August 25, 2026. 40.08148, -75.0902. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
tryin to split that diff between not having ne responsibility and not lettin it seem like i don't care, cause i do care, i jus don't want the responsibility. don't make me feel good when the kid asks me do you like the cat, of course i like the cat, but not enough that i wuld evr be responsible to take her to the vet, or clean up her shit or whtevr. if you want hermit crabs thats fine just dont expect me to wet the sponge, so 2 speak. im very upfront with my limitations as a person, and im at my limit do everything i can for three kids and a little bit too for all the kids in philly, i jus dont have it in me to care for animals 2, srry
Joe is working through a list of albums that he considers "blind spots," i.e. albums that he's never heard but feels like he should.
The first thing you should know is that the two-part Season 4 premiere of Degrassi: The Next Generation is called "Ghost in the Machine," and it is named after this album (which is itself named after a philosophical idea credited to British philosopher Gilbert Ryle, but the Degrassi episode-naming standard was that each title was named after '80s music, so we know that D:TNG is referring to the Police, not philosophy). Back in Season 2, Paige Michalchuk was raped by a college dude named Dean Walton, and in this two-parter at the beginning of Season 4, the trial is finally called. Paige slowly realizes that the justice system is not going to save her, but she remains steadfast in her decision to press charges in the first place, since this will at least help other women avoid Dean Walton, now that the world knows he's a rapist. Oh, also, Joey asks his stepson Craig for money.
There are no connections, literal or thematic, between this Degrassi episode and the album it's named after, but I wanted to make sure you knew how we got here. The ghost of Paige Michalchuk hung heavy over my experiences with Ghost in the Machine, the Police's fourth and second-to-last album. I think if I were to attempt to explain why, then maybe I'd say a general statement like "you'd think this would be a serious affair, but it's really not" and apply that to both. We don't need to go down the Degrassi rabbit hole, of course, but for the Police, it's an easy explanation. By the time I came of age, Sting was adult contemporary music. Even the one Police album I had before this week, Synchronicity, isn't necessarily FUN. It takes itself seriously. Ghost in the Machine doesn't take itself seriously, and it's all the better for it.
Like, I thought that was part of the joke in The Office, wasn't it? Kevin was the drummer in a Police cover band, and I thought one of the layers of that joke was that the Police played serious music but Kevin in all his naïveté was attempting to turn that music into party music (and the mediocre results in this regard would lead to another layer of the joke, when the dumb-dumb fiancé of Pam Beesly books them for their wedding without consulting his soon-to-be wife). But no, Ghost in the Machine reveals—to me, anyway, since I'm the real dumb-dumb here—that the Police actually did make fun party music. (Unlike Degrassi: The Next Generation, The Office sucks shit, and I would never recommend anyone watch it, but it's relevant here, so I held my nose and mentioned it anyway.)
The big highlights for me are the one-two punch of "Too Much Information" into "Re-Humanize Yourself," both of which feature the saxophone. I think I read that guitarist Andy Summers was a little pissed because it felt like he and Stewart Copeland were the backing band to a pop star, and the supplemental saxophone was named as a culprit. I understand that, and who am I to say, because I am not familiar with the first three albums in the Police's discography beyond the singles. Maybe the "fun" part of the Police, or at least the fun part as I experience it here, was only a temporary blip, and I'm just focusing on that blip right now, and getting the wrong impression. Does it matter? I'm having a fucking blast. I love this album.
The one you all know, "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," is instructive on how I feel about the album as a whole. Every time I hear the intro and opening verse of this song, I think, "this song is going to suck, isn't it?" And then every time that chorus hits, I'm like, "Ah shit, this is fucking GREAT, one of their best songs." It gets me every time. It's because I'm a man who fucks with preconceived notions, and looks out for things that confirm or deny those notions. I started listening to Ghost in the Machine thinking that it wasn't going to be good, that it was gonna sound like the Sting that I hear on the radio, but then I actually listen to the whole thing, and I'm just blown away.
I guess I was also always a little skeptical of the "reggae rock" genre that is typically applied to this band. Mostly because I didn't really hear any reggae within the code of the hit songs that I'm familiar with, and I was a little weary of hearing what skeletons these extremely white boys had hiding in their closet of deep cuts. Crisis averted—it's more style than substance, with the style basically being: cool as fuck. I definitely hear some reggae flavor in the groove of "Spirits in the Material World," and it is so fucking badass. I always assumed Stewart Copeland was a well-meaning nerd, but he's looks like the coolest person in the world when he locks into that groove at the chorus (I'm talking about the video, I should clarify—my iPod is still in the shop, I'm still wearing out YouTube playlists.)
Even when things do get a little serious, like "Invisible Sun" or some of "Ωmegaman," it never goes off a cliff into the turgid. Things are kept lively. And those are the exceptions. "Invisible Sun" moves right into "Hungry for You," which is like strict '80s new wave pop, and then "Demolition Man," which is closer to the Specials than anything Sting would ever do later in life. Even the last song, "Darkness," which isn't necessarily a party, can be chalked up to it being written by the drummer. Very cool they let him take the final slot (speaking as a drummer), but more importantly it's just cool how well the Police balance the profane and the profound on here.
