another silly little year

a letter of recommendations but don't get it twisted: this is not a best of list

Well, well, well. In the words of Emma Roberts: Surprise, bitch. I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me. That’s right, I am a subpar actress on a Ryan Murphy show and all of you reading this newsletter are Jessica Lange (a superb actress held hostage by the Ryan Murphy Industrial Complex, which requires her to have some sort of hallucination scene at least once in every project). You all thought this newsletter was dead but guess what. Like a Ryan Murphy production, it simply continues to improbably exist even as its consistency wanes.

The book is done? (Well, not done done—filed and in edit, although that didn’t stop one would-be source from behaving like an absolute clown this weekend, asking to be interviewed after months of runaround, then canceling on me 15 minutes before with a lie and an excuse that they didn’t want to waste my time. I have to laugh!!!). Has my brain begun to slowly heal from this, uh, experience? Sure, I guess. Has it healed enough to return to writing my long, sad essays? No! Patience, please!!! It is, though, at the point where I’m like “Well, gotta get back to filling this void with writing and busyness! What else am I supposed to do with all this time I suddenly have back? Get a hobby??!?” So, below, an assortment of blurbs about things I liked this year. A letter of recommendations, if you will, because I don’t really love best-of lists as a concept, and anyway this is so far from that, from a purely organizational perspective. Whatever. You do not need to know the rationale. 

okay thanks sorry love you happy holidays don’t tell me your new years resolutions i don’t want to know thanks again bye,

carrie  

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music i enjoyed

Tomberlin - “stoned” and “happy accident” 

(I wrote about “happy accident” for Pitchfork’s Best Songs of 2022 list but honestly (a) 100 words was not enough for what I want to say (b) I think it’s best discussed coupled with “stoned” which is….maybe the song for me. So.)

Tomberlin’s sophomore album, i don’t know who needs to hear this…, is an elevation of the hushed indie folk sound she broke through with, one that rejects the confines of a stereotypical Baptist pastor’s rebellious daughter listeners were projecting onto her. (“I am a Little House on the Prairie bitch, but that’s only part of me,” she told Pitchfork earlier this year.) But that expansion is a slow build, one that creeps up on you. Listen to just the acoustic vibes on the A side of the album and you might not suspect the wallop coming for you once you flip over to the climactic moment of sister songs “stoned” and “happy accident.” Together, they move towards a sound far heavier and more electric-leaning, curves in the path, loose gravel in the road—a sonic burst to pull you from an amble you’ve gotten used to. They’re songs about trust and forgiveness, about relationships with those who have hurt us and those who may continue to do so, but more simple than that: They’re songs about walking.

Figuratively, of course, but a little bit literally, too. The opening lines of “stoned” are, after all: “After the party, I walked home, so stoned, so stoned,” the rest of the song unfolding like a monologue to herself on her late night journey home. When Tomberlin moved to New York while writing the album, she got to know the city by walking it; big walk vibes abound, be it in the guitar loops as elliptical as her thoughts or the propulsive percussion that thumps like platform Doc-clad footsteps. Tomberlin’s walks are not hot girl walks. They’re the burst of cold late night air filling your lungs when you step out of an apartment party that’s grown claustrophobically hot. They’re long meanders through the city with your headphones in and your hands shoved deep in your pockets; morning after walks of shame; journeys on your way to make bad decisions, reneging your declaration of staying in tonight. “stoned” and its follow-up, “happy accident,” are about all those thoughts that unravel on long walks where you have too much time to think about everything you have ever done and everyone you have ever loved, spiraling slowly until you’re in too deep. Imagined confrontations and conversations find their way to the front: Who is this person? Do they like me for me, or for what I can offer them? Who am I? Am I really being me, or just a performative version of myself? 

The answers, at least in Tomberlin’s world, are never easy and often shifting. We make exceptions for people, continue to put a palatable version of ourselves out there even when we try our best to be our most genuinely human and imperfect. Not everything resolves itself neatly the way it does in the stories we tell ourselves. Life isn’t a narrative, as Tomberlin realizes by her conclusions. Better to quit trying to force the ending and keep walking. 

