptom of the overwrought metal-ish stylings, but the former is a symptom of a weak vocal performance. My dude just doesn't have much range. It's all good, though, for real. There's a bunch of people out there for whom Weight of the Truth is right up their alley. For the rest of us normies, it's just okay. Probably more memorable than if they attempted middle-of-the-road alt-rock again. Come on, though, listen to "Used to Be" et al., can't you just picture the dudes in middle school rocking baggy black jeans and wallet chains listening to this shit? I like thinking about it, but only because that's better than the competing thought ("why are we doing this?").
GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5
(Random RCAA News)
Jelly Roll is finally talking politics, and it (surprisingly?) is taking the form of shit-talking trump while guest-hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live. While being anti-trump is by no means progressive in any way, shape, or form, it is at the very least a relief that this jabroni isn't up there spouting MAGA shit, ya know?
Sturgill Simpson played his first live gig in a while, with his band Johnny Blue Skies and the Dark Clouds, a set that included a Talking Heads cover.
At this festival in NY at the end of the month, the second and third days are 50% comprised of RC alumnae, including: Brandi Carlile, Ethel Cain, CMAT, Muna, the Beaches, and Carly Rae Jepsen.
Alanis Morissette is having a rough time with her former tour manager.
September 4, 2026. 39.92273, -75.18484. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
It's the same thing, repeating, over and over, the more I try to break the cycle the more it all circles back upon me. Off to adventures unknown, and I pass a cheesesteak shop, one that I was at almost exactly six years ago, give or take a few days, flip-flop an AM and PM. I think about that year and how it was so different than this year, and yet here I am, in the glow of the same far-off cheesesteak destination, not stopping this time, so many differences, so many, so many, but it still feels the same to me. I try to mix it up but it always comes back to how it was. I try to overcome old fear and shake off old tensions and quash old anxieties, but here they are, again and again. This isn't a complaint, just an observation, how I'll always feel this way and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to break that cycle.
I didn't get a cheesesteak. I can't do that anymore. So there's that, I guess.
BONUS PICTURE: I was hanging out near Purple Orchid, and I still always think of it as Purple Orchid I, even though it's been like 20 years since they shut down Purple Orchid II. Same ol' story. I think about it every time I pass the building that used to house it, and the early blog post it inspired. The more things change...
UPDATE! The comments aren't working. Feel free to email me your comments if you have any, and I'll add them here!
NATE: blogger is not accepting comments at this time, so I share it here: Blue Jays won last night.
JOE: Two double-digit weeks in a row. Very proud of RC this summer. Reading what my friends write is sincerely one of my favorite things in my life, and it makes me so goddamn happy every Friday morning to see 'em all bunched together on this blog. Thanks.
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Original post:
Thanks for hanging out with us this summer in Record Club. I don't have the exact numbers now, but I think that there were probably 30 or 40 extra reviews that came from the constant badgering of people via email. Which is so cool! We love fresh perspectives here at RC.
Give us your fresh perspective for this one. What did you think? Did any of the reviews change your mind about the Strokes, their newest album, autotune, anything like that? Let's chat in the comments, before Labor Day turns summer in fall.
O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
I farmed out my writing this week to anyone I could. If I could play the album around someone I would. If I found someone who just wanted to share their love of the Strokes I hung around and listened. The short answer: it's mixed.
I didn't point this out, but Richard Prince didn't really care much about reality or what it portended, in and of itself. But maybe that's the point, plus the dripping amounts of autotune, to poke at reality a bit.
It's not my favorite album, but the lowest point here clears the bar. Odd heaters like "Psycho Shit" and "Falling Out of Love" work, and simple melodies like "Going Shopping" deliver the band's original promise. By the end of two weeks of listening to it, I land on having a good time.
The soul is not a smithy, the mind not a smith. But the infinite band of life begs for bending; the seeking of color from grey, for color's sake.
What did you do this summer? I learned to crochet, read the entire Game Changer series (well, I'm finishing the sixth book tonight and I need to talk to people about it), had a lovely vacation in Lancaster, saw Death Cab for Cutie in concert, and remembered how to like things again. I also listened to this incredibly mid album by the Strokes.
I'm not too familiar with the Strokes' catalog outside of their big hits. And of course, Julian Casablancas' collab with the Lonely Island, "Boombox," which is arguably better than anything on this album. I like Casablancas' voice normally, but I was really turned off by his reliance on Auto-Tune for most of these tracks. Is this always what the Strokes sound like? It felt both dated and too similar to the garbage uncanny-valley AI-generated music I've been hearing in the wild. Everything else was just kind of boring.
I'm just going to say what we're all thinking: the true album of the summer is Death Cab for Cutie's I Built You a Tower. This blog is a prison!
