notes: may 2025 (pt. 2)
trendcasting “lonesome crowded west homage” as 2026’s version of “actually i’ve always wanted to make a country album”
biweekly newsletter listing all the music, movies, books, and, tv i, mike, have experienced for the first time over the past two weeks and also the things i have thought about them. again, i am mike.
2025 releases
deafheaven, lonely people with power i want so badly to act like i’m too cool and aware of other metal things to be susceptible to this band’s charms, but my experience of slowly falling for this album to the point where i appreciate its smallest details—what this band has always been about, rather than just the sheer force of evil they expel on tracks like “doberman”—is unmatched by nearly anything since ordinary corrupt human love. i thought i could at least roast the “incidental” tracks, but at this point they may be my favorite moments on the album (aside from the record’s final two minutes, christ lmao)—instead of doing another shoegaze record they should make one that sounds like the track with jae from boy harsher.
home is where, hunting season i guess it’s probably an unreasonable critique of a band that first got our attention with an EP that sounded like a more immature take on in the aeroplane over the sea (complimentary) to say that this album just sounds like a more immature take on lonesome crowded west (neutral), so i’ll chalk it up to a skill issue on my end owing to the fact that this era of modest mouse never quite clicked for me. the MM thing kinda seems like an emerging trend i’m keeping an eye on (relatedly: this album’s warren zevon appreciation), though i’m a little disappointed that this record belatedly jumps on the “slide guitar” and “needlessly long runtime” trends of the past few years (well, maybe the 10-minute “roll tide” is homage to “truckers atlas”). wish they’d have at least introduced me to another incredible pittsburgh pop-punk band with the title of the album’s lead single.
model/actriz, pirouette feeling a certain betrayal that the lunatic industrial dance-punk band, too, has pivoted to explicitly talking about how they’ve worked through trauma in their singles, completing their full 180 from shrieking about genocide on their early recordings to 2025’s safest bet lyrically: therapy speak. the music remains lunatic in such a commendably unrepetitive way, though, that it mostly buoys this—even the eerily conventional indie-pop of “acid rain” feels avant-garde in being so un-avant-garde. plus, the line “i’m such a fucking biiiiiiiiiitch” on “diva” is obviously undeniable.
older albums
k-the-i??? & kenny segal, genuine dexterity (2024) perfect middle ground between fatboi sharif and twista. i’d guess billy woods is probably the same age as these guys, but the way backwoodz has begun putting out albums by this generation of underground rapper who’s been nearly forgotten despite their undeniable influence (thinking this and dose) feels like one of these A24-era rehab projects young directors take on to remind us middle-aged former stars still have worth. when are they dropping that despot debut?
the(e?) silver mt. zion (memorial orchestra?) (& tra-la-la band?), born into trouble as the sparks fly upward (2001) a bit more abstract than i remember he has left us alone being, and to its immense detriment features far fewer passages that could reasonably sync with footage of skydiving nuns and the dulcet tones of a herzog monologue. i don’t care that it’s not actually him, but danielson jump scare on “take these hands.”
movies
infernal affairs dir. andrew lau wai-keung & alan mak (2002) movie wherein tony leung receives a birthday present from his police connection while going deep cover with the second highest body count. simultaneously a genre picture very clearly co-conspired by the directing duo of a writer and a DP that’s so sterile of any sense of reality that it always feels on the verge of becoming a cartoon and an all-too-real look at the revolving door cops and criminals cohabitate naturally leading them into each other’s covert worlds. if you can suspend your disbelief enough to buy that only one of those who works forces is the same that serves mob bosses, and can stomach the absence of any deep-cut live covers needle-dropped at very questionable moments, leung and lau’s two-hander works in interesting contrast to scorsese’s ensemble adaptation.
a midnight clear dir. keith gordon (1992) adaptation of a war novel about rational cowardice (as all of the best WWII books were) that makes unexpected genre detours first into the realm of psychological horror (if not also the supernatural: the enemy combatant as omnipresent and laughing at you), then into christmas territory (perhaps misguidedly, as the movie does little to remind us who the real victims of this war were), and ultimately straightening out as a coming-of-age story (as the introduction of GIs playfully referred to as “father” and “mother” surely could’ve suggested) about the evils of power structures spreading far beyond nazism, making this somewhat of a test run for gordon’s pitch-perfect mother night adaptation. all of which is to say that it’s a pretty wild ride despite its tone being unusually subdued for a war movie, with the ambient score at odds with the sharp sounds of brass and snares supplied to more conflict-oriented war movies feeling apt for an enemy that’s equally atmospheric. only complaint really is the unremarkable casting led by a pre-charismatic ethan hawke, some knockoff kiefer sutherland, a worse dillon brother, and the director of patriots day. good thing john c. mcginley never got typecast.
redline dir. takeshi koike (2009) lori lightfoot’s inspo for successfully fighting all odds to impose a nascar race on the city of chicago while issues pertaining to civil rights and refugees go largely unaddressed. feels like a lot of world-building went into this movie that could easily be reduced to the race-fixing mafia villains and custom vehicles with a thousand buttons that all do surprising and often violent things of speed racer and the action-halting diplomacy and racetrack snipers of phantom menace if it weren’t for the added allure of cameos from sentient bioweapons, a ducktail rivaling johnny suede’s, and a peripheral romance plot that eclipses the conclusion. whole movie’s significantly nuts, but i’ve never heard the director’s credit recited by what appears to be part of the opening title sequence’s music rather than appearing on the screen.
take out dir. shih-ching tsou & sean baker (2004) i’ve seen this classified as an honorary dogme film, though it certainly feels more aligned with the von trier canon in being the story of an individual coping with the grueling adjustment to life in america while being ground into the dirt by everyone they encounter who clearly sees them as less than human. also surprised at how little it has in common with baker’s later films—seems like subject matter he and the safdies would later be drawn to (slice-of-life story of someone making questionable financial decisions and struggling to even-keel) as the audience anticipates the worst, though this feels a little too message-picture-y (and, aesthetically, too conventionally indie-film-fest-core, with the handheld camera frequently being a little too handheld) to qualify. i guess it does feel classically baker/safdie in the sense that i couldn’t even begin to guess which of these people are actors and which are which are just vibing. looks like several cast members returned for anora?
TV
the white lotus season 3 (2025) well summarized in the second to last episode as the “yin and yang battle of hope and pain”—a.k.a. the pain of western capitalism’s steady infiltration of eastern spaces either through business or pleasure, abetted by buddhist credos twisted into tautological business aphorisms, and the hope that the hypocritical figures manifest-destinying these schemes under the banner of “naturalism” upon such peaceful nations are able to one day understand their original meanings. what this show consistently does well is make all that stuff very obvious (in the case of this season, the dichotomies of the two older siblings and, to a lesser extent, the monk and hotel owner’s husband feel a bit like hand-holding) while remaining compelling, largely due, obviously, to casting. case in point: this series’ biggest asset thus far is probably amy lou wood’s face and the priceless reaction shots it provides to exaggerate our own responses to what we’re witnessing.