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bradluen
@bradluen.bsky.social
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bradluen.bsky.social
Tsuru bringing the spirit of Creem to Girl Meets Rock!
Page from the manga Girl Meets Rock! #87: Tsuru: "If you can't feel any youth in the music... then you could get a billion plays, sell out the Tokyo Dome, or win a Grammy, but it's all worthless. It's just pretty noise. Everything besides youth is garbage. Got it?" Reiha: <looks out into space>
November 22, 2025 at 6:01 PM
bradluen.bsky.social
New album dropping in a week (with lots of Funky QLA assistance), keep yr year-end lists open
Dlala Thukzin: Finally Famous Too Amapiano, gqom, 3-step, whatever: it’s 100% Thukzin. That means the usual effortless beauty, as on the approximately syncopated “Sohlala Sisonke”, one of his two current hits (single-only “Ama Gear” is also worthwhile), is table stakes. Though Thukzin can match almost any beatmaker for cool sonics, more than anyone else in his scene, Thukzin has the structures and the pacing to sustain bliss for a full-length; it helps that at an hour, by Afrotronica standards this is a mini. The percussion frameworks complement the singers: a big snare and an oscillating rattle for pop-leaning Simmy, while the rhythm-play vocalists in the center of the album get what I call “early fours”, where the fourth beat comes a sixteenth early for extra urgency. Towards the end, things get weird. Not sure what “VAR” has to do with the offside rule, but its high, hollow synths create an idiosyncratic groove; after a false start, the bass finally drops and it’s a tremendous contrast. “Ballito” has a different percussion sound again, like a faded memory of a beach party. “Whistle” starts off subtle, before fast rattle-rolls and the good old donk arrive in your face. I don’t think anyone since (sorry) Moby has better satisfied both the commercial and experimental imperatives of electronic dance music.
November 21, 2025 at 6:00 PM
bradluen.bsky.social
Maurice Vellekoop, I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together. The coming-out-to-conservative-family graphic memoir is VERY well-trodden ground, but this is above-average enough to be worthwhile. Just when you think things are settling into a comfortable pattern, there's someone to stab you in the head.
Page from Maurice Vellekoop's I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together: A Memoir. Via The Comics Journal: https://www.tcj.com/reviews/im-so-glad-we-had-this-time-together-a-memoir/
November 20, 2025 at 11:20 PM
bradluen.bsky.social
"got good brain but not much knowledge"
Over old school snares and with post-retro aesthetics, collegiate ingenue Keisha describes her admiration for one Damn Daniel, as does Felicia from further round the way, and suddenly it becomes clear why neither of them show up on his Instagram. By the time we get to “If you fuck with him, he’ll fuck all your friends”, it feels like the culmination of a 30-year pop feminism syllogism.
November 20, 2025 at 8:39 PM
bradluen.bsky.social
Greatest living pop musician who doesn't have a Nobel
Album review: Tom Zé: Língua Brasileira Hy-Brasil, per Irish folklore, is an Atlantic island whose name, per Wikipedia, has no linguistic connection to actual Brazil. Zé strengthens his “Hy-Brasil Terra Sem Mal” with the force of another popular story by singing the moniker to a minor-key version of the Jesus Christ Superstar title melody, before leaping to the Roman Empire to ponder the meaning of Pompeiian graffiti. This is just the opening to his soundtrack to a play about the Brazilian tongue, and if there’s little reason to think it an accurate account of the linguistics, well, neither is Chomsky’s work and we still put up with him. Thematic and geographical detours abound—Zé takes the old saw about singing the phone book literally, as he doubles up regular and falsetto voices to inform us of the contact information of the New York Fire Department borough by borough, before contrasting them with Brazilian emergency numbers that lack the childish memorability of the FDNY Manhattan’s 212-999-2222 when the services exist at all. There’s still no one who sings or rocks out quite like him—this time there are more programmed beats than his usual, but the guitar and sense of groove remain liquid Zé. If the album’s scholarship doesn’t match some of the Estudandos, it’s as fun as anything he’s done in his 30-year second act; I’d have it in my top five Zés. I suspected the multi-movement 9:42 “A Língua Prova Que” might be some kind of summation of everything he’s ever said about life and death and Afro-Brazilian music. After spending an age trying to find lyrics before thinking to click on the Discografia section of Zé’s website, it turns out to be about a Yoruban myth in which deities cook the best worst meal on record since “Rapper’s Delight”: tongue (i.e. língua) with a hint of bay leaf. There are also a lot of nonsense syllables. Macum-micum-macum-mi.