I found myself in a funk last week. The kind where I needed an hour just to walk around a thrift store to remind myself I didn't need to buy anything and should go home to my family. The kind where I'm asking Goddess cards to sort through my chaotic thoughts. It's a dark, probably hormonal, and empty mental space, dealing with some current family health stuff. My motivation to do much was fleeting—even the Dollar General and Target brought me little joy. Not a lotion or mascara in the land could bring me back.
Then I got my reminder email from Joe about the Strokes' Reality Awaits, and I was immediately "oh, no, I'm going to fail at this, and I'm going to forget, and I'm going to hate it, and it's just one more thing I can't figure out..." Spiral, spiral, little star, how I wonder, where you are. For some reason, out of the spiral, I started to listen to this album.
After "Going Shopping," I fell in like with this album, so I started writing this review. The Strokes have always been on the periphery of my listening ("Last Nite" right?), and I'm sure I've heard their other hits, but this album did something good, if only for the words and sounds I needed to hear in that moment. It wasn't loud, and it wasn't punk, and it wasn't something abrasive. So, for me in that headspace, it was a balm for the soul.
On a relisten, the album is just okay (what is happening with that auto-tuned vocal stuff?), but I am still grateful for the space it gave me to climb out of that other mental hole. When I think about the books I like, as someone who frequently discusses language and writing style, sometimes the vibes just vibe for me. I don't want to over-explore the minutiae (I can do that later), but I just want to exist with the book and how it makes me feel. While I don't know that I would call this an amazing album, for me, in that moment, it was.
Listening to this album was a great reminder for me to continue to do Record Club (I'll admit, I listen to a lot of the albums, but forget to write a review). First of all—wow. Great album. "Going Shopping" was my personal fave.
In my youth, I always felt like bands got worse as they progressed, but at the same time, I stopped listening to bands who did the same thing over and over again. Popular music tends to ebb and flow from overly produced pop to more raw pop sounds. I always viewed the Strokes as representing a specific point in musical tastes, and not a band that would adapt and evolve. The only things I've listened to since Room on Fire was the song "Ode to the Mets," which is a masterpiece. However, it never compelled me to dive back into their new material. This album has compelled me to listen to their more recent work, because they are clearly still producing great music. I'd like to hear what this album would sound like without the vocal filter, but I guess it's their signature at this point.
Side note: I hate the Mets with every fiber of my being, but appreciate that the band are Mets and Jets fans. Gotta love someone who sticks to something.
There's a rap song out now that has been credited to AI. The song is called "RUBBERZ" and it's by a guy I've never heard of named Fenix Felxin'. This is about all I can say for certain. I was going to say the song is "popular," but I really don't know what that means anymore. I hear it when I do psychic damage to myself by scrolling YouTube shorts, but that doesn't really mean anything. No one in my life is talking about it, but that doesn't really mean anything since I only really talk to five people about music. I don't hear it on the radio, but that doesn't really mean anything since the effect of radio play has largely cratered. It's been streamed a lot, but that doesn't really mean anything since streaming is easily manipulated and not necessarily a clean representation of people's interests. I was going to say the song was "written by AI," but I don't really know if that's true either. It certainly sounds like it was sung by AI, and it seems likely to me that it was written by AI, but that's about as far as I can take you.
What does this have to do with the Strokes? Very little. Reality Awaits is perhaps my least-favorite effort from the venerable rock band, owner of two classics, two other great records, and a handful of stinkers. "Band releases its worst album after 25-year career" isn't exactly headline news. However, I thought of Fenix Flexin' and his Claude-Song a lot while listening to this Strokes album because, to me, both of these products are a little odd and a lot boring. This raises utilitarian questions about what one seeks from music. What does it mean for the human-made mediocrity if the machine-made stuff is at the same replacement level-level? I do not consider my argument from the soul, I consider it entirely from the output.
The autotune is fine. Needs more songs is what it needs.
Is it possible for an album to be spoiled? Like in the way a movie could be spoiled, I mean. Does knowing what you're about to walk into ruin the album listening experience? Because if so, I am a victim of this crime. And the culprits? Everyone and their mother who had something to say about this new Strokes album.
Blame it on the algorithm, but ya girl was overloaded with memes and podcast reviews of Reality Awaits the second it dropped. The consensus: "Hope you like auto0o0o0otune!"
Well, I don't. So.
I never listened, and honestly, if I didn't finally give it a whirl through Record Club, I don't think I would've gotten through the whole thing. The first track is brutal.
However, that's all to say, I was glad to be forced (metaphorically) into listening to it in full a few times through. I mean, the autotune is a slog and I really truly did not enjoy those parts of the album at all. The opening/closing tracks and "Falling Out of Love" did absolutely nothing for me.