This is a great example of why Year of Blind Spots is functioning in this specific way in 2026. All 50 albums are Blind Spots from artists that I'm already familiar with (and have written about on the blog, mostly but not always in this very column). I'm trying it because all these great bands are out there with unplumbed depths that I just never fucking knew about. I'm coming in here ready to roll my eyes at the Police, and instead I'm finding one of the best albums I've heard this year for this column. If you are looking for something cool and interesting and upbeat and are willing to try ANYTHING to erase the memory of the phrase "Sting and Shaggy," then start here. Or maybe watch Degrassi. Either one.
August 24, 2026. 40.07659, -75.08294. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
Continuing to track the progress here. 30 years from now, two young people will spend their formative years as a couple in one of these apartments, and that's all they'll ever know of this space. They won't be able to imagine that anything else was ever here. I don't have a story, just a picture, which would be no reason to disavow them of that notion. Just a dumb picture of some boring framework to an ongoing building project in the neighborhood.
The sign says to call 311 or even 911 if you view unsafe construction practices. And if you don't see anything unsafe, you can just write on your blog.
A column about music, and about how the music informs our lives. Today's author is Joe. See the previous songs HERE.
"MIXTAPE LINER NOTES VAR. VII"
Frog
from 1000 Variations on the Same Song
2025
What I'm interested in is the idea of the music you listen to defining you in some way. Can you describe yourself with a playlist? There are a few ways of answering that question. The way I'm choosing to answer it today is by thinking of it as a synonymous question to another important one: What kind of music do you listen to?
I have attempted to answer the latter question many times, and I always end up confusing myself. The most accurate and least helpful answer I could give is "everything." It's accurate because I really do believe that I am at the point in my life that I can handle listening to and processing and reflecting on any example of music that could possibly cross through my ears at any point (the blog has helped me immensely in that regard). But that's not a helpful answer to someone who is asking, because they aren't asking about your brain and how it works, and they aren't asking in order to gauge how open-minded of a person you are. They are asking because they are looking for a connection. If you listen to a certain type of music and so do they, then that's something to bond over. If the answer is "everything," then the connection is there, but it's too weak. Either that, or the answer of "everything" gets misinterpreted as "anything," which is a completely different answer, and the worst answer there is. If you're the type of person who says "I listen to anything," then that means you don't actually listen to music, at least not actively, and furthermore you probably don't give a shit.
The answer that is still unhelpful, but perhaps a little less so, is "I listen to indie rock." That's helpful because, if you know what I'm talking about, then you instantly know where I'm coming from, and we can find common ground. But it's not entirely helpful because the genre tag of "indie rock" is basically undefinable at this point, if it ever even was at all. What the fuck is indie rock? Most of the time, I can't say. It's just easier to name bands, but even that is sort of pathetic, because I'm just naming my indie rock bands, and the genre, if it even exists, is infinitely wider than that, beyond my own personal scope of what I know and love.
I read a book over the past couple weeks that attempted to answer that corollary question of "what is indie rock?" It's called Such Great Heights, written by Stereogum editor Chris DeVille, and it attempts to answer that question by tracing the history of "indie rock" from its '90s origins into the near-present. The bedrock of this lineage is that it began as an off-shoot of alt-rock that was playing on college radio and was largely released on independent labels, and as it gained traction and cred, it was consumed by capitalism, basically, and turned inside out, i.e. turned back into the very pop music is originally attempted to counter. That's the most basic outline I can give you. The way the book fleshes out this central argument is by... well, basically just naming and describing a bunch of bands. I'm not knocking the book, that's literally the only way to do it, and I enjoyed the narrative immensely. But it's tough to describe the genre that you primarily live in when that genre is so inclusive that the meaning was lost even before you attempted to describe it.
I think this is actually a solution for me, not a problem. If indie rock at one point meant something, then at another point it opened up so wide that it doesn't mean anything anymore. And that process of opening up accurately mirrors my own personal journey. I started out within the confines of indie rock, listening to the bands of this genre almost exclusively, and then gradually opened myself up to new genres and new artists and new sounds, to the point where my own personal answer to "what do you listen to?" can't possibly mean anything at all.
What I'd like to do today, despite everything I've said about the impossibility of the task, is to attempt it anyway. I want to describe what I listen to accurately, and I want to do so through a playlist. Did you know that this is something people are doing? It's not hard to imagine. "Describing yourself with a playlist" is not a new concept. It's probably been done at least since the advent of cassette culture, if not earlier. But I've run into a few real-world examples of this recently, as I take my own mysterious journey through the weeds of non-monogamy (this post is about music, though, don't worry). In the race to get to know someone as quickly as a janky dating app will allow, a playlist can now be used as shorthand for describing oneself. "This is what I listen to" is another way of saying "This is who I am."
The first time I was presented with such a playlist from an ostensible stranger, I was sincerely disappointed. Our brief conversation prior to that had showed promise, with mention of Frightened Rabbit (one of my all-timers), Tango in the Night (recently written about on this blog), and Motown (fucking duh). But then she dropped the link to her 50-song playlist subtitled "get to know me by my favorite music," and I had a tough time with it. Lots of B-team stomp-and-holler tunes, lots of pop rock songs that were clearly pushed up with the help of algorithms on TikTok and elsewhere, plenty of songs that exist firmly in the post-commercialization of indie rock, and a big handful of songs that I like but that don't scan as cool or hip or anything that I'd use to describe me as a person, even in combination with other similar songs.