Margo Price - “Lydia” 

There’s no question that the two lead singles off Margo Price’s forthcoming Strays fucking go. “Been to the Mountain” and “Change of Heart” are relentlessly hard rocking, swaggering psychedelic-infused blues; they’re the high of the hard-won freedom of knowing of yourself that’s more intoxicating than any vape hit, a dare and a boot on the neck. Satisfying and masterfully produced, if not entirely surprising in Price’s canon of standout middle finger-raised kiss offs (see: cuts like “Stone Me” and “Four Years of Chances”) and manifestos from someone who sees through the bullshit of the game and is unafraid to call it out, much less refuse to play it. Price is a master storyteller with a gift for chronicling the human condition, no matter what genre she shape-shifts through, from honky tonk outlaw country to hard living bar band rock to new wave-flavored Americana and beyond. 

It’s a talent especially evident in the quieter tracks, the ones sung with hushed reverence, the observations from someone who lays aside a proud chested persona to reveal a vulnerable and sensitive soul who sees the heartbreak and injustice in every day life, one who knows that shit is hard and empathizes with the struggle. There’s no judgement, no romanticizing, no bootstraps rhetoric. Not everything happens for a reason. Not everyone gets to learn something from being poor, from being beaten, from being outcast, from not having the keys to open the doors they wish to walk through. Not everything gets to be an uplifting anecdote and not everyone gets a happy ending. But real, clear-eyed depictions of those existences are just as necessary as ones of all those who made it out.

“Lydia,” the third standout track off Strays, is one of those songs. A story about a poor woman in an abortion clinic told across six minutes without a discernible melody or rhyme, its production is skeletal. An acoustic guitar, a few haunting strings here and there; there’s no shiny veneer to make it an easy listen, to soften its brutal blow. Its the strength of Price’s ability to tell a story and her observational details—“nice neighbors, bad cough. No health insurance this year, transitional neighborhood. Gentrification comes like it always does and some nice condos, they go in”—that keep you hanging on with rapt attention. The character Lydia is not all that unique or special; there are millions of women just like her in this country, women who get up every morning and do what they have to do to make it to the next day, who, like Price, refuse to linger in self pity for too long. 

RXKnephew - “Saoirse Ronan”

I don’t even really know what to say about this other than I’ve never in my life thought I’d hear a rap track that genuinely fucking goes and is also littered with the name of the great 28 year old four time Academy Award nominee star of Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. Bonus points for all the references to the great forgotten Disney Channel girly icons. A true feat. 

Alvvays - “Belinda Says”

Look, you don’t need me to tell you that Alvvays’ third album Blue Rev is one of the best of the year, or that one of its standout tracks—“Belinda Says”—is one of the best (or, depending who you ask, the best) of the year. Here’s the thing: Do I still love this song now that I’ve paid closer attention to the details and lyrics and have read all there is to read about it and understand it as a fictional short story in song form? Yes, of course. But I’m still a little bit tied to the feeling it stirred within me the first few times I heard it, when my interpretation was different: In those first few listens, it wasn’t about an anonymous young woman dealing with an unexpected pregnancy; it wasn’t about giving in, but about giving up. It was a fantasy about dropping out, about deciding to throw in the towel, stop trying so hard, and give up hustle and grind of “success” to just “move into the country, have that baby, wait tables in town.” It was a romanticism of regression, leaving behind what some may see as paradise (but you know better) to move back to your hometown to start all over again with a pedestrian, normal life. Others are happy doing it, so why can’t you be, too? Because, as Molly Rankin sings, name-checking Belinda Carlisle, “heaven is a place on earth, well, so is hell.” More often than not, they’re the same place. 

Mallrat ft. Azealia Banks - “Surprise Me”

Pre-2022, the Mallrat I was acquainted with sang fun little sunkissed dream-pop bops that sounded like they would play over the final credits of a teen romcom set at the beach. Never would I have expected this literal surprise: a marriage of that shoegaze-y sound with a trap beat and, most importantly, a guest verse from Ms. Azealia “I wouldn’t give [Elon Musk] the credit of calling him an alien. He’s a mutant.” Banks. Like all her best, most savage Elon burns, it snatches the entire track and walks away with it, a wild and winning combination of filth and humor with rhymes like “You Louis C.K., jerk it like a Shake Weight.” “He said my pussy tighter than Nicole Kidman face”? That’s perhaps the greatest lyric written this year.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Live at the Fillmore, 1997

At least once a month I get kind of sad and think to myself “I would literally give anything to be at a Tom Petty concert right now.” I could write another long blurb elaborating on this that would stretch to near essay length—and I did, but then I deleted it, because you simply do not need it, not now, at least. If I can’t be at a Tom Petty concert, any one of the Heartbreakers’ live recordings—they always have the best mix in of audience sound that truly makes you feel there—is a good second, and this new release is no exception. (And it comes complete with an impromptu acquiescence to an audience request of what I think every good band should have: A dumb, deep-cut, inside joke gag track.) Tom Petty fucking ruled, and I miss him. 

