No Expectations 119: Gone (Can Mean a Lot of Things)

Six great new albums for your week. Plus, Chris DeVille's stellar new book on the 2000s indie rock explosion.

No Expectations 119 (cover image by Zack James)

No Expectations hits inboxes on Thursdays at 9am cst. Reader mailbag email: Noexpectationsnewsletter@gmail.com. Daily Chicagoan, the local news newsletter I produce at my day job with WTTW News (PBS Chicago), can be found here.

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Headline song: Greg Freeman, “Gone (Can Mean a Lot of Things)”

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Thanks for being here. Now that I’m in my early-to-mid thirties, I try to block off at least one day to do absolutely nothing: no work, no emails, no leaving the house, just reading books, watching movies, and listening to records. This is more out of necessity than personal preference. I’m not physically and emotionally able to attend five or six shows a week like I could in my twenties without having to call in sick at my job or call 911. When I have a reset day to be still, rest, and recharge, it also usually makes writing these weekly No Expectations posts easier. That didn’t happen last week. As I write this on Tuesday, I’m realizing this is my first night just chilling at home since Wednesday. I’ve crammed the past several days with shows, friends, and meals. It all ruled, but I’m a little fried.

Life is all about balance. Sometimes weeks are mostly chill, and other times, they’ll feel like a party. While I couldn’t get around to everything I wanted to for this newsletter (for instance, I didn’t watch a single movie or TV show last week for the What I Watched section), I still think it’s a pretty stacked No Expectations. Below, I recommend a half-dozen new LPs I’ve really loved and recap the handful of shows I attended. Plus, scroll to the bottom to read about Stereogum editor Chris DeVille’s brand new book, Such Great Heights: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion, which I devoured in basically two sittings. Between talking with Meg Duffy from Hand Habits about the Garden State soundtrack last week, my post-Ozzy metal deep dive, and now this excellent book, it’s been a banner month for rediscovering the music I loved (and occasionally hated) growing up.

Here’s the spiel for new subscribers: Each week, you get a wildcard main essay (often new album recommendations), a 15-song playlist, as well as updates on what I’m listening to, watching, and reading. Sometimes you’ll get an interview with an artist I love, and other times it’ll be a deep dive into one band’s discography. Since I’m a Chicago-based writer, this newsletter is very Midwest-focused. So, if you live in this city too, you’ll also receive a curated roundup of upcoming local shows to check out.

Here’s where I politely ask for money: This newsletter is something I write in my spare time after work. It’s unpaywalled and remains that way due to the generosity of my readers. I am not in the business of gatekeeping. If you have the means and like what you read, you can sign up for a paid subscription. If your budget is tight, telling a friend about a band you found out about here is just as good. It’s still $5 a month—the cost of one Old Style plus tip at Rainbo Club. Every bit helps, keeps this project going, and allows it to stay paywall-free. It’s rough out there, so it means the world you’re reading and supporting this writing project.

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6 Albums Worth Your Time This Week

Gelli Haha, Switcheroo

Great pop music thrives on escapist fun, but the best of the bunch always has ample edge, humor, and inventiveness, too. No record this year has checked all those boxes more than Switcheroo, Angel Abaya’s debut LP as Gelli Haha (which is pronounced “jelly”). Relentlessly playful and unpredictable throughout, the Filipino-American Los Angeles artist excels at immediately transportative world-building. Here, it’s called the “Gelliverse.” She combines the immersive atmospherics of Cocteau Twins with electroclash’s punky attitude, along with dance music’s most cerebral rhythms, and colorful melodies that are sugary but never cloying. On the raucous “Tiramisu,” she wails, “What the hell is going on?” over plinks of classic house piano chords. You might ask the same thing (in a positive way). The gorgeous opener “Funny People” abruptly ends with a cartoonish “bonk!” sound, while “Bounce House” is anchored by a bubbly synth groove and an ebullient “chugga-chugga-chugga” backing vocal. Even songs that would be a throwaway track in the hands of a lesser artist, like the hilariously bawdy “Piss Artist,” shine. I’m a couple of months late to this infectiously zany pop masterpiece, but I haven’t been able to stop playing it since I first heard it.