November 19, 2025 at 7:24 PM
bradluen.bsky.social
Anyway I'm giving up on Rhode Island and declaring victory
Map of two-party US Presidential election swing from 2012-24. tl;dr: Obama did better than Harris. R code available on request.
November 19, 2025 at 9:19 AM
bradluen.bsky.social
Blllurb
Blurb for Billlie, "Ring X Ring": From last year’s mini-album The Billage of Perception: Chapter One, not to be confused with the subsequent The Billage of Perception: Chapter Two, nor The Billage of Perception: Chapter Two Original Soundtrack from “The End of the World and the Awakening”. Anyway, this debut single is basically a kawaii L’avventura, with a verse melody that’s somehow just as strange as the last one-and-a-bit sentences, before a transition to a truly huge chorus that rhymes “missing” with “risky”. “Carol of the Bells” is in there too. Irony? Psychedelics? Why not both?
November 18, 2025 at 10:31 PM
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Tomas Tranströmer, The Blue House: Collected Works (tr. Patty Crane.) Pretty succinct for a Nobelist. Peak decade is 1973–83; throw in the debut (even then, he knew how to put a collection together) and the late prose reminiscences Memories Watch Me and you get a pretty good idea of his development.
Seeing through the Ground By Tomas Tranströmer Translated By Patty Crane The white sun melts into the smog. The light drips, working its way down to my subterranean eyes that lie deep under the city and gaze upward, seeing the place from below: streets, foundations— like aerial views of a wartime city, but the reverse—a mole’s photograph: silent rectangles in muted colors. Where decisions are made. The bones of the dead can’t be told from those of the living. The sunlight intensifies and spreads, flooding into aircraft cabins and peapods.
November 17, 2025 at 7:34 AM
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Big blurb energy
Corook: "They!" This might end up being the most effective political song of the year—it doesn’t try to convert the meanest people on the Internet, it just makes it feel like that if you have no problem with gay and lesbian people, acceptance of being non-cisgender should be the most obvious thing in the world. That the music is clever enough for life outside TikTok (listen for the variations in the high synth accompanying the “they/them energy” chants) is also essential.
November 15, 2025 at 8:29 PM
bradluen.bsky.social
This was my clear number one, never heard it before the poll and now I wonder if it's the great Nigerian pop song of its era (pace King Sunny)
12 POINTS: SEGUN ADEWALE - "Atewo-Lara Ka Tepa Mo 'Se" 10 POINTS: MODEL 500 - "No UFOs (Instrumental)" 8 POINTS: BHUNDU BOYS - "Chekudya Chose" 7 POINTS: ORCHESTRA BAOBAB - "Utrus Horas" 6 POINTS: GWEN GUTHRIE - "Hopscotch" 5 POINTS: FRANKIE PAUL - "Pass The Tu-Sheng-Peng" 4 POINTS: TIPPA IRIE - "Complain Neighbour" 3 POINTS: SHEILA E - "The Belle Of St Mark" 2 POINTS: KING SUNNY ADE - "365 Is My Number / The Message" 1 POINT: KURTIS BLOW - "Basketball"
November 12, 2025 at 7:22 PM
bradluen.bsky.social
I don't have proof but I suspect might be the only US album that Xgau got to and A-listed due in some part to me
album review Tommy Womack: I Thought I Was Fine He of “Alpha Male & the Canine Mystery Blood” told his crowdfunders “I am very proud of this record and strongly believe it is the best album of my career” as well as “I’m not going to say it stinks, am I?” You know what, I’ll take him at his word. Ditching all country pretenses, he and drummer Jonathan Bright turned the moolah of their 245 Indiegogo backers into a trad rock record as strong as anyone not from Cincinnati has made in years. Very aware of his vocal limits as well as his mortality (the album title alludes to his count-’em three bouts with cancer), Womack delegates most of the melody to guitar and writes to ensure the not-many notes of his range encompass a celebration of lives lived with love, often monogamous, though in his brother Waymond’s case it took a few attempts and an Elvis rejection. Tonal exception: the short, spoken “Call Me Gary”—the words first a priest’s instructions to the boy he treats to a vanilla cone, then St. Peter’s, should he exist, to the priest—is chilling. It's followed by “That Lucky Old Sun”.
