No Expectations 090: Virtual You
New LPs from 22º Halo, Haley Heynderickx, and more. Plus, a particularly pretty weekly playlist.
No Expectations hits inboxes on Thursdays at 9am cst. Reader mailbag email: Noexpectationsnewsletter@gmail.com. The newsletter I produce at my day job with WTTW News (PBS Chicago) can be found here.
Headline song: 22º Halo, "Virtual You"
Thanks for being here. Last weekend, I traveled a bit. I attended a beautiful wedding in Palm Springs for my girlfriend’s best friend and had a couple of nights in Los Angeles. While I didn't spend enough time exploring L.A. and couldn’t see most of my buds who live there, I still had a blast. I love that city a ton. Flying back to Chicago on Monday, I realized I caught some weird, non-COVID illness so I didn’t finish the promised “2023 LPs I Missed” list. I decided to save that one for some undetermined time in the future. It probably won’t be next week, because I started a different essay that I realized was too ambitious and unwieldy to finish in my limited post-vacation window. It’ll be better this way, I promise.
Anyway, the No Expectations year-end list is shaping up to be a banger. I’ll probably cap it at 60 LPs as always but this year has been so full of great releases I might be a sicko, give myself more work, and expand it to 75. That will run sometime in December—likely first or second week. After that, No Expectations will go on a short holiday hiatus.
You can upgrade to a paid subscription or tell a bud to check out one of the artists you read about here. Appreciate you reading.
Have you checked out the Best Tracks of 2024 Spotify playlist yet?
I shared this at the beginning of the year but figure right now is a good time to re-up it. I’ll be adding more tracks and going through old weekly playlists to see if I missed anything. It’s at well over 200 tracks now. 13 hours of good music.. While I can’t promise I’ll do this in the next few days since it’s a lot of work, my goal is to catch up with the Apple Music version (only at 59 tracks) before the EOY roundup drops in December.
(The boring, convoluted explanation for why that hasn’t been regularly updated despite Apple Music being my go-to streaming service is that for whatever reason, Apple Music flags albums in my downloaded library (which is quite a few of them) and doesn’t make them public. So, in order to fix it, I have to subtly tweak the files to say Album Name (Promo) so it publishes the version publicly available on streaming. It’s a real pain. I hope there’s a simple fix).
Are you on Bluesky? I am too.
I’m trying to be less online in general, which is a tough proposition considering my job and this newsletter. That said, I’m at the very least taking steps to be more mindful about what I expose myself to on the internet. Avoiding unneeded distractions is always a good idea too. Speaking of the latter, I know a few folks have deactivated their Twitter accounts and moved over to the other text-based social media app Bluesky. I’ve found that the site’s algorithm is more focused on friends and less doomscroll-inducing ragebait and casual cruelty. If you’re feeling similarly and want to be on a platform that doesn’t suppress links and news, I’m @joshterry.bsky.social. I’ll be posting there and sharing newsletter updates but I understand if you need to social media cleanse and log off.
What I listened to:
The No Expectations 090 Playlist: Spotify // Apple Music
1. Laurie Torres, "Lisière“
2. Haley Heynderickx, “Foxglove”
3. hemlock, “Full”
4. Lee Baggett, “Sea Turtle”
5. 22º Halo, “Cobwebs”
6. Threshold, “Baby”
7. Dave Vettraino, “Parallel Play”
8. Squid, “Crispy Skin”
9. Joni, “Avalanches”
10. Two Inch Astronaut, “Humorist”
11. Bananagun, “Children of the Man”
12. Super Infinity, “Beverly Laurel Motor Hotel”
13. Te Huhu, “Madjesty Free”
14. Home, Hether, “Deep Sea”
15. Dominic Billet, “Zuzu’s Song”
22º Halo, Lily of the Valley
Philadelphia band 22º Halo has been quietly releasing gorgeous, lo-fi, and inviting songs for the past half-decade treading murky waters between folk, slacker rock, and bedroom pop. Between the writing of their last LP, 2021’s Garden Bed, frontman Will Kennedy’s partner and musical collaborator Kate Schneider was diagnosed with brain cancer. Her battle with the disease and their resilience in getting through it is at the heart of Lily of the Valley, one of the most emotionally resonant and powerful indie rock records of the year. For a record that deals with such heaviness and a devastating period in their lives, it’s the most vivacious, alive, and hopeful album of their catalog. Single “Virtual You” deals with grappling with the present amid digital memories of past lives while “Orioles at Dusk” looks back on the spark of falling in love.
Haley Heynderickx, Seed of a Seed
Portland’s Haley Heynderickx is a fantastic guitarist and songwriter who makes verdant and imaginative folk that reminds me of Norma Tanega and Hannah Frances. Her spry acoustic fingerpicking weaves around her conversational and captivating voice throughout the 10 tracks here. Simultaneously homespun and expansive, these songs are hard to shake. She can sing about an asshole cat, running errands, and a welcome glass of wine at home with astounding gravitas, finding the grace in the mundane. Throughout Seed of a Seed, there are moments of profound grace and simple pleasures and each are delivered with an inviting spirit. Truly beautiful stuff here.
Lee Baggett, Waves for a Begull
Lee Baggett is a longtime West Coaster who’s been making music for a long time, releasing records under a variety of different monikers, and collaborating with Little Wings. Beyond knowing that and the fact that he’d done a Langiappe Session for Aquarium Drunkard where he covered Def Leppard, I’ve never ventured into his catalog. His latest, Waves for a Begull, makes me want to do a deep dive. It’s a crunchy and warm dose of Neil Young with Crazy Horse-indebted rock that’s mellower and less apocalyptic. Across 11 songs, Baggett and his three-piece backing band create breezy songs complete with snaking guitar solos that never meander and lush Hammond B3 organ licks—Baggett’s voice yelps and coos with equal grit too. The whole thing feels spectacularly up my alley.
Te Huhu, Deelishis Herbs
One of the most transportive western-inspired albums of 2024 comes from a quartet from Auckland, New Zealand. Te Huhu’s Deelishis Herbs is a potent dose of desert twang, country atmospherics, and brooding psych. While it’s not an ambient album (subdued, reverbed-out vocals populate most of the tracks), the band excels at building immersive arrangements and letting them linger. The moods oscillate between rowdy and propulsive (“Madjesty Free”) to haunting and sparse (“Huhu Dub”) to plaintively delicate (“All In My Head”). Over the past few weeks, I’ve been leaning into slower, more enveloping, and often instrumental full-lengths. This LP has been one of the clear standouts.
What I read:
Haruki Murakami, Novelist as a Vocation
Over the past decade or so, my reading habits have largely shifted from fiction to essays, history, criticism, and biographies. It’s not like I totally stopped reading novels (it’s probably a 70-30 split) but the more firmly entrenched I became in my journalism and writing career, the more I gravitated towards reported nonfiction. I plan to reintroduce a regular stream of novels back into the rotation, but I still decided to pick up Murakami’s essay collection Novelist as a Vocation. Though I haven’t read any of his work since I devoured Kafka On the Shore and Norwegian Wood in college, I remember being floored by his evocative and approachable style and the mesmerizing rhythm of his narratives. I’m also a sucker for writing about writing too, so this was a useful and illuminating look into his process, his career, and the discipline required for the craft. Don’t worry: I’m not writing a novel but I do think the format allows for more adventurous, experimental, and engaging prose.
The Weekly Chicago Show Calendar:
The gig calendar lives on the WTTW News website now. You can also subscribe to the newsletter I produce there called Daily Chicagoan to get it a day early.
Any thoughts on Chicago trio, The Slaps' new LP "Mudglimmer" ?