Welcome back to My Back Pages, a weekly digest recapping everything of note from the last seven days—pods, bylines, appearances, plus a few odds and ends.
Let’s get to it.
Pieces of the Week
Fun chat this week with Neptune’s Core, authors of one of the year’s most exciting debut LPs, which somehow manages to triangulate Olivia Rodrigo, Vivian Girls, and The Strokes. I wrote a little bit about lead single “Lemon Car” the other day—now you can hear from the band themselves (and give the whole record a spin).
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I was also glad to write up a few ~Hot or Nots~ in honor of “Boy Summer” for my dear friend Ori at Radicchio Salad, a conceptual queer food media ‘zine. Peep that here (unless you’re a fan of On sneakers…).
Pod of the Week
Light week for pods as we get ready to launch Jokermen 4 on Monday (subscriptions 25% off for the rest of August).
On Never Ending Stories, we hit Newport 2002—AKA the wig and beard show. Bob returns to the scene of the crime 37 years later to upsing his way through all the Sixties classics. Not the greatest tape we’ve ever heard, but an excellent hang as always, and we even found a way to sneak in a little bit about The Fat Boys and “Smart Girls.”
Chune of the Week
Wild Pink: “Round of Applause At The End of The World”
Sticking with new releases for this week’s Chune—they don’t always have to be forty year-old Van Morrison songs (although I’ve still been digging The Healing Game lately…)
No: this time it’s “Round of Applause At The End of The World,” off the new Wild Pink record Still Coming Down, which just dropped yesterday. I spoke with band leader John Ross recently for an interview that will run here next week. In the meantime, check this track, which somehow spins a hard-rocking piece of accordion-driven Americana out of JFK assassination theories.
As weird as that description looks on the page, it comes off beautifully in execution. When we spoke, John likened the song to The Band’s cover of “Atlantic City,” another snapshot of American desperation that makes notable use of the accordion (salute to anyone throwing out references to Jericho). Still Coming Down clocks in at a tidy 33 minutes across nine songs, making it an exceedingly approachable listen. It’s a really great little record that goes equally heavy on wry, writerly observations and huge rock chords, some of which are contributed by indie rock luminaries such as MJ Lenderman and Meg Duffy of Hand Habits.
It’s taken Wild Pink a little time to figure themselves out, but they’re clearly hitting their stride with this one. Don’t be surprised if these guys are doing War On Drugs numbers a year from now.
Fit of the Week
I wore this on Thursday, August 20th to go to dinner with my wife, my sister, and her fiancé. We went to Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack, one of our favorite local haunts here on the south side of San Francisco. They’ve always got a good vibe, a good cocktail, and a good plate of pasta waiting for you.
Despite my well-appointed wardrobe, I typically find myself wearing only a certain subset of clothes. Maybe 50% of what I own (and that’s being generous). Sometimes, I like to challenge myself to expand what I have in rotation by rummaging around in the back of my closet. Even if I haven’t been wearing certain pieces recently, I did still buy them at one point, so they must have something going for them. Occasionally I’ll discover these pieces have been relegated for a reason, and I send them on their way to Goodwill or eBay. Just as often, however, I come across things I really should be wearing.
Case in point: nearly everything I’m wearing here, all of which I purchased between two and three years ago. It’s a simple Brooks Brothers OCBD, a slightly oversized specimen with an excellent collar roll. The chinos are cheap vintage Ralph (the Andrew, natch) that I picked up for a double sawbuck one night and promptly forgot about. Today I’m digging the washed, worn-in look, especially the faded crease down the center of each leg.
And the break is perfect, especially with the cuff. It sits just where I want it to on top of my Oboz Sawtooths, which I still love but are absolutely roasted. No good for trails—I killed all the tread on the bottom—but I can still get away with them in less adventurous circumstances (and frankly, they look better than ever). I like the way they clash with the light Ivy vibe of the shirt and pants combo, which could come off as the dreaded “business casual” in other circumstances.
This is another advantage of my changing body, which I wrote about last week (I’ve put on another couple pounds since then, by the way—I’m up to 195). It encourages me to take full advantage of my wardrobe rather than settling into an easy, predictable cycle. That’s called glass-half-full thinking.
“triangulate Olivia Rodrigo, Vivian Girls, and The Strokes” you sonofabitch I’m in