You can see the problem. Well, first, the problem is me because I'm a snob (snobbery justified, I'm doing the fucking work to get to know music intimately enough to accurate judge it). But the other main problem is that it is clearly very hard to describe yourself via a single playlist. If my takeaway is negative, then it's either that we don't have compatible views on what is "good music," or the playlist made it easy to misinterpret the type of person that swiped-right pal is (or wants to present herself to be). And neither of those achieve the stated purpose of making a connection via the music.
There were plenty of other scenarios that would have played worse, I think. A step lower than the playlist she had would have been a playlist filled with basic pop music, like 50 songs comprised of Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars and Ella Langley (I had to look that last one up). A step lower than that would be pop music but pop-country, a playlist full of Morgan Wallen and Jelly Roll and Charley Crocket. A step lower than that would be, I dunno, a playlist full of artists I don't listen to anymore because they are sexually abusive? (The playlist that I checked out did indeed have Ryan Adams and Lizzo, but I'm trying to be sensitive and forgiving here, it's tough to share a part of yourself like that.) And then the bottom rung would probably be no playlist at all, because you don't listen to music.
A step above it, however, would probably be artists I've never heard of, but who are operating in niche genres that I am aware of and enjoy (like maybe a playlist full of hyperpop artists or something), shit that's cool and I know it's cool even though I don't know this song specifically. A step above that would be a narrow range of artists, but a depth of knowledge about those artists. For example, if I got a playlist full of Paul McCartney tunes, both the hits and the ultra-deep cuts, then I'd like that a lot, even if Sir Paul, whose music I love deeply, isn't necessarily my number-one favorite artist of all time. And then, of course, the top rung would be a playlist from a stranger full of music that I know and love and appreciate and feels like a mirror for my own musical soul. Doesn't happen too often.
Okay, so I'm going to create my own playlist. That's what I'm leading up to here. But I want to be clear about the what and the why. (I also want to make it clear that I'm not trying to shit on my once-and-probably-former friend, who made a good faith effort to make herself known, which I appreciate so much, even if it's not gonna work out, for reasons related and not related to music. I believe that you take a little something from everyone you've ever met, including in this specific and too-hot-for-the-blog context, and so why not the concept of a Playlist Describing You from this random person I might never talk to again.)
I don't want this be misinterpreted as an attempt at the Top 50 Songs of All Time. If you want a(n already outdated) copy of that, you just read this 2024 blog post (might take you a couple hours). I can love a song without letting it define me. In fact, many of the songs I love have extra gravity in my life because they were found outside of my comfort zone. I don't think "Welcome to the Black Parade" defines me at all, or means anything to me, besides the fact that it's one of the best songs of all time. To think that I am anything like the typical person who grew up with My Chemical Romance would be a gross misunderstanding of who I am and where I've come from.
On the other end of the spectrum, I also don't want this to be misinterpreted as a cool list of 50 random but certified cool songs that I've been listening to lately that you can chill with and "vibe" with or whatever the fuck. I can type a list of 200 good songs in about five minutes while blindfolded right now if you need me to, but the music I put down there would not give an accurate or full picture of who I am. Obviously you're going to find good music on my playlist, but it's been specifically curated for a singular purpose. I chose these songs because they accurately reflect what I like to listen to and what that might say about me.
If I'm going to make the claim that "I listen to everything," then I'm forced to admit that a 50-song playlist is not going to reflect that claim. There's no way I can cover every facet of my musical interests on such a playlist. So instead of trying, I'm going the opposite way. I'm narrowing the scope. The other claim of "I listen to indie rock" would be the shortest and easiest path to pursue. And more importantly, it wouldn't give anyone the wrong impression of what I "typically" listen to, or who I'm trying to describe myself as. Think about what you would believe about me if I said a song to describe me is "betty" by Taylor Swift. It's a fantastic song. If you ask me, it's the only Taylor Swift song that actually matters. But is that who I am? Do I want people thinking I'm a Swiftie? Do I want people to think I gave a single shit about what asshole jock she married or what private jet she's taking to buy a cup of coffee? Do you see how just adding the best songs would be counterintuitive to the purpose of today's mission?
There are countless other examples of music that were left off this playlist for similar, but far less cynical, reasons. You'll note, for example, that there is no hip hop on this list, even though I have grown in the past five years or so to deeply appreciate the genre and all its many facets, and consider a few rappers some of my favorite musicians of all time. I think it's more about knowing something, and wanting someone to assume what you know and what you don't know based on that song.
If I were to put Kendrick Lamar's "Swimming Pools (Drank)" on this playlist, this would be an excellent encapsulation of a piece of music that I love. Great fucking song. That second verse is bonkers. And I know it well, and think about it a lot. Being an alcoholic, it actually means a lot to me to hear a song that's questioning whether drinking is worth it in the long run, and speaks to the struggles we all have with substance abuse. I also recall walking home from McNally's somewhere one night drunk as shit and listening to this song and feeling the impact within me, years before I knew why. But if you saw this song on a playlist, would you be able to pull any of this out of the playlist? No. You would have to make assumptions. Which is okay, that's kinda what you're gonna need to do if you're checking out 50 songs from a guy trying to make himself known through the songs. I'm just saying that the assumptions have a greater chance of being wrong with a song that I know well from a genre I know less well.
