November 9, 2026. 39.95461, -75.16623. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
I think if you find yourself blaming handicapped people for an inconvenience you feel, then you should take a step back and consider what inconveniences they are feeling every day. And then take another step back and consider how stupid the layout of the Christmas Village is already, and wonder whether it's even worth it whether you can go into the stalls or not. And then take one final step back, into the street, and get run over by the car that the mayor's valet driver uses to get her to work every day on the city's dime will you're schlepping it on the goddamn train that's late again.
November 3, 2026. 40.07667, -75.08214. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
"Daddy, what are we doing?"
"I have to drop our votes in that box over there."
"Why?"
"We're trying to save our country."
That was two years ago, Election Day 2024, and I honestly believed what I said. By the next day, I felt like a fucking asshole. I'm sure I wasn't alone. That was probably the last time I felt any sort of hope for our country.
I am not hopeful now, but I still vote. I'm still voting like our lives depend on it. But I'm doing so with a crushed sense of spirit. It's all just too much. I was broken two years ago and I don't think I'll ever recover. Now I just vote to survive. It's like having the choice to breathe smog-filled air or not breathe at all. Give me the smog, I gotta breathe to live.
You are probably reading some election results right now, after this blog post is published. I am too. We don't have to talk about it here. But we can if you want. I'm just warning you that I'm gonna be completely joyless about it, regardless of whether our country has been saved for a couple more days or smashed into even tinier pieces.
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)
Max Roach
Drums Unlimited — RC Week 215 — 3.5 pukes out of 5
M'Boom
1979 (exact date unknown)
It's tough for me to ignore the stigma I sloppily attached to Max Roach's jazz during my last and final outing at McGillin's, but I get there with M'Boom, because it leans in hard toward the percussion of it all. This album is 100% comprised of men hitting things (the drums are truly unlimited now!). Absolutely no blowing, just hitting. This is my shit. I should've done this one for RC instead. Ah well. I actually think that Roach should've went farther. Eschew the xylophones and marimbas, and let the amelodic rhythms take over. Though I acknowledge that maybe there would be even less of an audience for that. I just love when musicians hit things, it's my favorite. You don't need to know which songs are good or which songs are bad. You won't be able to tell the difference. They are making songs from hitting things, how much more of a description do you need? You're either in or out. I'm in.
GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5
(Follow-up)
Jalen Ngonda
Come Around and Love Me — RC Week 247 — 3 pukes out of 5
Doctrine of Love
June 5, 2026
We've written about Greta Van Fleet on this blog a fair amount, and I think about them often. Just the idea of an artist sounding exactly like an older artist. This is a rock band from the 2020s that sounds exactly like vintage 1970s Led Zeppelin. Some people hate that, others like it, some are like me and just kinda shrug and appreciate that more music that sounds like music I already liked is being made today. I wonder if this phenomenon stretches past the genre I like so much (rock 'n' roll). Are there country artists who sound exactly like Garth Brooks? Are there jazz musicians who sound too much like Miles Davis? Is there an R&B artists who is aping Aaliyah? With Jalen Ngonda, we basically have the reincarnation of '60s soul artists. He's bringing that Sound of Philadelphia back to the masses. And, like with Greta Van Fleet, I shrug, because I don't see a problem with this at all. I fucking love those soul bands, the stuff that dips into doo-wop. Those fucking four-part harmonies that came spilling out of the Sigma Sound building 60 years ago. Jalen Ngonda is doing that. Sounds just like it. He is doing the opposite of reinventing the wheel. It's more like he's leaning so far into that original sound that it becomes original again just because of the balls it takes to release an album that sounds like this in the year 2026. Consider me fully invested at this point.
GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5
Of Montreal
Freewave Lucifer f<ck f^ck f>ck — RC Week 336 — 2 pukes out of 5
aethermead
June 5, 2026
The Bandcamp description almost immediate compares this newest album to three of Of Montreal's best (or maybe more like three of their only good ones), Hissing Fauna, Cherry Peel, and Lousy with Sylvanbriar. I felt sad at first, especially because the blurb immediately pivots to say that Of Monteal does NOT repeat itself, never, not ever, never never. Whereas we all know that this is untrue. aethermead sounds like an Of Montreal album. This is mostly a bad thing, because "Of Montreal album in 2026" is one thousand layered retreads. The most I can ask for at this point is that the album features actual songwriting, as opposed to schizophrenic noise labeled as "art" (this is basically what the RC album was). This newest album features songs, which is an amazing start. I think that it sounds tired and I don't think that you can do the thing where you're like "it's the best album since whatever the last good album was!" (probably Lousy with Sylvanbriar, to be honest), but I do think that it meets the most basic requirement. There are songs here. Verses and choruses. Attempts at hooks. Freewave Lucifer set the bar extremely low, and Of Montreal easily clears it here. But I still wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the RC alumni requirement. I'm glad I'm here, though. I want to be here for when Of Montreal drops one last classic. I don't know when it's going to happen, but it will some day, probably years from now. "Already Dreaming" is far from the best thing they've ever done, but it's a song that makes me know that there's something in here, way deep down, and that some day it's gonna suddenly burst to the surface, and we're gonna be like, holy shit, here it is, the final last gasp of a once great band that's been on hospice for literally decades. I can't wait. In the meantime, something like aethermead is bearable at least/best.
GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5
BIG|BRAVE
A Chaos of Flowers — RC Week 281 — 2 pukes out of 5
I don't knowwwwwwwww. I don't know what else to say! How fucked up would it be to say that I was disappointed to hear that the titular "grief" that the band was exploring was not actual experienced grief, but more so the idea of grief? Of course I'm glad that guitarist/vocalist Robin Wattie wasn't experiencing grief. That would've meant something bad happened, some terrible loss of some kind, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. But it gives me less to go on when listening to this album. If it's about a theoretical grief (and a theoretical hope), then the sound remains, quite simply, extended noise exercises. Which is cool if that's what you need. Hey, maybe someone experiencing grief found a way to listen to [throws a dart at the board] "skin ripper," with it loooooong droning guitar notes, and gained from it a sense of closure in their grief, or like some way to cope, protection within the noise, whatever! Just something! Because I'm listening with all my might here, and I don't think that there's actually anything to pull from this thing. You can, which speaks to the power of art, that you can pull from literally fucking anything. But I'm saying pull something from in grief or in hope without anything other than the music. You can't. It's just noise. Which is fine. That can be art! That's not what I'm saying! I'm just saying that I struggle to even know what the fuck this is! And so how can I critically assess it!!
GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5 (the 2-out-of-5 grades keep coming until morale improves!!!!)
(Random RCAA News)
As promised, we present to you an update on the Macklemore concerts to support a free Palestine, and we present it in this space because, as suspected, RC alumni Kneecap showed up as one of the opening acts at the opening night show in Ireland (saying at one point "We'd like to thank [RC alumnus] Ed ["Not Complicit"] Sheeran for organizing this concert"). RC alumnus Hozier was there too! The call on this blog to all those who agree with Macklemore's message of peace and love as well as action for those Palestinians who are being slaughtered by the Israeli government remains open: HERE is the link again for Gaza Soup Kitchen, if you'd like to take action like friend of the blog Macklemore.
Sufjan Stevens played some live music, apparently the first time in about eight years.
Hum is going out on tour, including a stop in Philly. I guess I didn't realize that their drummer had passed away about a year after RC covered them. I'm adding Bryan St. Pere to the RC In Memoriam list. R.I.P.
Eric Harm is a current full-time member of Titus Andronicus, a former fulltime member of Titus Andronicus as well (2007-2015), and he provided some vocals for the RC album The Will to Live. Now he's releasing a solo album, and +@ mastermind Patrick Stickles is producing.
New Brunswick hardcore band Taylor Swift was, for some reason, inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, despite not being of the genre that they typically induct. But that's the power of New Brunswick hardcore band Taylor Swift, I suppose. They are all-encompassing and ubiquitous.
"My Chemical Romance Bow to Pressure from the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders"
This is angry music, and I think that's part of the appeal. I personally find it appealing, just assuming I don't think about it too much. If I don't think about it, and just let it act as a conduit of anger, then it's helpful in processing emotions. It's enjoyable, even. How fun, to listen to an album of music that might reflect how you feel in small moments of the day, when the world's great injustices press upon you and make you, ya know, angry. Why not lean on a '90s nü-metal rap-rock album to soothe your angry soul?
But then I start thinking about it too much, and I ruin the moment. I start thinking about why I'm angry, and about why Fred Durst et al. is angry, and come to the conclusion that, no, I don't think we're angry for the same reasons. Which punctures the balloon a bit here. There's a difference between being angry at something specific and being angry at everything. Anger at a specific thing, especially when it's something you should be angry about, can be useful, as the anger spurs action. Anger at everything, or anything, is the other side of the coin from being angry at nothing, i.e. just being angry. I get the sense that Fred Durst's anger, in not being directed at anything in particular, is just an irresponsible way at processing anger over not understanding anything, at being too stupid to understand how the world works and, from within that ignorance, lashing out at that world, with anger.
Because, note that he doesn't actually explain what "my way" is, on the song "My Way." "Just one more fight about... a lot of things" he stupidly sings on this stupid song. But he's stupid enough to think that, in his ignorant, he has a right to browbeat you into accepting the world as he sees it. What is he fighting about, or fighting against? What is he so angry about? He never says. And that's to Limp Bizkit's detriment. It's okay to be angry. There's a lot to be angry about. But if you feel anger and you don't know why and can't explain, then that's a fucking problem. It then becomes a matter of either humbling oneself and asking for a better education on subjects that are important to you, or bravely accepting mental health services to address a feeling within you that you can't explain. Pushing people away and refusing to back down and being angry at everyone for no particular reason? Not healthy, man. And not a message I can condone in my nü-metal rap-rock songs.
