Week 16.24

I listened to Maggie Rogers’s new album a lot more this week. At a scant 36 minutes, it was nearly the perfect length for my commute into the office. And I went in every day this week, for maybe the first time in the four years since Covid, which seemed appropriate for my last full week after seven years with the company.

Yes, as mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the sabbatical is underway. I’m looking forward to having more time on my hands to focus on a few important areas (my vast media backlog being one of them). For how long? I don’t know yet, and frankly, I’m not ready to consider it. If there’s one thing I learnt from the last time around, it’s that approaching leisure with a planning and productivity mindset is for amateur layabouts. Still stressed while doing nothing? Skill issue. You have to let your time go wherever it wants.

In the process of saying goodbye to the team I’ve loved working with, a few more people learnt about this blog’s existence. Hopefully they’ll forget to come back. But watching over their shoulders as they browsed it the other day, I realized some of these posts are really too long so I’ll keep this week’s short.

I knew I wasn’t getting away without a farewell, but made clear that I’m not a fan of the greeting cards that everyone signs or writes something in — make it an NFT and send it to my wallet, I said. That way I’ll never lose it. They didn’t quite do that, but I was super pleased to receive a PDF document loaded with photos and messages, now safely stored on the cloud. Ben and Munz even remembered my fondness for the poem, Miss you. Would like to grab that chilled tofu we love., by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, and included a remixed version that makes reference to our shared places and memories (albeit treating me like a dead and departed person), and remains incredibly powerful for it.

Where was I? Oh yes, Maggie Rogers. Listening to her reminded me to go back and spend more time with the music of boygenius, and I discovered their live cover of Shania Twain’s You’re Still the One for BBC Radio 1, which is simply life-giving. I think it’s Shania’s finest pop song, up there with Mariah’s Always Be My Baby, and this version sublimely elevates the core melody.

In sort of the same North American indie rock vein, I’ve been enjoying the music of Rosali (last name Middleman), specifically her new album Bite Down and 2021’s No Medium. I was stumped trying to provide a description so I asked Google’s Gemini AI, which suggested that her music is similar to Neil Young and The War On Drugs, and I don’t feel that’s inaccurate! It’s early days and I don’t know her albums inside out yet, but first impressions were strong.

I don’t feel the same way about Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department which admittedly has only been out for a day, but I’ve played it through twice in the background and felt nothing. My expectations were already set low because of its cringey title. I’m in agreement with the reviews calling out the bland sameness from song to song — perhaps Jack Antonoff has finally exhausted his creative run and needs to take some time off too. Double albums are tricky. They need variety, progression, and invention to provide signposts and avoid being unmemorable mazes. Even some of the greatest double albums in history are hard to appreciate all at once. I’m deleting it from my library for now because keeping it around makes me feel obliged to take it in.

But I’m really looking forward to the new Billie Eilish album coming next month after hearing her talk to Zane Lowe about it. The 14-second sample of Chihiro that she shared might have more life in it than all two hours of Taylor’s tortured poetry.

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Late Sunday evening note: We finally got a new TV after 9 years, just in time for my upcoming jump in screen time. It’s coming next week.