There's a difference, in other words, between listening to something that you enjoy, and knowing something and the context from which it came fully and completely. If someone is going to be asking me about a song, I want to be speaking intelligently about it and the world in which it exists. I want to expound upon it. I could try to speak to "Swimming Pools (Drank)," but anything I have to say about it collapses inward. I don't know context, I just know what it sounds like (to me). It's all important when it comes to explaining "what you listen to."
But I want to be clear that this is not a playlist of the best songs. I'm not saying that I have "better taste" then you. That would be an obscene thing to say. Music is so fucking subjective, and I am continually humbled by how vast musical tastes can be. I'm not asking anyone to love every song on this list, because that's not the point. If I was going to make a playlist like that, I could. I took "Rock Me Gently" by Andy Kim off the playlist below at the last minute. I fucking love that song. It's better than most of the songs on here. If you're looking for a great song, start there. But it doesn't answer the question we're answering today. It says nothing about what I listen to typically. It is one exception out of many, many, many exceptions. It's some hokey '60s pop song made by a goober without another hit in one thousand years. That's not what I usually listen to. I listen to "Rock Me Gently," basically every day of my life, but that says nothing about me.
This playlist does say something about me. I think. I actually don't care, you should know that too. Care about someone knowing me, I mean. It's cool when someone does know me, or care to know me, like that feels good, but I'm not trying to make a habit of seeking that out. There's too much of that in the world. We are a society obsessed with trying to make ourselves understood by any means necessary. This blog has perpetuated that mindset way too often, and I'm trying to cut it out. I don't need you to understand me.
August 23, 2026. 40.10033, -75.02357. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
Everyone out here, worrying about gas, queueing up at the wholesale club to save a few nickels and dimes, while there's a great big blue sky beyond, wide open, the birds that coast along its winds without a worry or care. They fly toward the hospital, or don't, it doesn't really make a difference to them.
CATEGORY OF VOTING: "I Fucking Hate Music" — The bit is that I don't hate music at all, except there are just about five artists whose music I hate enough that I actively try to avoid it. And so I put those five artists on a poll, and allowed y'all to do your worst. For the record, there are a few other artists not included in the poll that I don't have any plans to listen to because I've hated everything I've heard from them (e.g. Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash, etc.), but we can save all that for next summer. Also for the record, I have plans to be incredibly, radically open-minded this week. I am not approaching today's chosen album as if I already hate it. I am instead approaching it like I don't know it at all. Let's see what happens.
LOSING ALBUMS:Brave New World by Steve Miller Band; No One Cares by Frank Sinatra; Sheer Heart Attack by Queen; Turnstiles by Billy Joel
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ALBUM DETAILS
GENRE: Folk pop, contemporary folk, singer-songwriter
PRONOUNS: he/him/his preference for Paul Simon and for Art Garfunkel
PUNCTUATION: PoYB Style Guide insists that the artist "Simon & Garfunkel" utilizes the ampersand, and should not look like "Simon and Garfunkel." The PoYB Style Guide also insists that the ante meridiem time should be "AM" and not "A.M.," but there's nothing I can do about the album title, unfortunately.
ABOUT: Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel met in school in 1953. After being known as Tom & Jerry for a little bit, they changed their duo name to Simon & Garfunkel when they reconvened in 1963, and released their first album in 1964. It was not a commercial success, until 1965, when radio stations started to play "The Sound of Silence," which eventually went all the way to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Four more albums and two more #1s would follow. Their music featured prominently in The Graduate. The duo broke up in 1970, but there have been a few reunions over the years, including a 1981 concert in Central Park that attracted 500,000 people (supposedly). They were inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. Paul Simon had a successful solo career as well. Art Garfunkel less so, but he did find some success in acting. Both are still alive and still working, though as far as I can tell, they haven't reunited since 2009. I get the sense that Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel hate each other.
DISCOGRAPHY: This is the duo's first of five albums. The rest are: Sounds of Silence (1966), Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966), Bookends (1968), and Bridge over Troubled Water (1970).
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ADDITIONAL INFO
READING SOME SHIT: a 2018 interview with Simon that specifically mentions the hit song on this album
RECORD CLUB CONNECTIONS: Chronologically, there were three other RC artists (so far) that were inducted in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame before Simon & Garfunkel: the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones. Bob Dylan has a writing credit on this album, with S&G's cover of "The Times They Are a-Changin'." Rolling Stone made a list of the Top 20 Duos, and Simon & Garfunkel were at #3. The Black Keys (#20) and OutKast (#7) made the list, and Tina Turner was on the list at #2 as part of Ike & Tina Turner.
There was a song called "3AM" on Halsey's Manic (still not the correct style, but closer than this album's attempt). Wasn't there another RC album with a song titled by the time on a clock? I can't remember, and it's tough to find. Reading over some reviews of boygenius' the record, it looks like their "Cool About It" got a couple comparisons to Simon & Garfunkel's sound (in one case, "The Boxer" specifically). Studio bass played Bill Lee played on this album and worked closely with Max Roach throughout his career. Oh yeah, I forgot I mentioned this already: Harry Styles covered Simon & Garfunkel recently.
