As I mentioned earlier this month, I’ve been listening a lot to the new Deafheaven album, Infinite Granite, and I really dig it. Very atmospheric, excellent melody, lots of energy.
Baltimore’s own Turnstile released a new album, Glow On, which sounds really good on first listen. I really loved their last album, a mixture of powerful vocals, shredding guitar, and pure hardcore energy. This one is more polished but the fact that they’re just going for it with every idea they have is amazing.
And, as mentioned before, Chvrches just released a new album that I haven’t listened to yet. I’m embedding it here to remind myself to spin it as soon as I’m in front of the laptop again.
On the streaming front, I watched the last season of Bosch on Amazon Prime and enjoyed every minute of it. I’d read this was the last season and wondered if they had any plans beyond this, and my hunch was correct: three of the main characters are going to continue in a new series over on IMDb TV (apparently that is A Thing) where Bosch, his daughter, and another character will fight crime in LA. I’ll miss all of the supporting characters I was familiar with from the book and series—Crate and Barrel, J. Edgar, Lt. Billets, Sgt. Mankewicz, etc. but they’ve had seven great seasons.
In my podcast queue I found a couple of new shows I really like. Strong Songs features a careful deconstruction of a song, spanning multiple genres, as well as careful explanations of basic music theory. I came for his episode on Know One Knows and was hooked. I have two friends currently teaching music history and theory and immediately shot the link off to them. There are three seasons dating back to 2018 so I’m set for awhile.
SmartLess is a podcast hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett, and they are always able to get incredible guests to come on and talk about anything and everything. They got Kamala Harris the week she was asked to be the VP; they’ve had Paul McCartney and Megan Rapinoe and Tony Hawk and many more.
I Spy is a podcast produced by Foreign Policy and features stories told by spies about their experiences in danger zones around the world: a CIA agent before the fall of Saigon, the guy who interrogated Saddam Hussein, and a Soviet sleeper agent sent to the U.S. before the end of the Cold War. Riveting and fascinating. This was my binge on the way home from Ohio a few weeks ago.
Cautionary Tales is about mistakes that we make and how we might learn from them. The last episode I listened to was about how we depend on tools like Microsoft Excel, how we often use them incorrectly, and how that can lead to disaster. It’s a better version of Malcom Gladwell’s podcast.