I'm Listening: Take Dump 3/16/26

Get ready to see a lot of music takes in these Take Dumps! My current routine is listening to one 2026 album a day, all the way through, during phone-game decompression at night. While I would never feel comfortable writing a “real” album review after that cursory an investigation, it’s enough to tell me whether I enjoyed it a lot, a little, or didn’t enjoy it at all. This is the same amount of attention a musical act would receive in concert, and you’re allowed to review a concert, right? So treat any negative takes here with that level of credence. And it’s negative takes that will be more topical, because the albums I know I like I’ll sit with longer. Though I’ll try not to wait until a year-end best-of to give them a shout-out.

Part of why there wasn’t a year-end best-of for 2025 is that I was letting myself tap out of an album after a couple tracks. That’s fine if you just don’t want to miss a classic, but I’m accepting my creative muse requires a little more discipline than that. Case in point…the new Kim Gordon! It only took a couple minutes to realize PLAY ME is another solo album where she issues the same constipated vocals and basic meme-play she has since at least Sonic Youth’s Dirty, over “trap” beats by producer Justin Raisen. She’s very much in a place where Yoko Ono was in the ‘90s and ‘00s. Hipsters are impressed mom is down with the cool kids, and surviving the misogynist maligning of earlier decades gives her a “Get Out Of Meh Free” pass for life. The question of whether fifty other acts do this kind of thing better in 2026 is moot, because she’s an avatar of underestimated women-in-rock, earning a “queen!” on principle. But I already detailed my appreciation and criticisms of the Kim Gordon gestalt in my Sonic Youth Album Guide, so why go there again without financial reward?

Well, as mundane and uninspiring as I can find Gordon’s gasps and mewls (the hip-hop affectations no shock if you remember Ciccone Youth and know “Kool Thing” was about being fascinated by LL Cool J), “NOT TODAY” - track 6 - allows for a bit of melody, groove and dynamics in the swirling SY sense (all things relative). That put me in a good enough mood to enjoy the murmurs of discontent over financebros on “SUBCON.” PLAY ME - not even 30 minutes long - is pretty threadbare for an album. “You’re a boy with a hook/ a girl with a look” and “post-empire/ where’s my cherry pie/ makes me cry” are just some of the lyrics that could have fallen behind a desk circa NYC Ghosts & Flowers. But “NOT TODAY” and “SUBCON” would make a nice 7”.

Another hype that got better as it went on was Singin’ To An Empty Chair by Ratboys. The A side really got my danders up. The music is less sodden, quicker to rave-up, than fellow modern stomp-box alt-country heroes Wednesday. Unfortunately, Ratboys’ choruses and arrangements are so banal and repetitive the grandiosity becomes offensive. After a couple songs, my harumph went from “mid Bettie Serveert” to “mid Letters To Cleo” to that Ben Stiller Show sketch about Melrose Heights 902102042(6), where the guy sings “I’m a young adult, and I’m in love!’” Just replace the rasp and sax with self-admiring drawl and “rock lives!” guitar breaks. But, ironically, I started to turn around on the longest song on the album, “Just Want You To Know The Truth,” which builds slow and drops a lot of specifics over its eight minutes, instead of trying to milk deep truth out of a catchphrase. Two tracks later, they lost me again with a belabored whisper to “burn it down.” Despite the yearning chirp of it all, this is actually their sixth album - having traded Topshelf Records for the larger New West. So I wouldn’t be shocked if they put out a winner beforehand, one that doesn’t make me snap “Why-lo Kiley?”

Though I referred to Joyce Manor’s I Used To Go To This Bar as “admirably succinct” in my phone notes, the only listen I found downright excruciating to date is Bill Callahan’s My Days Of 58. I recently credited the Artist Formerly Known As Smog with My Favorite Album of 2005, so don’t call me a hater! I knew he’d grown more comfortable with artifice of late, Drag City veterans no longer needing to keep things spartan and raw. But I wasn’t prepared for the mix of seemingly improvisational indulgence and cornball schmaltz (if the wandering tone is intentional, or if that song dissing auto-tune is tongue-in-cheek, that doesn’t make it better). Callahan often sounds like Giant Sand’s Howe Gelb with an irredeemable case of the cutes, having become so relaxed in center stage he comes off entitled. I’m not shocked the album has gotten high marks; those eager to write about Callahan aren’t looking to slam him. But I have a hard time believing anyone finds My Days Of 58 as adorable and charming as Callahan does.