Is there a connection between Simon & Garfunkel and Hall & Oates? The only one I can think of off the top of my head is that comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates, you remember them? An early-2010s thing for sure. I guess they had a TV show too. And Weird Al played himself in an episode. Maybe we can cover Garfunkel and Oates' music sometime. Or maybe this guy named Simon Hall.
Here's to you, Ms. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you could know, woah woah woah.
MENTIONS ON THE BLOG: Yes, and it's mostly in Song Challenge and Monday Morning Mixtape. In fact, there have been so many S&G songs chosen for this blog already that I specifically had to tally each one to make sure that the S&G album that ended up on this summer poll wasn't already disqualified (it might have been anyway, I forget, who cares, fuck this blog). Here they are:
Burholme also covered the Lemonheads' version of "Mrs. Robinson," which was originally a Simon & Garfunkel song, but of course Burholme didn't really know that.
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RECORD CLUB ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
This week's discography dive album: From the Choirgirl Hotel by Tori Amos
This week's follow-up album:Fate Morgana: Dawn by St. Lucia, Fate Morgana: Dusk by St. Lucia, and possibly The Hours: High Noon by Cautious Clay as well
This week's keeping up album (probably): Nothing is coming out this week that I'm really excited about. I suppose I could try to check out the new Weezer?
Listen with us! Keep your favorite Record Club artists in the rotation!
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COUNTDOWN:
69 Weeks Until Week 420
the sound of violence
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.
August 22, 2026. 40.08148, -75.08559. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
I see the neighboring house and realize that this is the first time the windows haven't been boarded up in recent memory, which means the home has been restored after a fire, which means that the street isn't adorned with a large dumpster and porta potty anymore, which is nice, and I think to remark this to my dad, which is something I often do, sort of earmark a thought to relay to my dad at some future point, except for now that relaying will occur at the hospital, not his house, which is where I just was, his house, and he was not there, which was strange and disheartening and a little scary, though we'd all like to believe it's only temporary, that he'll soon be back and we can marvel together at the state of the block that he lives on and how there's not a porta potty in sight.
The thing about American Trappist—probably my favorite unknown artist to come to us through the channel of Record Club, lest we'd never have even heard of them—is that they always sound way bigger than their stature suggests they might. What I mean by that is that American Trappist plays music fit for stadiums. Not all the time, but there are songs that fucking go for it, you know what I mean? Listen to "The Devil Is Real" on this, their self-titled debut from almost exactly ten years ago, and tell me that shit shouldn't be pumping out of large walls of speakers at a 30k venue. So it goes in the music industry, I guess. And, like, maybe the next song, "On the River Toms," is not something stadium-worthy, I dunno. Maybe I should be talking about quality over quantity. There's depth to this shit, and NOT just because I am overly fond of RC alumni generally. American Trappist isn't some bullshit local artist stumbling their way through a hobby. This is catchy, often beautiful, occasionally poignant music. I am touched, for example, at the Philadelphia shoutout on "Fireworks." I do feel on fire when I listen to this song, and this artist. Why doesn't anyone else know about this artist? I don't know. Does Sean E., the RC captain who picked Tentanda Via for our listening pleasure 352 weeks ago, still listen to American Trappist? I don't know. But I'm really glad I'm still listening, and it's very cool that this guy apparently had the goods from his very first album. It's rare that you get passed along something that sticks with you like this.
It's tough but not unfair to review a follow-up album when you don't really remember the original RC album. That's what the RC reviews are for, ya know? I haven't listened to Oas in a while, but my own words tell me it was a little boring and a little derivative. I don't get that sense with Människobarn. I instead have a different critique, one that is more indicative of the fact that I will never be a professional music writer—Människobarn feels too market-tested. Is that a thing? It should be a thing. I feel like some suit in Sweden was like "you should try to hit the middle of Portugal. the Man, Florence + the Machine, and Fitz and the Tantrums." They succeeded, of course, but to their detriment. Whatever suit told this band to start adding harder backbeats to their music, I'd pat on the back, because "Där huden är tunnast" is cool, it almost has disco vibes. "Dålig teve," on the other hand, is just derivative Stevie Nicks. I'm a simple guy, I don't need much. Dina Ögon picked up the tempo (compared to what I remember), and that's good enough for me. But I sense a lack of heart, and that's a bummer.
Credit always to those who work under the umbrella of nepotism and still manage to make something that actually sounds interesting. It would have been pretty easy for WILLOW to sound like Tate McRae or whatever. She would have been successfully commercially, but that would have been because of her parents, and her insane ability to reach large audiences just due to who her family is and the power that rich people have. WILLOW, as we have already established, has chosen not to take this route, and is all the better for it. I think that petal rock black is fine. It's a soft jazz thing, occasionally with some rhythmic bite but otherwise most consisting of WILLOW (and some guests) crooning over pretty basic jazz tunes. I don't love it, I probably won't return to it, and I think that WILLOW has the ability to be more interesting than this. I'm just saying that the overarching idea of "nepo baby making Kate Bush's version of Norah Jones" is cool to think about. It's also less than a half hour, so I don't really have anything to complain about here.