November 3, 2025 at 7:12 PM
bradluen.bsky.social
Comic: Charlie Brown and Linus sit in silence for three panels Fourth panel: Charlie screams: "Why couldn't Clement have hit the ball just three feet higher?"
November 2, 2025 at 5:20 AM
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A major punchline: Qing cultivated land went up a lot through 1850 (tho not nearly as fast as population growth) before stagnating outside of the Northeast and to an extent the Southwest. Famines became much more common. (The data seems solid for 1724 and 1850, but in between is a bit of a guess.)
Graph of Qing Dynasty cultivated land by region: North: Zhili, Shandong, Henan, Shanxi, Shaanzi, Gansu Southeast: Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangxi Southwest: Sichuan, Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou Central: Hubei, Hunan Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia are excluded. Data from Shi Zhihong, Agricultural Development in Qing China.
October 30, 2025 at 7:16 AM
bradluen.bsky.social
amazing
From the Wikipedia article for Alex Warren's album You'll Be Alright, Kid: "On July 17, 2025, the album was premiered at nearly 4,000 Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant locations prior to its worldwide release the following day."
October 30, 2025 at 6:15 AM
bradluen.bsky.social
YouTube link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jipQ...

Album review (published a year and a half after the album came out, I'm not saying I'm quick on these things):
WizKid: Made in Lagos (2020) When “Essence” crossed over last year, he became Nigeria’s most popular international star ever (check Fela’s placement in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame fan vote before disputing this.) His major rival, Burna Boy, brings a stronger-than-usual version of his macho Auto-Tune on track two and still isn’t as interesting a singer as his host, who also has no trouble matching up with an intercontinental array of guests, the non-Brits of whom acquit themselves well. When WizKid does use evident pitch correction, as on the Damian Marley collab, he does so expressively. The Afro-with-Jamaican-characteristics beats are pleasant if not cutting edge, while the lyrics are the usual boy-girl-jollof stuff. The lack of innovation hardly matters on the best tracks, led by “Essence”, in which duet partner Tems comes across as—what’s this—an equal? (The deluxe edition adds four tracks, including an “Essence” remix in which Tems lets Justin Bieber take her place for a bit, which would be a lot funnier if it wasn’t over an hour in.)
October 28, 2025 at 5:19 PM
bradluen.bsky.social
<sighs> there's no way we could've avoided this
The OP holding the book Agricultural Development in Qing China: A Quantitative Study, 1661–1911 by Shi Zhihong
October 28, 2025 at 1:07 AM
bradluen.bsky.social
Album review:
Review of Tyla's self-titled album: She calls this “popiano”; I think of it as R&B with amapiano characteristics. The sonics are watered (some pun intended) down for global consumption, but when isn’t that the case when a regional scene blows up? The log-donk, however tamed, is novel to northern audiences, and the general chill is a salve after decades of oversinging as soul. Tyla’s a fairly neutral vocalist; perhaps one might wish she’d kiss off clingy exes with more force. Given the brisk tempos, however, her casualness is sufficient on everything barring the Travis Scott remix, and might even be the correct choice when the material is as lascivious as the breakout single, or when wildcard guests like Gunna and Skillibeng require her to maintain some sense of order. Ghanaian-Brit main beatmaker Sammy SoSo layers her on the choruses, and a dozen co-producers contribute their pet drum sounds for depth. Another guest, Tems, demonstrates possibilities that would open up if Tyla put a little more character into her singing. For now, she only needs to coo “jump” for the world to do it.
October 27, 2025 at 6:52 PM
bradluen.bsky.social
aaaaaand that's it! (Eurojazz will go in Some Other Thread.)

