Odds and Ends: April 2024

doing lots of eating and listening

Hammock season is here! Lemonade season is here! My foot is in a boot and has been for weeks because I messed my ankle up! There is still plenty to do, see, and behold!

ATE

Tempura Crunch Salmon

This is another winner from Caroline Chambers, and it is super simple if you have a couple of key ingredients on hand (sesame oil, sesame seeds). We ended up making ours with plain ol’ white rice and sauteeing some kale before adding a bunch of chile crisp (Laoganma or bust) and assembling it all in bowls. Easy enough for a weeknight but impressive enough you can serve it for a crowd.

One-Pan Orzo with Spinach and Feta (gift link)

This is so simple it’s silly, and we made it two times in one week. Don’t add the spinach when the recipe says to or it will cook down to nothing by the time you’re done. Instead, save it for the very end. I chopped up the spinach and stirred it in just until wilted and added the feta on top. Goes beautifully with salmon on the side, would also go well as a meal with some type of protein stirred in.

LISTENED

Lola Young: Conceited at Maida Vale Studios

WE MADE IT pt I: Lola Young on the BBC Radio 1 channel!! I shrieked the second this was uploaded, and I’m so delighted to see her reaching a broader audience. Conceited is one of her strongest songs, and this live version amps up the grit and rawness of the studio version and is one of the punkest songs she has. The groove of this chorus is infectious (seriously, you can’t not sing along when you bought me some flowers, I gave them to someone else kicks in). God, I love this woman. She’s going to be massive. Adele meets Amy Winehouse meets, idk, some cool girl.

More Lola Young in my January Pick Out the Jams newsletter.

Chappell Roan

WE MADE IT pt 2: I was overjoyed to see Chappell Roan perform both weekends of Coachella. She is such a delightful artist with a voice that has shades of Lana del Rey and Tragic Kingdom-era Gwen Stefani and songs that have echoes of Fame-era Gaga. Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl just hits different with a crowd of people singing along. Can you imagine the Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl iPod commercial 20 years ago, bc I can! (also my husband loves her too now and it is bringing me SO much joy)

I’m also using this as an excuse to plug her equally exceptional Tiny Desk (the lipstick on her teeth! the hair! the guitar solo on the violin! the singalong at the end of Red Wine Supernova!). Also check out Good Luck, Babe! for major Marina (formerly Marina and the Diamonds) vibes.

The Last Dinner Party

Honestly? WE MADE IT pt 3! On top of their spectacular Coachella performance, The Last Dinner Party was also in the New York Times (?!). They’re often compared to Florence and the Machine, and they certainly have the soaring vocals and theatricality to back it up. I might also weave in a favorable comparison to Queen (appropriate as their guitarist was once Brian May in a Queen cover band), as they really go a step further than FATM ever has. Abigail, the lead singer, also has major Patti Smith vibes to me, a true frontwoman who is interested in performing, not just singing. You’ve probably heard Nothing Matters, but the rest of their debut is worth a spin too. Picture it: windows down, 65 mph on a deserted highway, breezy summer night headed home from dinner with a friend blasting Nothing Matters. Life affirming.

More Favorite Listens

• Chosen to Deserve: Wednesday Tiny Desk

Wednesday is folky, yodelly, and damn catchy. Karly, the lead singer, has an honest voice that reminds me a lot of my favorite folk punk. Chosen to Deserve is a highlight and delight.

• Love Is a Losing Game Demo: Amy Winehouse

I’m going to withhold what I have to say about the new movie coming out, but the one good thing about it is that it has pushed me back into some of my favorite performances of the real Amy Winehouse. Love Is a Losing Game has always been my favorite Amy song because it is deceptively simple, absolutely beautiful, and heartbreaking. This is Amy at her best, singing alone with an acoustic guitar, almost painfully raw.

WATCHED

Anatomy of a Fall

Anatomy of a Fall is deliriously good. I adored it the first time I watched it before the Academy Awards, and I’ve watched it two times since then and possibly hundreds of times if you count plays of the steel drum cover of PIMP that features heavily in it (can you BELIEVE that they almost used Jolene instead?! It would be an entirely different movie) and plays of this scene.

Watch it! And, more importantly, let me know who you think did it if you do :)

Is the Peaky Blinders Juice Worth the Squeeze?

I finally tried to start Peaky Blinders and have been absolutely kneecapped by my inability to tolerate the off-tune singing (it makes men stop fighting! they all can’t believe how beautiful and talented I am! we’re peaky blindahs!) and cheesy anachronistic car commercial music. My recent Boardwalk Empire rewatch is also making me compare everything (and Boardwalk comes out on top most of the time). I get it, they’re bad guys and cool at the same time. Someone who is reading this and who has watched it please tell me truly—is the juice worth the squeeze in 2024?

READ

This is an anti-recommendation, but I was overwhelmingly disappointed by two of the nonfiction books I was looking forward to the most this year, Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie and Filterworld by Kyle Chayka. I struck out back to back and read nothing else for a couple of weeks because I was so bummed! Not the End of the World is radically irresponsible IMO, and I went in with the most open mind that I could. I think I’ve been pollution-pilled by living in Pittsburgh. Filterworld was also a massive letdown. I think either I’ve been touching so much grass that I can’t feel sympathy for those who cannot touch grass anymore or the book is just that over the top. Take this, from when he opens up Spotify to realize that they moved the homepage around:

My muscle memory didn’t work. The collection had been rearranged without giving me any notice or choice in the matter. It felt like a form of aphasia, as if someone had moved around all the furniture in my living room overnight and I was still trying to navigate it as I always had. […] Spotify’s interface updates felt like… a total disruption of the pieces of art and culture that shaped me.

You good brother? The day Spotify redesigning its homepage feels like someone moved around physical objects in my real home is the day I log off forever.

PLAYING

stitch

stitch is endlessly cute and a great game for people who don’t really like playing Game Games (like me!). It reminds me of nonograms (shout out Shadow at the Water’s Edge for introducing me to those) and it’s nice to mindlessly plug away at if you already have Apple Arcade.

Ok that’s all for now! Hammock Guide I wrote last summer coming your way before Memorial Day :)