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5
THE THREAD
July 24, 2026
Of the two WILLOW albums that have dropped this year (so far!), I'll now give the win to THE THREAD. I don't think this is a hot take. The hot take would be saying that the two albums are way closer in quality than anyone seems to want to admit. The big difference, and the thing that gives THE THREAD the edge, is that it's way more dynamic. The songs on petal rock black were similar in tone and style, but THE THREAD is all over the place. Which is a good thing. I prefer something like "Talk on the Hill," which is Kate Bush cosplay, over something like "Shrink to Fantasy," which, besides some tempo and time signature wonkery, plays like your standard Beyoncé R&B album-filler. But the fact that these songs are coming from the same artist is the good part. WILLOW is still gaining strength, but for now, her versatility is what would keep me coming back. She's weird! In a good way! This is the only worthy path for a nepo baby like her!
Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan — RC f/u #54 — 4.5 pukes out of 5
Days
August 7, 2026
I know this isn't necessarily a new thing with the MGs—at least not with their 2020s output—but it was the first time that "repeat the same thing over and over and that's the chorus" got a little annoying to me. I am speculating that the reason that it was more noticeable this time around was that the words that comprised the repeated mantras were ultra specific. A lot of this album references other bands in jokey-but-serious ways (it was originally going to be a sequel to their 2017 album Goths, and it was going to be called Grunges), and so you get a chorus that goes "Maybe you don't recall / Renaissance played at Carnegie Hall." Over, and over, and over. I get that's how music works sometimes, and I get that the Mountain Goats have done this before to great effect ("I'm gonna make it through this year if it kills me" gets stronger the more it is repeated). But when you have to hear a chorus of "Find me here / crying on Eddie Nash's grave" a bunch of times, you start to realize how corny it is. I think it's a good song; it's catchy, and the verses are poetic, and way deeper than any "song about Eddie Nash" could ever hope to be. I just noticed this one little thing this time around, and I don't think that's my fault. Now, would you say that John Darnielle is AWARE of what he's doing? Probably. When you write a song called "Best Hard Rock Albums of 2013," and the chorus consists of saying the phrase "The best hard rock albums of 2013" over and over, I think at a certain point you have to assume that it's being done in a winking way. And the craziest fucking thing about it is that I honestly don't mind, at the end of the day. So many earworms on this thing. There's no other band on earth who could write a song called "Candlebox" and have the chorus be "Candlebox!" and not make me want to write them off forever. These are the Mountain Goats though. They apparently can do whatever the fuck they want. I'll keep listening either way.
GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5
(Random RCAA News)
A few RC alumni teaming up in concert this week, as Noah Kahan brings out Chappell Roan, and Fontaines D.C. brings out Kurt Vile.
August 21, 2026. 39.95198, -75.17182. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
I'm walking around Center City, looking for Jiffy Pop.
Can't find it, so I'm probably gonna have to go to the damn supermarket back at home. The reason I'm looking for it is because of the request made by three extremely cute children as I was leaving the home this morning. It's Family Movie Night, and they said that we haven't done popcorn in a while, and they are obsessed with Jiffy Pop for some reason.
Something that I'm pretty strict about is... well no, "strict" isn't the right word. It's more like I believe in certain ideals and I try to impress those ideals upon my children. One of my ideals is that we cannot find happiness through BUYING SHIT. The society that we currently live in wants us to believe that consumerism is the pathway to emotional well-being, and it's all a fucking lie. No matter how many little useless trinkets these kids buy at Target, these will never be satisfied, and they will never be happy. We talked about this after reading The Giving Tree the other night (not my decision, but the timing worked great), how the only character who is happy is the tree, because they give themselves away, and the other character, the boy, is fucking miserable and that is because he takes and he takes and he takes. So I refuse to partake in it. I don't get upset when Pam comes home from running errands saying "well they kept whining so I bought them something," but if I'm the one running errands, the kids know not to ask for some bullshit, and when we get home, they don't whine or complain, they are happier than they even understand.
The request for Jiffy Pop does not fall into this category, however. Food and experiences don't count as consumerism, for the most part. I'm gonna get them the damn Jiffy Pop, because that makes them happy, no ironic quotation marks required. I want my kids to be happy, so fucking sue me if they just need a little guidance in that regard sometimes. Other times, we're all on the same page. I'll find the Jiffy Pop for Family Movie Night.
Have we reached our Icelandic limit as a music club? That's the three most popular covered so far (Björk, Sigur Rós, Of Monsters and Men). Who else is there? If I had unlimited time, I would attempt to a population density relative to RC artists from that country, and compare each country. With a population of 400k, that means that we've covered 0.0075 Icelandic artists per one thousand residents. Just as an example, we've covered six Irish artists in RC, but their population is 5.4 million, which means that we've covered only 0.0011 Irish artists per one thousand residents. I would love to go through each country, but alas. Where's Ms. Robinson when you need her?
Hey, what did you think about this album? Did any of the reviews change your mind. Did any of the reviews spark your interest in any way? Let's chat about them in the comments. Thanks to all those who participated. Happy Friday!!!
I'm going to write this review in two parts, although I may only finish one on time. It's a little past 1 AM on Friday, and I didn't get a chance to write a review yet. But I love this album, and I have a good story tangled up with memories of playing it.