Caitlin Rose - Cazimi 

I love Caitlin’s music so very much, and I was humbled and delighted to write the bio for her new album that says all I want to say about it in a way that does it more justice than this type of frazzled blurb ever could. But even if I hadn’t, I’d still say: This was one of my most on-repeat albums of the year, and it only just came out. What a writer, what a voice, what a presence I am so happy to see making music again. 

“Lara’s Theme” from Dr. Zhivago

On a recent Sunday night (4:30 p.m.) in November, I turned on my TV, clicked the little Hulu live app, and went to see what was playing on TCM. Turner Classic Movies has always been that bitch, but the programming has been more fire than usual lately. I’d like to think this uptick in quality lineups began when they programmed the horniest night on television (triple feature of The Natural, Crossing Delancey, and Yentl) back in May, but I digress. So: Sunday night. What’s starting? Dr. Zhivago, a movie I had long known about but never seen. We all know how I feel about sprawling love story-meets-history lesson epics about the Russian Revolution, so, duh, of course I was in. Anyway, this little blurb is not about the movie—which is, I don’t know, fine? Very “this is so obviously shot on a soundstage with painted backdrops in the dying days of the studio system, but that’s kind of enjoyable”? It is not nearly as horny or as well crafted as Reds, although the fantastic-but-anachronistic costumes and HMU (you cannot tell me Julie Christie does not have the face of a girly who knows who the Beatles are) make it a fun Sunday watch.

This blurb is about the score, which is fire. How do I know? Because the next very cold morning, I donned my fluffy little faux-leopard coat and sauntered out into the day pretending I was a Russian woman heading to a Christmas party to shoot her much-older lover and not just another Upper West Side millennial going to get a flu shot. For the next eight or so feverishly-out-of-my-fucking-mind-texting-friends-“I feel HIGH”-hours, I listened to “Lara’s Theme” on repeat, in a state that ranged from “I am a beautiful girly living in exile with a handsome married man who walked all this way through the bitter winter for me” to full dissociation, not realizing the three minute long swelling track was still playing. I am bereft that Spotify stopped collecting data before they could include it in my Wrapped, but my Last.fm scrobbles speak for themselves: I have, as of this moment, listened to it 98 (soon to be 99—I’m playing it now) times, and I don’t regret a single one of them.

other music i played on repeat this year that i will spare you ramblings about because i’m trying to keep my word count reasonable: 

Alex G. - God Save The Animals // Amanda Shires - Take It Like a Man // Beyoncé - Renaissance // // Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You // Braxe + Falcon - “Step By Step - 12” Version” // Carly Rae Jepsen - “Western Wind” // Cate Le Bon - Pompeii // Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg and Stumpwork // Ethel Cain - “American Teenager” // Harry Styles - “Music For a Sushi Restaurant” // Jockstrap - “Greatest Hits” //  LCD Soundsystem - “new body rhumba” // Lulu Lewis - Dyscopia // Maggie Rogers - Surrender // Maren Morris - “Circles Around This Town” // Plains - “Problem With It” // // Regina Spektor - “Becoming All Alone” // Soccer Mommy - “Shotgun” // Tariq, The Gregory Brothers, and Recess Therapy - “It’s Corn” // Ted Leo - For Coit and Killie // Wet Leg - Wet Leg // and, as always, Alexandre Desplat’s score for Little Women (2019)

movies i watched for the first time and liked

Holiday (1938)

We used to be a country, a real country, where rom coms were good and it was entirely plausible that you’d hate your fiancée’s family but love her wacky sister and end up getting with her instead (and somehow you didn’t have to deal with the whole “but your family sucks” thing because she’d hate them too). A country where all women had to do was have quirky interests and wear fun little hats and be good at banter. If my rights are going to be pretty much on par with what they were in the ‘30s then I should at least be given THAT fantasy life to go along with it.