It's actually not that hard to discuss specific things that might cause the reaction of anger. There's a lot going on in the world that would induce that particular emotion. I feel anger sometimes. I feel anger at injustice in the world. I see kids starving in my own city and I lack the agency to feed them all, while our federal government actively harms by taking away resources. I read about kids getting blown apart across the sea, starved and burned and murdered, so I get angry about specific incidents of that happening, as well as the inaction of people who shrug their shoulders and say, hmm, well have you ever considered that we, the citizens living under the oppressors, are the real victims, and not the kids being murdered by my government? That all makes me angry. And you could get angry at the fact that I'm typing this, on this blog, which is another form of inaction, of useless anger. But at least it's specific anger, which is my point here. Limp Bizkit seems incapable of describing specific reasons to be angry. The anger on this album is oblique, useless, and stemming from a place of obliviousness about the world and how it operates and how we exist within it. It's anger as a symptom of being confused. (Where's the Epimemeologist when you need him?!)
The easiest way to avoid this particular pitfall when you enter the world of assholes that look like starfish covered in poop chocolate is to... avoid it. Ignore it. Bask in the ignorance, and just let the anger fuel bliss. Which is fine. This is a safe space, here in the realm of music and the sub-realm of music criticism. Limp Bizkit's bizness should not inform the way you live your life. Perhaps it can enhance it, by giving color to the specific anger that you feel. You can feel angry in responsible ways and you can enjoy the irresponsible anger of Limp Bizkit and you can use their anger to withstand your own. You don't need to adhere to their principles, but you can harness the energy and use it for good. In order to do this, I would recommend listening to the song "Getcha Groove On," a song that makes explicit the plan to take the anger that you feel and use it as an excuse to forget about the world around you and just take it easy for a little bit. You can lose yourself in the unrighteous anger of watery hot dogs, allow yourself to be unburdened by the righteous or unrighteous anger that you feel all the time, and accept, just for a little bit, that some things are out of your control.
It's probably unfair to ask Limp Bizkit to show their work anyway. They have no obligation to make clear what they are angry about, and their being unclear about it shouldn't affect the value of the art. I think I am just getting caught up in the idea that there are so many angry people in the world today, and so many of them have no fucking idea what they are angry about. Plus consider the number of ways that propaganda can provide misinformation about sources of anger. It's like (e.g.) you feel anger because you hurt your lower back, and get access to health care through the Affordable Care Act, and then somehow end up directing your anger at the President who made the ACA happen. The anger is real and warranted but misdirected through ignorance and propaganda. I am afraid that Limp Bizkit is fueling this anger too, the misdirected kind. I just can't bring myself to trust the American populace to interpret the purpose of Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water responsibly, to not take this anger here on this album and use it to justify their own misguided anger. I don't know.
It's also not my responsibility to worry about how other people interpret art, so I'm in the wrong here, probably. And it's also not really Limp Bizkit's responsibility either. They made the album and once it hits the shelves, it's out of their control. If people want to listen to it after getting really angry about having to vaccinate their children and think "wow, Fred Durst is angry, just like me!" then there's not really much anyone can do about it. From a harm reduction standpoint, I suppose you could even make the argument that it's better for someone to listen to Limp Bizkit for all the wrong reasons then to, say, shoot up a school. Like if people need Limp Bizkit in order to mirror their own ignorance, and that makes them feel at peace in a fucked-up, confusing, anger-inducing world, then have at it!
Not all of these thoughts that I've written about so far are kind thoughts, and many of them betray a general sense of anxiety I have about the state of society. I want you to know that I do have empathy for all humans, including those who don't see the world how I see it, and those who don't care to ever learn anything about the world or themselves. I really do appreciate the idea of someone finding this particular album and finding peace here. That would be the best case scenario. I like the idea, mostly, of finding peace in camaraderie, in finding common ground with others and using that as a springboard to a better understanding and eventually to real action. It has to start somewhere. Why not start at Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water?!
If I'm choosing one song from this album that might exemplify the ideal, I'm choosing "Rollin' (Urban Assault Vehicle)," in which Fred Durst teams up with DMX, Redman, and Method Man in an ode to perseverance. (My woke bonafides constrict me from saying that this is a "good" song, mostly due to the celebratory use of the r-slur, but if we could please, for the sake of the argument I'm about to make, gently put this very real and warranted criticism to the side, temporarily.) Like, if we're talking about anger in society, and how many people are ill-equipped to deal with this very real and warranted emotion, then maybe we can look to such a song as this and use it to gather an action plan.