My short take, unrelated to the story: this is the album I'd put on if a witch asked me to weave them a cloak from the silk of magical worms. Now, do I know anything about weaving beyond the definitions of "warp" and "weft"? No. Do I think killing bugs for fabric is unethical? Soft yes. Do I think killing supernatural bugs for fabric is unethical? Hard yes. Would I be up for the task anyway? Also a hard yes.
Vespertine sounds like music made specifically to be sampled by other artists or dropped into a very tasteful 30–60 second movie montage where something emotional and perhaps even dramatic happens.
This isn't really a mark against Björk. It's more an indictment of my own limited musical sensibilities and education. She is, after all, critically acclaimed. I can hear that something impressive is happening. I just don't seem to get it beyond knowing that I'm supposed to be impressed.
The production is intricate, intimate, strange, and occasionally beautiful in a way that makes me feel like I should have taken a music appreciation course before pressing play. Björk clearly has a vision. Unfortunately, my vision is mostly me wondering whether the next song is going to turn into something I recognize as a song.
No X out of 5 pukes rating for this one. I'm simply not qualified to give one.
"Pagan Poetry," though... I get that one. Good stuff.
This definitely sounds like something, something I can't really name. It's eclectic. Perhaps it's the foreign-ness in the accent, though not the language, with the interesting rhythms and light beep boops mixed in. Her vocal delivery being the clear spike. Bjork (I don't know how to make the umlauts without copy pasting so I'm not going to try) has been hanging around as an artist most of my life. Wynona Ryder on SNL? Just seeing that this album came out in early 2001 is something of a mind flip.
Listening to Björk in public is a little like wearing a boa constrictor. Most people just notice and say something like "wait, is that...?" Others comment "oh, Boa, are you wearing that for snake club?" All well and good, most enjoy the snake even if they don't totally get it, or get me. But some get violent, or perhaps, scared, and demand that the Boa be removed immediately. When asked well what other snake or animal would you like me to wear, the answer is a simple anything but Björk.
Which is a shame because I kinda like whatever strange floaty project this is. It's up to me!
There is a rot. It is perverse. An art gallery at a golf course. A data center in a dry lakebed. There have been six great global extinction events in the history of the earth, so says the popscientist. Geological time will destroy you with its scale. What else are we to do? How do you look right at it? How do you resist becoming a guileless expression of emotion? Why do some resist it at all. The size of it makes it impossible to ignore, yet that very ignorance allows life in its shadow. What shadow? What life? The only one you'll ever know, I guess.
I want to like this album, but I don't. Maybe listening to it in a bath with candles, fog, and retrograde amnesia might be a cool experience, but I don't think I'll ever listen to Vespertine again. I would if I was a cloud person who lives in the sky as a collection of dew drops. Or if I turned into a tree root.
But as is? I just cannot get down with Björk's vocals, and this is not my first time trying. I dig the delightfully experimental tracks especially "It's Not Up to You" and the outro on "Undo." Give me those instrumentals. But Björk's voice makes me kind of uneasy. She's undeniably talented and a trailblazer, and I can totally understand and respect why she's so highly regarded as an artist. If she sang in her raspy, punky approach toward the end of "Pagan Poetry" more often on this album, I think I'd be more into it. The album is a classic example of me appreciating something in theory, but then I turn it on and don't actually want to listen. Sorry, Thom Yorke. I know you're a big fan.
I'm supposed to be writing employee evaluations today, but instead I'm evaluating the music of the Icelandic queen of art pop, Björk. I am drawn to the way that Björk doesn't kowtow to the needs of an audience member like me. She gets me to bend my will to hers, not the other way around. I would say that I am not particularly drawn to glitchy electronica like this too often, but Björk makes tiny decisions that get me to reconsider that broad take. The first song on the album, "Hidden World," is well-named, and pays off in the final song, "Unison," which finally pulls me into that hidden world after an album-length stay in limbo, wondering whether I get it or don't get it. "Unison" is probably well-named too, in that regard. I become one with Vespertine when I hear those synths in the background, so goddamn perfectly placed. At the very least, "Unison" gets me to hit repeat pretty quickly, but more generally, it makes me understand at the final moment that Vespertine is good, that it is for me, that it is something I can grasp and make mine through that understanding.
I accidentally give my review to my boss instead of the employee evaluations.
But she's the type of boss who doesn't actually mind. Like, I'm not going to get in trouble for this snafu. She's actually interested, at least for the five minutes that it takes her to finish whatever tofu-kale concoction her husband put together for her for breakfast.
"I just think that we need little breaks like this, you know? I just get so tired of all these outcomes that I have to process and IDS summaries that I have to approve, that sometimes it's good to just enjoy something like early-'00s glitch-pop."
She's got a voice like Fran Drescher, but none of her devilishly handsome looks (which is for the best, I think, given that I need no further distractions at work, at least beyond hobby blogging duties). She's one of the nicest people I've ever met. I am struggling to think of any boss I've ever had in this stinkin' government municipal building that would ever greet an accidental album review with this lack of disdain. I already know that I'm going to pledge fealty to this woman for as long as retirement restrictions keep her here.
"It's like the question I had this morning about the difference between orders of protective custody and dependent petitions. Sometimes I don't feel like I should be a part of this world, a world that I am continually humbled by how much I don't understand. I don't know what this delinquent court order means, I don't know if I'll ever get it through my thick skull. And I've been wondering lately if there is a similar barrier for certain types of music getting through that skull too. Like Björk."
