Reading Records
Many moons ago, a long streak of swiping on dating apps really anthropomorphized the nihilist in me to bleakly roll her eyes and bare her midriff like some version of cartoon Lizzie McGuire (but brunette). Certain profiles would send me into an incomprehensible, disgusted tailspin, particularly if the bio section contained anything to the effect of I have synesthesia. I always match with people who lead with I have synesthesia. (This dreadful opening monologue is actually word-for-word cut lines from Billy Eichner’s Bros.)
I say all this because while I don’t have synesthesia, I do contain some morsel of magic that comes in the form of book recommendations. Actually, it’s probably just having decent reading comprehension and drawing lyrical parallels from albums to books and vice versa. (Also, I started writing for this Substack a year ago, and the traditional one year anniversary gift is paper, so while I’m emotionally tethered to an e-reader these days, here’s to paperback books and you, babe.)
If you like Samia’s Honey, then you should read Jordan Kisner’s Thin Places
Samia gets eerily close to some of the subject matter in Kisner’s essay collection, including Aspen Grove and its odd multiple singularity. Kisner describes thin places to be where realities mix and meld–places where the space between the physical and spiritual world is more diluted–a place, I think, Samia’s new record nestles in quite nicely.
If you like MUNA’s Saves the World, then you should read Melissa Febos’s Abandon Me
I’ve already made this comparison, but if you like MUNA and/or care deeply about locating meaning from past relationships of all stripes that you can move through, you should pick up Abandon Me. When I first heard Saves the World, I felt understood. I think this memoir holds a similar power, born from a willingness to excavate life with unflinching emotional honesty. At one point in the book, Febos writes, “We invent nothing. We are in constant collaboration with our contexts,” a sentiment I believe MUNA’s songwriter, Katie Gavin, would agree with.
If you like Japanese Breakfast’s Jubilee, then you should read Ross Gay’s Inciting Joy
Perhaps this comes in a little on the nose, considering frontwoman Michelle Zauner herself has described Jubilee to be a record about joy. I read Gay’s latest gem and was so moved to write him an email afterward that I did. Both are incredible works, bursting with humanity, growing in the direction of a world that’s already possible because of creatives like Zauner and Gay. Both also weave in the grief of losing a parent with the ongoingness of life in a way that feels like a celebration. (There’s also an essay about masculinity and football that made me extremely emotional. I really enjoyed the Super Bowl this year, which feels related.)
If you like Arlo Parks’s Collapsed in Sunbeams, then you should read Ada Limón’s The Hurting Kind
I’m not meaning to phone it in, but as an Ada Limón stan I’d be remiss not to pair her with an album. In a world that often feels beyond dark and out of control, records/books like this are grounding. They don’t minimize pain, nor do they romanticize it, but instead sit in the room with you, make tea. The first time I heard “Black Dog,” I was walking around my neighborhood while it snowed and I texted the Spotify link to one friend, then another, then another, breathlessly asking, “have you heard this?” while dodging cars and dog walkers. Similarly, with Limón, there’s an urgency that comes with the experience of reading her work that begs an instinct in you to pin down someone you love and wave a poem in front of them, “have you read this?”
If you like Better Oblivion Community Center’s title record, then you should read A Gringo Like Me by Jennifer L. Knox
Jennifer L. Knox knocks me sideways. A wonderful professor in college introduced me to her with “Hot Ass Poem.” I became instantly obsessed. I centered my final paper for the class around her work. Her first collection highlights many unsavory narrators and inflates them with an extra serving of absurdity. They stumble about, making a mess, like the characters of the Better Oblivion Community Center universe, particularly of the lead single, “Didn’t Know What I Was In For,” which was released just a few weeks after I turned in that last essay. With Knox still ringing in my ears, the connection was a lit neon sign.
Some friends sent in albums for the machine in me to calculate and spit out recommendations. One day ChatGPT will probably be able to do this, in part because I’m posting these exact words to the internet, but for now, it’s a skill that sets me apart from the bots. (Quick sidebar: why are tech companies so bad at naming things? If I was a tech company, I would simply call my chatbot Kramer and be paid four million bucks.)
If you like Oso Oso’s sore thumb, then you should read Genevieve Hudson’s Boys of Alabama
It’s challenging to articulate the “why” here, because upon listening, sore thumb bleeds its south shore Long Island locale for the world to feast on and at first glance, a book set in Alabama doesn’t exactly match that highly specific vibe, but when I heard “father tracy” it clicked for me. Trust.
If you like The Beth’s Expert In A Dying Field, then you should read Bryan Washington’s Memorial
Repurposing the phrase “expert in a dying field” to be about exes… The Beths I am so forever openly jealous I didn’t write that myself. This album/book combo takes the mundane and fashions it into gorgeous balloon animal vignettes. Without giving too much away about Memorial’s plot, the novel begins with a relationship on the rocks, featuring two people who have collected years of memories that fall in step with the title track’s verse, “Hours of phrases I've memorized/Thousands of lines on the page/All of my notes in a desolate pile/I haven't touched in an age.” Later refrains on the record of “why do you like to be mine?” and “why do you like to still try?” ring especially true for Washington’s Benson and Mike.
If you like Pinegrove’s 11:11, then you should read Richard Powers’s The Overstory
Trees. Easy. Next.
If you like Rebecca Black’s Rebecca Black Was Here, then you should read Carol Bensimon’s We All Loved Cowboys
Don’t let the syrupy and strange pop elements of this EP distract you: this record bears the weight of an explicitly queer pendulum, detailing a relationship that swings between revisionist history and total delusion. The kind of intense coupling where no one leaves unscathed while begging the question, “what even was that?” Bensimon’s novel inhabits a similar space, but instead reunites its estranged ex-lovers for a road trip. It’s giving commitment issues! It’s giving coming of age!
boygenius bonus zone:
boygenius is BACK and thousands of crying emojis have been sent in all the group chats. While the record is still forthcoming, we have 3 singles to work with.
If you like boygenius’s new track “$20,” then you should read Miriam Toew’s Fight Night
When my friend Bradley was a bookseller, I gave them the prompt “precocious child” and was gifted Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation (which I tore through in an evening and loved). Toew’s rambunctious leading girl, Swiv, would eat Offill’s precocious child for breakfast. This book captured my attention and made me cry on a train. It’s fierce. It throws punches. It’s Saoirse Ronan saying “Women–” in Little Women. It’s very much like Phoebe Bridgers screaming, “I KNOW YOU HAVE $20.”
If you like boygenius’s new track “True Blue,” then you should read Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend
I waited too long to start this series, afraid it wouldn’t live up to its adoring hype. I’m eating my words and they taste like pasta! Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend is the perfect pair to “True Blue” because… say it with me… complex female friendship! That’s all I’ll say about that.
If you like boygenius’s new track “Emily I’m Sorry,” then you should probably read Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends, but I haven’t, so I cannot genuinely recommend. I watched the show and once again can confirm: those people may be someone’s friends, but they sure aren’t mine!
Here are some of those songs compiled for your listening convenience:
And finally, a musician I love, Hope Tala, recently launched her own book club called Novelsong, which similarly centers on pairing reading with listening. This month, we (yes, I am a self-appointed member, there’s ownership in that) are reading Beloved by Toni Morrison while listening to Beyoncé’s Lemonade and it is WILD. Join us.
Give me a shout if there are any albums or books you require a cross-medium matchmaker for and I’ll consult my shelves.
Now go listen to “Love Drought,” because you probably haven’t in a minute, and it really is perfection.
Big love,
kaylasomething