A key lyric is literally "breathe in and breathe out." That's good advice! Better advice? Keep rollin'. Keep goin'. Keep existin'. Keep fightin' the good fight. Keep stickin' up for what you believe in. Even if there are people out there who are going to doubt you, belittle you, write mean blog posts about you, you gotta keep rollin'. And the best advice? That we can do all this together! Think about what it took to get these rap titans on this goofy-ass rap-rock band's album! They are working together. There are a lot of differences between Fred Durst and DMX, but this song finds the commonalities. They are able to join together to acknowledge that the world is tough to live in and that all we can do is keep going. It's the power of togetherness that this song effectively makes clear. We can only survive if we work together! Keep rollin' together!
And so... I thought a lot about this album throughout the week. I will say that the music mostly annoyed me. Not a fan. Some moments of levity, for sure, but also some moments that induced eyerolls. That's nü-metal for ya. That's rap-rock for ya. But through it all, I can say that one thing that it didn't make me feel was anger. The worst albums that we've ever listened to in Record Club make me fucking angry, and I didn't get that here. Now, whether that's a sign that I approached the album initially without anger or if the album's messaging was effective in reducing my anger to nothing, I don't know. Maybe it doesn't matter. I wouldn't listen to this album again by my own free will, but I ended up appreciating it for what it was, and was glad to spend time with it, and consider it seriously. And I think if you're still angry after listening to this album, then there was nothing any music could do to help you to begin with.
6. So satisfying when the Aussie accent comes out on "so."
7. Absolutely belongs in the 10 Things I Hate About You soundtrack. Kat Stratford downnnn.
8. Not the vibe you'd expect from the title!!! (Reminds me of his previous "One of Your Girls" 😭)
9. I see what you did there, you cheeky little rascal! Jazzy!
10. Troye stays putting out the HORNIEST videos. Sometimes they're sad AND horny. As one YouTube commenter wrote, "what a glorious day to have eyes." And ears, for that matter!
11. If "No YOU hang up" was a song.
12. WHY LRD?
Closing thoughts: Some lovely and silly highs with some skippable lows. I'm glad Troye Sivan is making music for the masses. I'd take his version of cowboys over the slop on country-pop radio. Stay glittery, y'all.
*The world seems to be at an excessively high level of hating women right now. Sure, that's been the case for most of western/Christian civilization for all time; it's just feeling extra potent. I'll take all the diva worship I can get these days. The bar is in hell when it comes to men showing up for women. Y'all don't need to write a song for us, but maybe tell your friends/coworkers/gym pals/the guy next to you on the bus to shut the fuck up the next time they say something demeaning about the better sex. I promise you, the opportunities ABOUND. THANKS.
Stop saying that, you're making me mad! If you know your letters you can blog. You just don't know you can blog. I watched 500 movies I'd never seen before with some of the stupidest children God ever put on the face of this earth, and all of them could blog well enough to find a name on a tombstone.
Driving Miss Daisy
1989
Bruce Beresford
I suppose the first time I became cognizant of the existence and reputation of Driving Miss Daisy was around the time Green Book won Best Picture at the Oscars. This was 29 years after Driving Miss Daisy won the same award. And I guess there were some people who were making comparisons between the two, since they both involved a central relationship that involved two people with different skin colors, one of whom was driving the other one around as a job. A little blog called Puke on Your Birthday did its best to sum up some of the controversies surrounding the way that Green Book presented the issue of race, slightly before the movie won the big award, so you can check that out if you're bored.
The phrase that sticks out for me in that summary (from a publication called The Root) is "palatable racism for white people." I'm reading that phrase now for the first time in a while, and I'm wondering whether it applies to Driving Miss Daisy too. It probably does. It does a better job explaining why these movies won Best Picture than it does explaining whether either movie is a good movie or not. I think that Driving Miss Daisy was a good movie, but I'll be the first to admit that this might have been because I am white. I don't think I'd say I like it more because the racism was "palatable," though. I mean, we literally just watched In the Heat of the Night. The racism portrayed in that film was deeply unpalatable, I'd argue, and that made it a more interesting film, and a better one overall. You could even tell that Driving Miss Daisy was aware of it, because there was one scene that felt like it was inserted for just this very purpose, where the small-town cops dropped the N-word... but, ya know, softly, as Hoke and Miss Daisy were driving away, to no threat toward either of them.
The film does not mean for us to question the portrayal of Hoke. I was not surprised to learn that many critics of the film consider it to be a racist portrayal. That theory would go that Hoke, a Black man, exists solely as "tool" for the white Miss Daisy, that he is never fleshed out as a character outside of that relationship, and that his subservience (his constant "yes'm" and all that) was a bad look. I won't say that it wasn't concerning, and I won't say I disagree with it. If I wanted to disagree with it, then that would be racist. I don't want to disagree with that theory, and I think it's an extremely valid takeaway, if that is indeed your takeaway.