"Ya know, I think it's... I don't think anyone expects anyone to really 'get it' around here. I just work here. I do what I'm told, just like you do, you know? So you see it when you get these workers who are being pushed through the system without any training, it's like, how do you expect anyone to know what's going on? I wouldn't worry about it with the music either. You don't need to know Björk. You're just putting in the work. We had a case a few weeks ago that..."
I'll be honest, sometimes I don't understand my boss either. Like occasionally she's telling me something and the words are going in my ears and being processed through my brain but the ticket that gets printed out through my teeth has in big blocky letters DOES NOT COMPUTE. I think it's half because she likes talking more than not talking, which could be a problem in a chain of command if you let it, and half because I am getting distracted while she's talking, like sometimes my brain gets fuzzy and all I can hear is the high chimes of "Frosti."
But I know she means well, I know she's doing her best with me, someone who has always felt a pull toward anti-authoritarianism and now is struggling with being labeled as an authority, I know that she honestly does have the kids' best interest at heart, which is for real the only fuckin' thing that matters in this place, at the end of the day.
I tell her I don't have any more questions and she's like "Well hold on, we didn't actually talk about your Vespertine review" and I'm recoiling like ah shit, I hope she doesn't know that this is why I don't have any of my employee evaluations completed yet. But then she starts talking about modern abstractionism in folktronica art-pop, how Björk is creating moods here most of the time. I'm like, how do you know any of this, do you listen to music like this? I can't hear her response because my brain gets all fuzzy again.
That's what the music is for. It comes to me in a flash.
Vespertine gives words and sounds to that feeling you have when you're confused and discombobulated and unable to concentrate. Yes, of course, I don't get it—that's the point! Holy fucking shit. I'm sitting in my boss's office now listening to her drone on about timecards and overtime slips and mandatory trainings but I'm so distracted from the answer that just hit me that I can't do it, I can't pretend to be interested. I start backing away toward the door. I'm nodding my head, making little laconic affirmations, need to get back to my keyboard NOW. I say okay and then say "thanks for your help" as I walk out the door and I'm 20 feet away from her doorway when I hear the Drescherian "no, thank you!" and I know she's already distracted by one thousand other tasks and won't remember saying anything about Vespertine by the time she has her morning coffee tomorrow.
Now I'm sure of it. I'm convinced that this is the key to understanding the album. All I need to do is stretch my original outline to include it. Yes, the album starts with an invitation into something that you hitherto did not know, and yes, the album ends with a preposterously gorgeous song about finally knowing that world, but in between, all the "Pagan Poetry" and "It's Not Up to You" and "Sun in My Mouth," all of it lying there, making me perplexed on what it does and how, all of that stuff is supposed to be there, and it's supposed to make you feel that way. It's a beauty and a discomfort—the music, yes, but also the confusion. Do you see? Can you see it now? You're not supposed to know! Until you finally do! And then "Unison" confirms it for you! You've taken the journey and now you know!
I type this and then run back to my boss's office, and yell "I've got it! I've got it and I get it!" I'm excited to finally understand. I spend so much of my time trying to understand everything, and it's exhausting. I spent all goddamn week trying to understand Björk and then just typed up a review that amounted to the embarrassing conclusion of "I don't get it" and then made the devastating blunder of sharing that embarrassing conclusion with someone outside my circle, my boss, who maaaaaaybe understands it, "it" in this case being not necessarily my music album review but the work we share, the work as I understand it at least, how there's a way to get through the day by choosing what to care about and what not to care about, sometimes I think she understands it and sometimes I'm not so sure, but she's never called me out for not caring about something I've chosen to not care about, so I'm leaning towards "she understands it," which makes me sleep pretty well at night. But you see how exhausting it is too, to constantly bounce up against people and things and try to understand, even try to understand their level of understanding, you see, you get it, and you're wondering why I'm so excited about this, and I'm saying to you that I understand that Vespertine is supposed to be about the lack of understanding, it's baked into the premise, it's real and it teaches you how to not understand and how that in itself can be the understanding, you see! and that that can be its own kind of beauty, the permission to not understand, and one step removed: understanding that you don't understand, every emotion being incredibly complex and not actually able to be processed by the puny human mind, and so we step back and we just admire, the beauty of it, the emotion and that it is felt, just to feel is wonderful even if you don't actually understand how you feel! and how Björk so ably captures all that, here in this beguiling, bewitching album.
I have it all, I have the answer, I'm running toward my boss's office, but she's not there. She's at lunch. Or maybe she doesn't exist. She does exist, of course, but not in this form, because she can never know about the album reviewing club, because she wouldn't understand.
August 20, 2026. 40.07959, -75.08793. See the updated map here. See all the blog posts here.
lol, that ill-fated cemetery ride the other day, uncle joe's cursed carpool, beyond the old lady red light snafu, there was also myriad construction detours (including the bridge), and so the whole lot of us were snaking our way through the local roads of the smallest town of Rockledge, my hometown, less than a square mile, streets not fit for a hearse at all.
and i remember thinking, wow, this is the only time i'll ever be able to blow a stop sign without worry about bored cops fucking up my day.
so i sped up a little at each intersection, middle finger up but hand below the steering wheel so uncle joe couldn't see.
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"