Fascination is the first Jean Rollin film I’ve ever seen, so I’m not in a place to either dismiss him as a pretentious smut peddler or mourn that this auteur of the fantastique was forced to make porn because his passion projects were too profound and daring. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pretentious smut movie before that actually succeeds on both levels. Our hero is Marc, a reckless young thief on the run from the whimsically dressed gang he betrayed. Searching for a hideout, Marc accidentally meets two hotties in an otherwise empty chateau. These ladies, when not canoodling nude, are planning for the arrival of even more women for a total freak-fest. It’s clearly unwise for Marc to stick around, even before his ex-accomplices are offed, one mid-coitus. But he’s a rather proud sort, eager to learn what kind of crazy girls' night is afoot, and refuses to believe it could leave him worse for wear. I won’t spoil whether it does, but the movie has strikingly spectral imagery involving blood and scythes, a somewhat feminist message (or at least lets the men be vain morons), and a whole lotta cheesecake. I get the sense cineastes are supposed to be too mature and familiar with the requirements of European erotica to acknowledge the gratuitous T&A as such, but whatever. Fascination would be perfect background fare at your finer tawdry dive bars. FOUR BAGS OF POPCORN.

I was sincerely under the impression Nick Stahl was dead, but it looks like that might have been due to a clickbait hoax that went around Twitter in 2020. The former teen actor (In The Bedroom, Sin City) dealt with some heavy demons in the ‘10s, but is reportedly sober and has been working consistently this decade. It’s awkward to acknowledge, but his troubled reputation serves him well in 2023’s What You Wish For. Stahl is Ryan, a debt-ridden chef visiting his friend Jack from culinary school at a mysterious gig in Colombia. Jack seemingly hangs himself overnight (it’s in the trailer, not a spoiler), Ryan seeing a chance to leap out of the metaphorical frying pan and risk some dangerous fire. Stahl delivers one of the most Hitchcockian lead performances I’ve seen in ages, where we aren’t certain if he’s worth rooting for as he races to fake ID, put together a con, and pray Jack’s situation was better than his own. Stahl and director Nick Tomnay don’t give us the relief of transparent wholesomeness or malevolence as Ryan skirts around a variety of uncertain threats and sudden twists of fate. What You Wish For concerns a desperate man who’s been through enough to suck it up and adjust as necessary. Whether he’s a hero or anti-hero is almost beside the point. FIVE BAGS OF POPCORN.

I sometimes forget Alexandre Aja directed 2019’s Crawl, where Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper play a father and daughter stuck in a flooded basement with alligators during a hurricane. I never saw High Tension or Horns, but Mirrors and his Hills Have Eyes remake were dreary DVD fodder. Piranha 3D is a ridiculous hoot, recommended if you want to watch Jerry O’Connell brutally parody the Girls Gone Wild guy, or see Adam Scott pump and fire a shotgun with one hand on a jet ski. But nothing would have led me to believe Aja could do a simple, spirited B-movie focused on charismatic, capable characters trying to stay calm and rational during a batshit situation most of us would faint three seconds into. Granted, Sam Raimi produced, but that doesn’t guarantee gold. Someday, when I resubscribe to Netflix, I’ll have to check out Aja’s “Melanie Laurent stuck in a cryogenic pod” movie. POPCORN CLASSIC.

My movie ratings are explained here. I'm not going to rate albums in Take Dumps, so I can more easily tell the aggrieved I might have "missed something." If you sincerely think I did, or want to suggest I check out a different piece of media, anthony is right at gmail dot com is the mailbox of choice.