Perhaps it would have been a better film—less palatable, more interesting, more in line with modern expectations—had Driving Miss Daisy gone out of its way to question the characterization of Hoke, had attempted to grapple with his subservient role in Daisy's life, had given him anything else to work with in his life beyond his job as a Black servant for a rich white lady. As with all movies, there's not much I can do beyond shrug and agree. It's easy to talk about what a movie is; it's harder to talk about what it should have been. (And for what it's worth, Green Book does actually go into the "questioning" of it all, so, for its still many flaws, I think that Green Book was at the very least slightly more responsible with its subject matter.)
Putting what the film should have been to the side, we can ask, well, what is this film? What is the intended point? I think its intentions are pure, even if the execution is flawed. I think that Driving Miss Daisy's point is to portray two people who are very different, and watch as the pressing weight of time drives them together, tangles their lives together, and ultimately exposes the goodness in humanity. Viewed through an anti-racist lens, Daisy is labeled a racist, despite her low-simmering questioning of racist beliefs. She says early in the film "I am not prejudiced!" She doesn't treat Hoke like shit because he's Black, she treats him like shit because she treats everyone like shit. You can see how 1989 audiences might find this enlightened, but it circles back around for 2026, who view this as just another form of racism.
Another key to unlocking what they were going for here is the conversation that Daisy and Hoke have about Daisy's upbringing. An underlying behavior trait for the rich Miss Daisy is that she is ashamed of her wealth. Not enough to give it away, but enough to bristle at any mention of how much money she has. She's quick to point out that she came up poor. This is intended, I think, to level the playing field between her and Hoke, like, they can relate if they both started from the same place. Again, I don't think that plays well with a 2026 audience (I know so many people who insist that their middle-class upbringing was closer to poverty than it actually way), because we know that Daisy and Hoke did not, in fact, start from the same place in life, and to claim as much would be to deny the structural racism that resulted in Daisy becoming rich and Hoke becoming a butler. But I'm just trying to see things from the filmmaker's point of view. Did Driving Miss Daisy achieve what it wanted to achieve? Maybe.
It's the attempt that counts, I'd argue. The film attempts to drive a line connecting Daisy and Hoke through their experiences in the lower class, economically speaking. It's not really the same thing, but in this world, it is. And I could see maybe this film being helpful—despite the argument's one great flaw, yes—to someone who is struggling to relate to someone who has a different color skin than they do, and realizing, through Daisy and Hoke, that it's not actually all about skin color. Maybe we can say the problem here is that they go too far in the other direction, and occasionally refuse to acknowledge the differences in skin color at all (the "colorblind" argument that is so antithetical to anti-racism). The true answer is that it's both.
Beyond economic class, the film also attempts to draw a line between the two characters in that Daisy experiences prejudice through her identity of being Jewish. There's the scene where she can't go to synagogue because the building has been bombed. In this way, I think there really is a connection between Daisy and Hoke. Is the film clumsy in the way that it goes about drawing that connection? Sure. The bombing feels like a convenience for the plot, in the opposite way that institutional racism is ignored for the convenience of the plot. Both forms of prejudice very much exist, both in this world and in the real world.
Maybe you are part of the audience of this film in 2026 and you have personally experienced antisemitism. I'm particular sensitive to this subject since it was implied, on this very blog, that I'm antisemitic (and then, in private, that my actions and beliefs would be antisemitic if I wasn't deemed an exception by the implying parties). You can take all that how you will, but I know that my beliefs—seeing the world through the lens of the oppressed—very much make me supportive of any parties that are prejudiced against, including Black people and Jewish people (and, of course, Palestinians who are currently being murdered by the Israeli government). At the end of the day, Driving Miss Daisy was connecting the two based on those prejudices that both characters experienced, and I think it was a worthwhile attempt.
I think what this all comes down to is how you take that scene toward the end when Daisy tells Hoke that he is her best friend, and Hoke shares the sentiment. To like this movie means that you feel that this moment is earned. To not like this movie means that you feel like it's sentimental hogwash attached to a film that has to bluster its way toward that conclusion by ignoring a whole bunch of heinous shit. I do think that Driving Miss Daisy did a lot of ignoring, but I think the most egregious was how long it kept these characters apart, emotionally speaking. I think that it built its case well that Daisy and Hoke would indeed eventually realize that they are best friends. But I think that enough happens that this realization occurs much sooner. There's no reason for Daisy and Hoke to be eating dinner in separate rooms, each very much alone, for as long as they did. There's no reason that Hoke should be left out of the Christmas celebration without either character acknowledging how sad it is, that a cold door is closed in his face.