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Goose, Chain Yer Dragon

I imagine it must suck to be a jam band releasing a proper album. The loyal audience they cultivated through sprawling shows would probably prefer to hear those songs live, while someone new to the band likely won’t listen because, well, it’s a studio album from a jam band. More than any of their peers (except maybe their Connecticut comrades, Eggy, whose ‘24 LP Waiting Game was excellent), Goose have gone to great lengths to successfully cross over with less wook-y audiences with each LP since 2022’s Dripfield. While the band is a newsletter favorite, one of America’s best live acts, and a thoughtful and fun Taste Profile interview, I’ve found their studio fare to be a mixed bag. On this year’s Everything Must Go, their understandable impulse to differentiate themselves on record from their bread-and-butter live performances has led them to, in my opinion, overindulge in maximalist studio flourishes. Whenever it feels overproduced, it obscures what makes their songs so compelling. They’re a good band, but they’re at their best when they’re not overthinking it, leaning into their tangible chemistry and letting their songs speak for themselves. Chain Yer Dragon, their no-frills fifth LP and second of 2025, is their best yet. It captures the galvanizing grit of their live show and refuses to sand down the loose magic of their improvisations. It rules. Featuring repertoire staples that date back over a decade as well as new tunes, it’s the best primer on Goose so far and the record I can without qualification recommend to the still-skeptical, especially if you’re a fan of Jackson Browne and the Band.

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Greg Freeman, Burnover

Hearing Greg Freeman’s 2022 LP I Looked Out for the first time was a jarring experience. What some twenty-something from Burlington made with his friends turned into one of the most arresting, electric, and memorable debuts I had heard in years. Recent artists have melded country and indie rock so frequently it’s become a meme, but Freeman’s always been different. His voice was creaky and emotive, his arrangements had near apocalyptic urgency, and his lyrics were evocative, painting illuminating portraits of rapture and despair rather than deadpan, conversational observations. I’ve written about him a ton in this newsletter and gotten to know him because of it, but seeing these songs grow into what would become Burnover has been unbelievably rewarding. His second LP channels the explosiveness of his first effort into something more intentional and cohesive. Across the 10 exemplary tracks here, there’s a tangible arc: the bombast of opener “Point and Shoot,” the timelessness of the lowkey “Gallic Shrug,” and the desolate moodiness of closer “Wolf Pine.” On the frantic, Elvis Costello-channeling “Gulch,” Freeman yelps, “And the highway is bright whеn the speed's just right / and it's hitting like a million bucks tonight / I love the world, but I think it's too fucked up to drive.” From how the piano-led “Curtain” dissolves into New Orleans jazz to the scorching guitars that anchor “Gone (Can Mean a Lot of Things), each song stuns. I’m so proud of the guy. It’s an obvious AOTY contender, and I’m not just saying that because my writing is on the vinyl’s sticker.

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Tops, Bury the Key

For the past 13 years, Montreal’s Tops have made sleek and adventurous pop that sounds effortless. They’re a band that clearly prioritizes craft over vibes but excels at both. Bury The Key, the band’s fifth full-length, is another breezy dose of airtight hooks, propulsive and lush arrangements, and bandleader Jane Penny’s dynamic voice. While “Annihilation” purposefully references the futuristic synth-funk of Yellow Magic Orchestra, the band’s chameleonic approach to pop makes it their own. The dreamlike “Call You Back” is an exercise in sparkling, soulful wistfulness, while opener “Stars Come After You” thrills in its subtle groove. Uniformly tasteful and always interesting, Tops are independent pop’s foremost sophisticates.

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Water From Your Eyes, It’s a Beautiful Place

There’s so much talent in Brooklyn’s Water From Eyes that it’s almost overwhelming. Touring members Al Nardo and Bailey Wollowitz make up the excellent art pop duo Fantasy of a Broken Heart, while main songwriters Nate Amos and Rachel Brown have fabulous respective solo projects in This Is Lorelei and Thanks For Coming. I wrote that the band’s intoxicating 2023 LP Everyone’s Crushed boasted songs that “seamlessly and unpredictably bounce from gnarly guitars to club-ready beats, inside jokes, and droney experiments.” That winning alchemy remains on their follow-up, It’s a Beautiful Place, but it adds an exclamation point to each ingredient. It rocks harder, it’s more danceable, it’s funnier, and more cohesive. The glitchy “Playing Classics” is wholly enveloping, thanks to its plucky samples and Brown’s mesmerizing, relaxed vocal delivery. “Nights in Armor” masks a delicate hook underneath volatile guitars, while the most straightforward song, “Blood on the Dollar,” wows in its simplicity. Though I still claim them as a Chicago band (Brown’s from here, and they both lived here for a bit), they’re leading New York’s musical renaissance right now.