But sprinkled in there was also some of my favorite stuff from the Strokes in a long time. "Going to Babble On" and "The Fruits of Conquest" were both welcome reprieves from the autotune-overload, and probably the only two that will be new members of the music rotation going forward. (Has anyone else walked around all week singing "I'm a leech" to themselves and worry the people around you, or just me?)
A couple tunes that found bright spots despite their tuney vocal highlights included "Dine N'Dash" and "Going Shopping," but neither really helped sway my tastes too much.
Overall, I'd give the album 2.5 / 5 pukes, almost all the weight of that two and half coming from my favorites. Otherwise, I really like the instrumentals, and could see vibing out to this album when I don't really need to think about it too much. What works is amazing, the rest and majority just isn't for me.
I like the Strokes. That feels like a question when I say it. I like the Strokes? I like the Strokes!! I've listened to this album for what feels like a dozen times, and for the first eleven, I couldn't hear it. I constantly lost focus and let it melt into background music. Over and over and over. But something recently clicked, and now I'm bopping around the subway on my morning commute humming "I did that yesterdayyyyyyyyy..." It's undeniably fun.
I'd have to dive into their discography to say this with any authority but I'm gonna go for it anyway: this album kinda feels like the Strokes doing an impression of themselves. It doesn't have quite the same heft as some of their older stuff. And I understand they're known and loved for those unique distorted vocals, but the auto-tune was out of control on this one.
That said, I hear it more and like it more every time I listen—am I relenting or just evolving? I can't tell. Stay tuned, I guess!
I didn't like it at first, but Reality Awaits grows on you. I think my initial problem with it is that I couldn't get behind the autotuned voice in most of the songs. And I still can't really get behind it. It seemed at odds with the kind of spacey art-rock feel of the instrumentals. "Dine N'Dash" is my favorite song on the album partly because it isn't overly autotuned, partly because it has a very Radiohead energy about it.
But I think it's impressive for a band that has been active for so long to put out something that sounds like a departure from their "normal" sound. I actually wonder if that is why it gets better with repeated listens; I was expecting something similar to Is This It or The New Abnormal and didn't get that experience. It can be hard to drop those expectations that you have for a band and meet them where they are now.
If you ever decide to listen to Record Club on a mini road trip with a child who can read perfectly, but also decided to start saying the word, "Shit" a lot, I advise against it. Nothing like having the text across the giant screen in our van.
Speaking of that magical word, it's perfect for this album. Long gone is "Reptilia," "The Adults Are Talking," and "Last Night." In their place are just whiney songs at a whisper for money. Time to pack it up, boys, before I have a stroke listening to this.
"These are just all songs from the storks." —Vincent
This has happened before, but never so violently. I'm talking about the act of a song (and, subsequently, the album, and, subsequently, the artist) all of a sudden making sense, that great cosmic act of a piece of art that was hitherto tough to parse through suddenly clicking into place and becoming a clear and important part of your world. This happened to me as I was listening to "Going to Babble On" by the Strokes on their 2026 album Reality Awaits at approximately 1:29 PM on Monday, August 31, 2026, on my (estimated) 37th time hearing it. I previously didn't really give it much thought, and then in an instant, and at the very last minute, it became my Song of the Summer.
Who knows why this song, and who knows why now. Those reasons will come later, possibly even by the time I'm finished this album review.
You can start with the fact that it's a good song. Possibly, distressingly, it might be the closest in sound to the Strokes that I was first familiar with two-thirds of a lifetime ago—"distressing" due to this being a sure sign of aging, that the story has stretched this far, that at least one additional generation has grown up with the Strokes, and see them in a different way, and, so I'm told, consider this 2020s iteration to be the only iteration that matters, which absolutely shatters what the gatekeepers have been espousing since at least the mid-'00s about the legacy of the garage rock revival that expanded and contracted before I even graduated eighth grade. Could be that the teenage Strokes acolytes of today pooh-pooh this song as a trite throwback; could be that I'm just a little too paranoid about what the youngs think about olds like me.
They have a point, though. Maybe this shit is the only shit that matters. Yes, even when you include Is This It. See, the whole thing with that (and Room on Fire, and then some of First Impressions of Earth before the wheels fell off) was that these were records ostensibly looking backward. They were a modern take on what had happened already—rock 'n' roll, garage rock, whatever you wanna call it. Skip ahead two decades and what we have here on Reality Awaits is music that looks forward. Say what you will about it—and I'm sure, for a certain subset of listeners, there will be a lot to say about the autotune slathered all over this thing—but you can't deny that it really does sound unique, "futuristic" in multiple ways, and never content to settle. The Strokes have been around a long time, but this album definitively proves that they will not be, and perhaps cannot be, a legacy act.