Carnal Knowledge (1971) / Goodfellas (1990) / Magnolia (1999)

AKA the trio of films I finally watched for the first time after years spent waiting until I was “old enough”/in the mood/ready for them and was subsequently furious with myself for putting off for so long—a short lived fury, though, because I knew in my heart I was absolutely right to do so. That I was left thinking “How am I supposed to go out and walk around the world like a normal person after this?” after viewing each and every one proves to me that I would have made any one of these fine films my entire personality and been the most insufferable person on the planet (more so than I already am) had I seen them a minute sooner. 

Joe Versus the Volcano (1990)

It’s about life, it’s about death, it’s about capitalism, it’s about adventure, it’s about Meg Ryan doing funny voices and Tom Hanks dancing upon luggage floating in the sea. I cannot believe I walked into a 35mm screening of this on a Saturday afternoon as “something to do,” expecting to just simply like it. Me, a person who famously has a great deal of fondness for big messy goofy comedies with heart that do a little too much but do so with a wild, confident swing (and do so while burning a major studio’s money). How could I have possibly thought I’d do anything other than come out of it a full convert, deeply obsessed and in love with what I just watched, in a great mood from sitting smiling for nearly two hours saying “I love the movies!” and thinking “Haha, wouldn’t it be crazy if I bought a ticket to see this again tomorrow…haha, that would be crazy, right?” Reader, I did, and it was just as wonderful the second time. I am once again proven right in my fierce theory that every Tom Hanks movie is a Christmas movie. I will not discuss that any further, but you know where to find me. 

Squirrels to the Nuts (2014)

The first time I watched She’s Funny That Way, Peter Bogdanovich’s final film, I hated it. The screwball comedy about a playwright and the love triangle between his wife, her ex—both actors in his new play—and the call girl he hires, then later casts in the production, left the sad and sour taste of disappointment in my mouth. Bogdanovich’s most wonderfully wonderful films are all send-ups of popular film genres long since passed—few people know how to make films that bring that sort of “Whatta picture!” energy decades after they stopped making “Whatta picture!” pictures better than he—so an expectation of anachronisms is always to be expected. But She’s Funny That Way felt different: unaware of its pastiche, messy and lacking in structure, like everyone was acting in a different film. It felt indulgent, lazy and tired, even, like a lost flat soda draft of What’s Up, Doc?—glimmers of greatness, but weighed down by a lot of nonsense—that was only fun if you watched it imagining who in his original group of players would be which character. 

I wasn’t entirely wrong. She’s Funny That Way IS a mess. But that wasn’t all Bogdanovich’s fault; the wonky structure and inane framing device were the results of reshoots and edits that he seemed resigned to make, a watering down to appease producers and studio heads and see it through to release. Bogdanovich was no stranger to making films with original cuts that are vastly better than the version finally released (see: At Long Last Love, which I could defend all day). Like At Long Last Love, the original cut of She’s Funny That Way—called Squirrels to the Nuts—seemed lost forever until it randomly appeared decades later and was released in rough form. 

Is it perfect? Does it match the filmmaker’s screwball greats What’s Up, Doc? or They All Laughed? No, and definitely not. But it’s an astounding improvement on the theatrical version, with its charm and delightful fizzle reinstated enough to get you to admit that even a subpar Bogdanovich comedy is a better time than most other’s best attempts.

Tár (2022)

You don’t need me to tell you that Tár fucking rules. 

Causeway (2022)

We need more small, quiet, character-driven movies that feel like they’re adaptations of plays. Bring back this very ‘80s move, please, I’m begging you.

Jackass Forever (2022)

I just think it’s kind of beautiful that movies can be deeply meaningful, thoughtfully plotted stories or works of escapism or heightened realities that reflect our world back to us and allow us to feel things and revel in the art of marrying storytelling to picture, and that they can also just be dudes hitting each other’s dicks for 90 minutes straight. Like, that’s the magic of cinema. I could intellectualize it and talk about male bonding or the facade of masculinity, but that would ruin it. Sometimes it’s not that deep. Sometimes it’s just doing stupid shit for laughs, and I for one think that’s great.

other highlight first watches that tbh you can just read my thoughts about on letterboxd

The More the Merrier (1943) // Luv (1967) // Taking Off (1971) // The Last of Sheila (1973) // Chinatown (1974) // Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) // The Power of the Dog (2021) // The Lost Daughter (2021) // Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2022) // Glass Onion (2022)

 

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