June: who is "May" anyway?

I did not write a May post, forgive me. The last week of the month I was researching a profile outside of work hours (it’s out next week I think), becoming nothing but a horrible little work-sleep machine and absolutely terrible girlfriend, then spent all of the last weekend in Dublin for said profile, where I did about eight hours of interviews in two days, four and a half of them consecutively, and stayed in a hostel to help keep costs low, and realised: I am 37 years old. I do not love indie music enough to be crawling into my little curtain-shaded hole at the end of a long, sweaty work day and a flight while a doubtless very sweet young man beneath me tries to talk to me while I am wearing pyjamas before doing the same again tomorrow. (No regerts tho, I love this noisy band, stay tuned!!) Then I worked some more the next week, worked some more outside of work, then actually went on holiday for a week. The day I got back to work afterwards, I still had another freelance job to start, and instantly felt back in work jail. I realised that taking on anything else was going to put me in a big black brain hole, and did the sensible thing: asked, with apology, if I could just drop it. This is progress, for me, and my lovely editor could not have been nicer about why no one should spend too much of their one life feeling on the cusp of a breakdown, especially about voluntary work <3

Anyway, not that anyone cares whether I am here or not, it’s just nice to write these things down otherwise I forget. That said, the Rosalía show I lost my mind writing about remains present in my brain and I am desperately jel of everyone getting to see the US leg atm. I feel like you could write a whole book on this show (why are tours so under-documented outside of the live review?) and really appreciated the dance deep dive angle the NYT took this week.

🚨 EMERGENCY ROSALÍA POST 🚨

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May 7

Until 8.45pm last night, Rosalía’s Motomami tour was the best pop show I’d ever seen: a single take – no costume stages, no leaving the stage – undimmed physical effort and complete excellence, a cameraman relentlessly dogging her in a game of cat and mouse, displayed on phone-shaped vertical screens either side of the stage that understand how we consu…

Quilts made

“Regular” (lol) readers to this irregular newsletter may have clocked that any new quilts go at the bottom. But I also didn’t write a May update because I was busy making one for Charles’ dad’s 70th that month, so this time it can go up top for you to behold and go, yes we see why you were unable to write your usual 1000 words of nonsense and anti AI-poster diatribes – hey, maybe make more quilts? (Don’t worry, I am!!!!)

Listening post

If you’re reading this it’s probably because you might grab a music recco from it, hey. I don’t think I have a crazy amount of new (or at least shareable) tips. It’s all Hekt, Old Saw, Phil Geraldi, Quiet Light, Gold Panda, Lido Pimienta, Pleasure Systems (thanks Harry Tafoya/Yasi Salek), Helena Gao, Brennan Wedl and Ibrahim Alfa Jr on atm. I didn’t really listen to any music on holiday, but we did go to Beaches Brew in Ravenna, sort of a sister festival to my fav, Le Guess Who in Utrecht, and the Zawose Queens and M(h)aol really stole the show. (What a great festival: two stages at one beach bar, free, wonderful DJs – and staying in a campsite chalet nearby made it feel just like ATP.)

Angine de Poitrine were even better at the Brudenell than I thought they’d be given the hype: so fun, tho that attitude could be better reflected in the slightly shovey blokes in the crowd (apparently it was even worse in London). Saw Kraftwerk for the first time (vg Ceefax-style visuals), Hayley Williams solo in the heatwave (what a treat to see her somewhere comparatively intimate to the O2 Arena or Leeds festival, where I’ve seen Paramore; also with Water From Your Eyes as support!) and we just went to the first Black Lights festival in Blackpool (you can read my extremely thorough and serious review for Shaad Magazine). I wish I’d come away with my hair blown back by something I’d never seen before – and most of what we saw was great – but it’d be hard for anything to compete with being swathed in drone and dry ice during longtime fav Kali Malone’s Opera House set. Also Blackpool is great - my takeaway is it’s a place where you just have to give yourself over to it wholly, much like the town has to pleasure.

Good reading month(s) though

I interviewed my good pal Daniel Dylan Wray about Groovy, Laidback and Nasty, his excellent history of Sheffield music, for a local festival. I was most taken by the fact that in 1976, when the rest of the country was losing its nut for punk, Kraftwerk played Sheffield and that was the city’s music year zero. Loved how morbidly horrible Tony Tulathimutte’s Rejection was; maybe its opposite is Lily King’s Heart the Lover, which made me cry some very tired tears at the end. I didn’t like Esther Freud’s My Sister and Other Lovers at first, but then did by the end. I allowed myself another Laurie Colwin in Family Happiness, which shot near the top of my LC ranking, and did my first Ann Patchett, Commonwealth, after seeing her shout out LC during an interview about her new book. (I’ve also been reading Gisèle Pelicot’s memoir in French. Don’t worry, I can see you making a wanking gesture at the screen and frankly I deserve it. I just thought it was worth reading in her language. The vocabulary is surprisingly easy; the content obviously not.)

But the BEST thing I read was Sophie Kemp’s Paradise Logic. I wrote this in a note but it also reminded me of Candide, his brain addled by Cosmo: what a dream to be the best of all possible girlfriends in the best of all possible worlds. I’m such a bad sponge for infectious writing; her style got right in there inside my brain, like the narrator of Lucy Ellman’s Ducks, Newburyport, a big fav.

Representative images

Work of note

Reviewed Kacey, did the only interview with the very sweet Angine de Poitrine, wrote about the gross CMAT and Olivia Rodrigo situations, interviewed the Field and Camille, reviewed the new Phoebe. Also it may not have escaped your notice that we’re in another Taylor Swift season: to mark 20 years since her debut single, we put together this whopper survey of the 20 ways she’s remade pop culture in her image, I reviewed the Toy Story song (best thing she’s put out in some time) and talked about this juncture in her career (have you heard, there’s a wedding) for our US news podcast Stateside.

That’s probably enough isn’t it. Say hi, have a chat, I hope you’re eating some monster summer salads that stretch the definition of “salad” and daring to wear slightly less than usually feels comfortable ✸ ✸ ✸