If we're talking about "conveniences in the plot," then this is the biggest one. It was convenient for the two characters to ignore the truth about each other for so long. It was convenient for Daisy to take such baby steps when everything was there to allow her to take leaps. It was convenient that those baby steps were portrayed as larger than they actually were, to underline the point that she was "not prejudiced" in her mind. Ultimately, I think the fact that Driving Miss Daisy was so fucking obvious with the point it was trying to make saves the film from being a complete racist mess, but also dooms it to being lesser than, a film that has good intentions but doesn't hold up to the scrutiny of time and social progress. If we're talking about "whether I enjoyed it" or not, then sure, yeah, I enjoyed watching it, but Film Club is about what happens afterwards, when you think about it some more. I've thought about it some more, and I don't know if it can hold the weight.
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5
NEXT TIME: A conclusion to our planes, trains, and automobiles week with Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
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.
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.
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.
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"
October 5, 2026. 40.07506, -75.08421. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
How many board meetings did it take to move the trash can from the front of the building to the side? Was the subject header of the Outlook invite "new anti-homeless initiative" or something? Not saying that Wawa executives have a fiscal responsibility to treating the hoagie-eaters of this city with any respect, but I do think that we, as human beings, maybe have the moral responsibility to consider what it means to have people begging for change in front of the Wawa, and to maybe come up with a kinder solution then "let's take away the structure on top of which they keep their food while they beg." Like maybe there's a better solution to keeping our neighborhoods safe than paying a cop to play Candy Crush on his phone next to the deli counter. I don't know. It's easy to talk the talk like this. I just don't have many solutions that allow me to walk the walk satisfactorily. Walking the walk would be a group effort, large-scale and long-term investments in the well-being of our community by ensuring basic needs are met. Which isn't something we has a human race have figure out yet. Don't mind me, I'm just eating a shitty soft pretzel and minding my own business.
A column about music, and about how the music informs our lives. Today's author is Joe. See the previous songs HERE.
"Downtown"
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
from This Unruly Mess I've Made
2016
Let's survey the history of Macklemore on this blog. I won't try to be cute about it; I'll tell you why I'm doing this right here at the beginning. I've been thinking about Macklemore because he was kicked off of Ed Sheeran's stadium tour, for reasons that bothered me. When I'm bothered by something, I usually turn to the blog, as one might do with their own diary or journal when attempting to explore their emotions surrounding a particular subject. I'm trying to "get to the bottom of it," as they say. Why does something that happened to Macklemore in the year 2026, at least fourteen years past his cultural and commercial peak, perturb me so?
September 2, 2026. 40.07308, -75.06953. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
Occasionally, say at family parties, with specific people who will not be named here, I'll hear an argument like "my kid isn't going to college, he's gonna just learn how to do a trade," which is fine if that's how it shakes out, but ultimately that argument feels like a masked anti-education argument sprouting from a couple layers of conservative propaganda, like the powers that be talk shit on college and tell you to send your kid to welding school but where do you think they are sending their own grandkids, ya know, but ANYWAYS.
I never had the makings of a tradie. I will say, though, that the one thing that I've always been envious of when it comes to plumbers, electricians, etc., is the ability to make your own schedule. If I was fixing your toilet for pay, I'd force you to let me in at 5 AM. I'd wrap up my day around 2 PM, and use the ensuing afternoon free time wisely. Whoever's picking up this compost bucket usually gets there close to 4 AM. For a morning person, that's the fucking dream. As a white-collar college grad, I think about this every time I'm stuck on the train home at 4:48 PM, another afternoon wasted at the office.
Wrecking Ball probably came five to ten years too early for me, when it comes to the lyrics. When it comes to the music, it hit at exactly the right time. Let's talk about the difference.
In 2012, when Wrecking Ball dropped, I was transition from a bohemian-via-Vegas lifestyle to half-settling into my regular working life. By the time this late-stage Springsteen masterpiece reached my ears, I was commuting into the city on regional rail, working for a car-sharing company called Zipcar. I recall walking from Market Street to Locust, listening to this album. I wasn't a grown-up yet. I had a girlfriend who would eventually be my wife, I had a paycheck and I was scrimping and saving all that I could to pay for house and a wedding, but I also still lived with my parents, I still was spending weekends hanging out with friends at bars without a care, and I still had no fucking clue what the idea "career" meant, or "mortgage," or "retirement funds" or whatever. It was the in-between years.
I was obviously familiar with Bruce Springsteen at this point in my life. Had you asked me at the time (and maybe you could, since I have an eighteen-year-old blog), I might have described Springsteen as "music fit for the summer." This was a primitive understanding, but that's okay. I will never say that I "know music," but I'm always trying to learn more. Time would reveal that Springsteen's music is fit for all seasons. It was pretty easy to assign "Thunder Road" et al. that description though, you gotta admit! But we already went through all that.