It manages to be catchy too, but that takes a while. Perhaps that's on purpose, like maybe it's like that scene from that cartoon Spider-Man movie, you know the one, and the kid is trying to prove that he should be kicked out of the smart school so he purposefully answers all the questions wrong and the teacher's like, if you got EVERY question wrong then obviously you know all the right answers to start with, so I'm giving you an A+. Like that, yeah. The Strokes know what the right answer would be—remaking their first two albums, for old time's sake—and so they purposefully scribble in the opposite answer at every opportunity. Takes someone willing to trust in the trickery to see that a test full of wrong answers is actually perfect.
Not that Reality Awaits is perfect. The highs are extremely high, and the lows are pleasantly unobtrusive. Do we need a six-minute autotuned love ballad in "Falling Out of Love"? Probably not. But it evens out with something propulsive like "Dine N'Dash." At the end of the day—and this goes for anyone, not just the Strokes, though the Strokes are pretty devious about it, when you stop to consider it—we're just looking for something catchy and/or memorable. The high-pitched "Dine N'Dash" chorus sells it, because it's catchy. The bizarro section in "The Fruits of Conquest" where Casablancas goes deep for "I'm a leech, I'm a leech" is not catchy, but it sticks to the brain. "Liar's Remorse" is a nothing of a song, but a couple songs later, "Tyrants of the Mellow Moon" manages to make good on the cowboy imagery on the album cover, except for, ya know, the autotune that goes beyond absurd, beyond any robot-sounding bullshit that even T-Pain could ever imagine. Good stuff.
"Going Shopping" is a whole separate category. I like it, I might even love it. If I'm talking about hearing this album 37 times, then I will say that I've heard "Going Shopping" upward of 100, and not on purpose. The thing is that XPN has been playing the damn thing about every 25 minutes for the past five months. I usually have a rule that I don't like to hear or become familiar with advance singles before I listen to the whole album, but XPN held a gun to my head on this one: either listen to "Going Shopping," or not be able to listen to XPN at all the entire spring and summer. I hate the idea of a song curdling from being overplayed, but it was either that or listen to 104.5, which plays Red Hot Chili Peppers twice every 25 minutes.
And the funny part is, it never got old. It actually got better, over time. After watching the video, with Walton Goggins doing a deranged version of Chevy Chase and the Strokes and various supporting members learning Paul Simon's dance moves, my appreciation for the song doubled again. But it also doesn't distract when I hear it in the context of the album. It's good but it's not that much better than the other good songs. I think maybe I've heard it so much that it smashed through the "it's annoying now" phase and went all the way to the "ubiquitous and comforting" phase.
I guess it's spot on the tracklist right after "Going to Babble On" could be a legitimate explanation as to why I didn't get around to being obsessed with "Going to Babble On" until just now. Like maybe everything in my mind gets flushed out when I hear "Going Shopping" yet again. "Going Shopping" feels like a natural extension from where the Strokes used to be to where they are going, whereas "Going to Babble On" feels like a bridge back to what they were known for back then. It's more relaxed. It's cooler, basically. I don't think "Going Shopping" is cool, at least not in the way the Strokes were cool in 2001. Maybe they don't need to be cool anymore.
I didn't think I needed to feel cool anymore either, but my just discovered love for "Going to Babble On" is making me worried. But so there's another path to take here, in trying to explain why it's hitting so hard right now. "Sometimes it feels like the world is just movin' too fast / No one is struggling as hard as you" are lyrics that aren't revelatory, but they feel right, they feel like they fit. I know that there are people struggling way more than I am right now, but there are moments when it doesn't feel that way. It's tough to see the forest around the trees. I get selfish sometimes, like only my problems matter. When I know that's not the case. Hundreds of thousands of people being admitted to the hospital each day, many of them getting unfavorable diagnoses, leaving their families in shock, feeling that whiplash of, like, what can we even fucking do, how can we be helpful here, and I ain't hurting, the world is moving fast but I'm not struggling, it's moving to fast to struggle, something like that. The fact that this relatively simple Strokes song turns my brain into mush and turns this paragraph into nonsense means that it's a good song. I mean, now that I think about it, it really did make me want to babble on about it.
I could think about "Going to Babble On" all day. I could probably do the same for every other song on here, regardless of whether I even like the damn song or not. What I think my conclusion is, based on my feelings about the song that hit me today and the song that leeched onto me through constant listens prior to today and all the potential songs that could wallop me tomorrow, is that there is pretty much unlimited depth here. I've had this album for half the summer already, and now summer is over, and I'm wondering how many more times I could hit repeat and be happy about it. Probably forever. That's some real psycho shit.