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Way Dynamic, Massive Shoe

Few songwriters are as adept at making classic 70s-inspired songs sound fresh as Naarm/Melbourne’s Dylan Young. I included his last effort Duck in the No Expectations 2024 Best of List, where I mentioned Carole King, Jackson Browne, Todd Rundgren, and Harry Nilsson as reference points. Here, he sounds more confident and energetic, drawing from a well of different influences from the same decade. The folksy “Miffed It” does Nick Drake better than any imitator I’ve heard, “Ibiza” is irresistible oddball funk, while “People Settle Down” is danceable folk-rock bliss. Every song is written with such painstaking care to get the small things write: the precise harmonies, the pristine drum sounds, and Young’s compelling love for a sturdy tune. It’s quiet but never slight, lovingly wears its influences but is never a retread.

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What I listened to:

The No Expectations 119 Playlist: Apple Music // Spotify // Tidal

1. Greg Freeman, "Gone (Can Mean a Lot of Things)"
2. Good Flying Birds, "Fall Away"
3. Sam and Louise Sullivan, "Lonely Days Lonely Nights"
4. Golden Apples, "Freeeee"
5. Geese, "100 Horses"
6. Way Dynamic, "In Review"
7. Goose, "Royal"
8. Shallowater, "Sadie"
9. Thomas Dollbaum, "Angus Valley"
10. Prewn, "Dirty Dog"
11. Snõõper, "Guard Dog"
12. Water From Your Eyes, "Spaceship"
13. Gelli Haha, "Bounce House"
14. TOPS, "Stars Come After You"
15. Mavis Staples, "Beautiful Strangers" (Kevin Morby Cover)

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Gig recap: Teddy and the Rough Riders at Judson and Moore (8/22)

Judson and Moore has quickly become the best venue in Chicago for country music, and their monthly late-night honky-tonk event featured newsletter favorites in Nashville’s Teddy and the Rough Riders. Last year, I said their album Down Home was “hilariously up my alley,” and it remains true seeing their psychedelic and twangy rippers in person. They mixed covers with originals, but the true highlight was seeing the guitar interplay between bandleader Jack Quiggins and Josh Halper. If you want rowdy fun and classic country scorchers, see them next time they’re in your town.

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Gig recap: Bongripper at the Empty Bottle (8/22)

Listen, going to a honky tonk show and then a doom metal gig is not a common one-two-punch, but I did it Friday and it ruled. It’s always great when set times math pays off. Bongripper are a long-running Chicago band that make impossibly heavy instrumental doom metal. They luxuriate in pummeling riffs, extending a four-song set over an hour. I’ve seen them a couple of times in venues around town—it’s always a ribcage rattling experience. One thing that’s unlocked metal for me is to approach it the way I would ambient music, being along for the ride and letting the songs engulf me. Remembering they had an album called Hippie Killer, I kept the Grateful Dead hat at home this time.

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Gig recap: Good Looks at Thalia Hall (8/23)

Austin’s Good Looks are Friends of the Newsletter who returned to the city to play Thalia Hall’s all-day free festival Saturday with local bands like Ratboys, Motel Breakfast, and Reilly Downes & the Acid Cowboys. (I had to leave a little early for a bachelor party and only caught Good Looks set in full—but what I saw of Ratboys’ headlining show unsurprisingly RIPPED). It was great to see the guys in Good Looks debut a couple of new and knotty songs and to hear that they’ll be recording those sometime soon. There is no more hypnotic guitarist to watch live than Jake Ames, whose frantic, squall-inducing playing style is just awesome. I hope my U.K. subscribers check them out live this week.

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What I watched:

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What I read:

Such Great Heights: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion (by Chris DeVille)

When Lizzy Goodman’s excellent oral history Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001–2011 came out in 2017, it was shocking to read such an authoritative book on music that felt so recent. Stereogum editor and Friend of the Newsletter Chris DeVille’s Such Great Heights: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion takes a different and more birds-eye view approach. Rather than focusing on one particular scene, he widens the scope to connect disparate musical communities, the rise of file sharing, the iPod, and streaming, blogs from Stereogum to Hipster Runoff, along with how pop culture was primed for independent music thanks to The O.C. and Garden State. These are all things I remember voraciously consuming as a teen, but I wasn’t thinking critically then about how it all converged as I was growing up. This book is a blast: equally fun to revisit your favorite albums from high school as much as it is to recall how much I loathed some of the bands from that era (fun., The Bravery, the Moldy Peaches). DeVille has always been one of music writing’s most clear-eyed critics; his prose is compulsively readable, and the observations he makes are always astute and eye-opening. Even if you were deep in the blog-era trenches too, you’ll learn a lot and think about this deeply millennial music in new ways. Also, DeVille has been posting chapter-based playlists and essays on his great newsletter

Such Great Heights

. It was such a blast to remember some bands while I read along.

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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 in your inbox a day early.