What I'm saying here is that Wrecking Ball was my very first look past the days of innocence vis-à-vis Bruce Springsteen's discography. This wasn't music that was made before I was born and thus felt from a different era (of music history; of my life). This was music being made now. It was current, and it was vital. That was a new sensation to me then. I'm really proud to fill in so many of the gaps that I skipped over back then through this blog project, but let's acknowledge that most people's understanding of any given artist is not formed by a deep dive chronologically. I went from Born to Run to Wrecking Ball, and the reaction mainly was: holy shit, Bruce still has the juice.
This is Bruce's "recession album," which means it falls in line with many of his other 21st century albums, where you can assign an easy descriptor to it based on what was happening in the country at that time. The Rising was his "9/11 album," Devils & Dust was his "Iraqi War album," Working on a Dream was his "Obama's election" album. You don't have to assign these descriptors, and if you don't, then there are certainly plenty of options on each tracklist for you to pick and choose from and not think about these political issues. The difference between those other three albums and Wrecking Ball is that the topic Bruce has landed on for this one seems unfortunately evergreen.
It's not just about Occupy Wall Street, just like Occupy Wall Street wasn't just about Wall Street. More generally, it's about class warfare, and it's about the broader picture of the haves versus the have-nots. Billionaires are the enemy, and Bruce Springsteen is attempting to rally those whom he has always had a connection with—the working man, people like me and you—in the battle against those who are trying to crush us. This isn't the first collection of Springsteen songs to operate under that pretense, but it's the first that seems to be working in the present tense. There's a difference between the protest songs of We Shall Overcome (in which Springsteen is taking old songs from the past and applying them to the here and now) and the songs from Wrecking Ball (in which Springsteen is tell you what is happening right this very second, and trying to convince us that it's not too late). September 11th was almost 25 years ago; Wall Street has its boots on your neck right fucking now.
The Stereogum Springsteen ranking I've been following along with while writing these columns was compiled a short while after Wrecking Ball was released (which means that we won't be using it again until we get to some of the archival compilations). In it, Ryan Leas wrote that Wrecking Ball felt too "black-and-white" when it came to the issues it was tackling, as opposed to the more "nuanced" take on, say, Devils & Dust re: war. The decade-plus since has revealed that Leas was premature in his assessment. Yes, it's black-and-white. It always has been, and that's the truth that Springsteen needs to address. Working on a Dream, for all its flaws, grappled with the idea that the Obama years felt like an improvement, and yet there was still so long to go. The Rising was stuck between wanting to support a country that needed support and caution against falling into straight-up jingoism. There's no need for caution within the world of Wrecking Ball. There's no "both sides" to class warfare. Billionaires are a pox on society, and they need to be eliminated (to the illiterate FBI agents reading this post right now: I'm talking figuratively, relax!)
This is what I meant at the top when I said that I was a little too young still to understand what Wrecking Ball actually means. I didn't care about politics, I didn't know what Occupy Wall Street was, I still was operating under the naive notion that some billionaires could effect positive change in this world. I was earning pennies on the dollar from some large corporation that would soon (thank god) spit me out without a care in the world. I just liked the music. It meant something to me, but it didn't mean this. It would eventually. There's only so much we can take before it becomes impossible to ignore. Electing a billionaire pedophile to the presidency (twice) was terrible for our country in so many ways, but at the very least it opened my eyes to how this nation really operated, and I was radicalized, and I, ya know, also came to appreciate certain albums of music as a consequence of all that. There is where Wrecking Ball sits for me, at this crossroad.
I guess we should say that it is unfortunate that Wrecking Ball has aged so well. If only Bezos got the noose and we all lived in peace and harmony in a society that focused on making sure everyone's basic needs were met, then maybe this album would feel outdated. But that's not where we are, so Wrecking Ball has aged well, because it's still relevant today. Perhaps more so. I'm talking about theme, of course, not the music itself. But to my ears, the music has aged well too. That's why it's important to talk about my own experiences with this album, though. It could just be the cloud of nostalgia hanging over the music for me, which always improves an album's standing within the mind of that nostalgic person.
I think we can all agree on a couple of things, though, even if you're just hearing Wrecking Ball for the first time in 2026. We can certainly agree about the two classic cuts from this album, "Land of Hope and Dreams" and the title track, adequately capturing the full might of Bruce Springsteen's talent for epic drama. The former has basically Clarence Clemons' final sax solo, and the latter has another amazing "1, 2, a 1 2 3 4!" If you're burned about Bruce Springsteen getting older and not being able to replicate "Born to Run" on every track, then you'll find comfort here. You can possibly add "We Take Care of Our Own" here too, in terms of "epic songs." I think the guitar chords at the beginning of the song (and album) are designed for us to think that way. I also think that it's a direct callback to the sardonic nature of "Born in the U.S.A.," in that it sounds patriotic but is very clearly the opposite of that, all of which elevate the stature of "We Take Care of Our Own" in my mind.