Next: favorite '60s soul albums, coming in a week or two
"it's over!" end screen from Homestar Runner's Teen Girl Squad
October 25, 2025 at 6:58 PM
bradluen.bsky.social
At least Botswana's ex-president liked it! Now to take a big sip of coffee and read about President Masisi's elephant hunting policy
2023 year-end blurb: 7. Lady Amar, JL SA, Cici, Murumba Pitch: “Hamba Juba” Amidst all the current innovation in South African dance this year, my fave was this back-to-basics number one hit. Lady Amar and JL SA are the producers, mostly working straight house, though the Donk does make a guest appearance. Cici and Murumba Pitch’s singer Innocent do a good old-fashioned female/male it’s over/no it ain’t duet, with Cici singing “go away my dove” and Innocent trying to live up to his name; the song gives no indication that she buys it. Botswana’s president has danced to it.
October 24, 2025 at 5:44 PM
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From the 2023 year-end blurb: "fjuck-the-haters singalong [that's] not only exceedingly clever but also disgustingly, sickeningly cute, with harmonies and whoops and, ick, a happy ending… Play this at every elementary school, frat party, NASCAR race etc."
2023 year-end blurb 5. Corook & Olivia Barton: “If I Were a Fish” “Why is everyone on the Internet so mean?” doesn’t require an answer; instead, it gets a response that’s a conceptual coup: own your insecurities and make your fjuck-the-haters singalong not only exceedingly clever but also disgustingly, sickeningly cute, with harmonies and whoops and, ick, a happy ending. And they’re right: everyone is a special snowflake! If I were a head of kale they’d say “that’s a healthy head of kale” and blend me into a smoothie! Play this at every elementary school, frat party, NASCAR race etc.
October 19, 2025 at 2:32 PM
bradluen.bsky.social
#GWE Jon Moxley vs. Darby Allin 10/18/25. Not their greatest match because the intention was to give a definitive winner (and have him win with a *wrestling* move.) Still sick, still funny, still enough to get me worried with a broken aquarium around. Better: Darby, that was the point (3¾*)
View of Darby Allin choking Jon Moxley from section 113, WrestleDream, St. Louis 10/18/25.
October 19, 2025 at 5:33 AM
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Nice arch, bros #AEW #WrestleDream
October 18, 2025 at 11:54 PM
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A little thunderstorm ain't stopping St. Louis #NoKings
No Kings protest, Oct 18, Chestnut St, St. Louis
October 18, 2025 at 6:43 PM
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Review of the most shocking top ten finisher I've had in more than a decade of doing year-end album polls. Happy No Kings Day!
Kahil El’Zabar’s America the Beautiful The shock top ten finisher on the Expert Witness readers’ poll starts with an Aylerian or Ivesian or maybe just out of tune rendition of the title anthem. It’s one of several covers by one of El’Zabar’s two bands on the record, including an anthemic “Express Yourself” and a “How Can We Mend a Broken Heart” pluralized to include both homeboy Al Green and the naturalized Barry Gibb. The other band crosses potted Afropop with a string quartet, which as someone who spent a year complaining Vampire Weekend were inauthentic I’m not nearly as fond of. Still, borrowing and recombining influences is the American way, even or especially when it isn’t an improvement. Grade: B PLUS (“Express Yourself”, “America the Beautiful - Instrumental”, “How Can We Mend a Broken Heart”)
October 18, 2025 at 3:44 PM
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Review of Lil Baby's My Turn. (Found It's Only Me underwhelming; should probably give Wham a spin now that my expectations have been usefully lowered.)
Lil Baby: My Turn (27-track Deluxe Edition, not to be confused with the 26-track Deluxe Edition) Key word: “Consistent”. Don’t know if it’s surprising or just very 2020 that the year’s most streamed album adheres to Ramones-level palette restriction, essaying minor variations on the same basic post-“Versace” pattern. Spice is provided by old friends (Young Thug, Gunna) and new (his gambling buddy and fellow aficionado of overpriced streetwear 42 Dugg.) Bear in and you’ll find barbed lines throughout: they’re especially concentrated on “Sum 2 Prove”, which contrasts past eviction notices with his current successes, yet still recognizes the perilous nature of black fame: “They don’t want see us on TV unless it's the news.” From there, it’s only a zoom-out to the bigger picture. Grade: A MINUS (“The Bigger Picture”, “Sum 2 Prove”, “Whoa”)
October 15, 2025 at 5:38 PM