We can probably all agree, I think, on the trio of stompers that make up the stellar deep cuts on Wrecking Ball—"Easy Money," "Shackled and Drawn," and "Death to My Hometown." All of them have a similar feel of "boots on the ground" in the way they move. All three are addressing similar plights. All three are incredibly passionate about what is happening now, and why that's fucked up. I might be reaching, but it's hard to see how you could dislike these three songs. Maybe you want more Max Weinberg drum fills? Wrecking Ball is not in E Street Band mode, and it's better for it.
If we're talking about "aging well," then we need to discuss "Rocky Ground." From where I'm standing, this thing has aged the best out of any song on the tracklist, if only because it was far and away the most critically derided at the time of the album's release. I remember this clearly, people having an issue with there being a rap verse on a Bruce Springsteen song. I probably fell into this mindset as well, at the time (if there was proof on this blog either way, I'd show it, but there's not, as far as I could find). I was young, and I didn't have the capacity to take a stand on something like this.
But I have that ability now, and I will say that, from where I'm standing, "Rocky Ground" is a triumph of inclusion. I keep saying "class warfare," and that's on purpose. If there is an us-vs.-them, it's not in terms of race (as the rock-vs.-rap division very often implies), it's in terms of class, the people who have everything vs. the people that they are stealing from. And we need everyone, even those who want to hear hip hop in their music, to come together. Ah shit, I don't know how to word it without sounding hokey and patronizing, I'm sorry. I do believe this, though, that Springsteen was trying to knock down divisions, and I do think that including Michelle Moore's verse was a purposeful way to do that.
Not only that, but Wrecking Ball came out right before the onset of the streaming era. Soon after, streaming would provide every regular listener with the entire collection of music history, and throughout this period, genre walls would start getting knocked down, and people would stop caring so much about what is "supposed" to be in a rock song. It all gets blended. With mixed results, sure! I'm not necessarily interested in young hip hop artists using emo music to create cloud rap, for example. I'm not interested in listening to it, I should say. But I am interested in it in theory. I'm interested in "Rocky Ground" in the same way, how Springsteen foresees the genre-less future and gets a jump on it, critics be damned. I also like "Rocky Ground" as a song, and think it's catchy, so there's that. I'm just saying that critics were way too quick to pile on this song. It's aged beautifully.
I am not quite there yet on my journey, but I'm far enough to be able to confidently claim at this point that Wrecking Ball is the best Bruce Springsteen release of the 21st century. The music is there as it usually is, and the lyrics get truer as we take another step each year toward self-destruction. It makes me think back to the apocrypha regarding the inspiration for The Rising, how the towers fell and some guy rolled down his window yelled at Springsteen that "we need you more than ever." That might have felt true at the time, but we didn't actually need Bruce Springsteen to address a single terrorist attack. In Wrecking Ball, though, Springsteen finally meets the moment when we need him. If his legacy is that he is a musician speaking to the heart of the working man, then this is the moment—2012 and also now—when the working class is being systematically eradicated, and we need him to sing to that. He does so on Wrecking Ball.
Song for the "Tramps like Us" mixtape: "Death to My Hometown"
August 11, 2026. 40.07803, -75.08236. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
Zoom in to see the threat, and then wonder with me about how better the world would be if people weren't trained to be so afraid all the time. Last week, I told the story of the old lady coming into our house and said how proud I was that we had our door open for our community and were able to get her help, and a family member was like "well what if she had come in aggressively?" And I'm like, but that's literally not what happened. If I had the mindset of that family member, I'd buy a gun and shoot any old lady that came near my house, or at the very least threaten anyone who gets near the fire escape of the apartment you're renting. Doesn't seem like an emotionally healthy way to live, but that's just me.
August 2, 2026. 38.99256, -74.79718. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
Remember when they tried to ban canopies from the beach? This was in Wildwood, the backwards fucking shore town that I've somehow found myself visiting every year of my life. The jabronis who live here year-round love to bitch and moan about the beach, and I guess a few years ago they looked around and saw that the rapidly shrinking beach was being increasingly covered with large tents, and, ya know, instead of attempting any long-term change, like voting for responsible environmental policies, they instead kept voting for the pedophile and then attempted to just make sure people didn't have shade on the beach. That ban lasted half a summer (I think this was like 2023ish), and didn't even last until I finally got down here with my own cabana. As I type this, I don't have sunburn. I've only seen one pedophile flag in town so far, none on the beach, and also only one nazi flag (a.k.a. the thin blue line-style "American" flag). Maybe these people are starting to realize they fucked themselves. Or maybe they just don't care anymore, which is probably worse. Anyways. It was a good beach day.
