No Expectations 093: Bark at the Moon
The 2023 LPs I missed and the 2024 songs that howled at the moon.
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Headline song: MJ Lenderman, “Bark at the Moon”
Thanks for being here. It’s list season right now. Every publication is posting its End-of-year roundups, ranking the best albums and songs of 2024. Here at No Expectations, I figured it’s a good time to look back on the LPs from a year ago that I didn’t write about. This newsletter isn’t in the business of chasing clicks (I chase email subscriptions—there’s a difference). Plus, album cycles aren’t real. Good music is good music no matter when it comes out. No one is going to yell at you if you’re late to the party. You can talk about records when they’re not in the zeitgeist.
The No Expectations Best Albums of 2024 list will arrive next week. According to a quick run-through of each newsletter this year, I wrote about and recommended ~130 new LPs. I also listened to and enjoyed several albums I didn’t write about—so there’s still a lot to go through to pare it down to 60. There’s no need to rush it either.
Writing for this newsletter has been my year’s major highlight. While I’m looking forward to a holiday break to recharge, read, and plan out 2025, I didn’t want to stop just yet. That said, with next week’s EOY post, this is the last normal No Expectations of the year. If you want to keep up with the Weekly Show Calendar, subscribe to Daily Chicagoan, the newsletter I run at my day job at WTTW News. My concert recommendations run on Wednesdays.
In a pretty cool milestone, Sunday marks the two-year anniversary of No Expectations. The day after my first post in 2022, I woke up to 500 subscribers: about 450 more than I thought I’d get so soon. Now, it looks like the newsletter will hit the 6,000 mark by 2025. That’s nutty. I’m so grateful to you for reading, sharing, and supporting this scrappy, independent outlet where I can share the music I dig. It’s always meant the world and still does. I can’t wait to see what you think about next week’s 2024 roundup.
As always, you can sign up for a paid subscription and tell a friend about a band you read about here. Every bit helps and keeps this project going.
Four Great LPs I Didn’t Write About in 2023
Overhand Sam, Bad Weapon
Overhand Sam is the project of Rochester, New York’s Sam Snyder. He’s called Overhand Sam because of his unconventional guitar technique—he grips the next almost like a baseball, draping his fingers above the fretboard. It’s a playing style he developed because he learned the instrument while wearing a cast and it’s wild to watch. These oddball, march-to-the-beat-of-your-own-drum sensibilities carry over into his music: densely psychedelic and knotty rock songs that burst at the seams with left-field ideas and Synder’s effortless melodies. Bad Weapon is a blast from start to finish, from the breezy, bass-anchored “Too Far Away” to the slow-burning synth-laden “Green Eyes.” Kudos to Friend of the Substack Dari Bay for the recommendation.
Water From Your Eyes, Everyone's Crushed
When Water From Your Eyes’ Rachel Brown and Nate Amos were based in Chicago (they’ve been in NYC for years now), I never saw them live or wrote about them. (Sometimes, believe it or not, even local music journalists miss the boat). To be honest, before 2023’s Everyone’s Crushed, I only remember checking out a Soundcloud link someone sent to me years back from Thank You For Coming, Brown’s solo project (I’m also pretty sure I saw Amos’ old band Opposites play in Chicago around 2013 but I might be wrong). Though I missed my chance to be early on them, I can’t stop playing their critically acclaimed full-length from last year. It’s inventive art-rock that’s playful, intense, and always interesting. Anchored by Brown’s inviting and conversational voice, the songs seamlessly and unpredictably bounce from gnarly guitars to club-ready beats, inside jokes, and droney experiments. It rules.
R.M.F.C., Club Hits
R.M.F.C. stands for “Rock Music Fan Club,” the recording project of Sydney-based twenty-something Buz Clatworthy. A true believer in the power of blistering guitar music, Clatworthy rips through 13 kinetic and riff-heavy tunes in under 30 minutes on Club Hits. Hard-hitting and frenetic, there’s a lot to love here. It’s so refreshing to hear this kind of music so earnestly and thoughtfully performed in 2024. I’m glad it exists and hope to catch it live someday.
Monde UFO, Vandalized Statue To Be Replaced With Shrine
Subtle but not slight, Los Angeles duo Monde UFO opt for mellow yet immersive arrangements on their 2023 LP Vandalized Statue To Be Replaced With Shrine. It’s a beguiling LP that’s a grab bag of disparate sounds: blissful synths, distorted horns, relaxed drum machines, samples, and laconic vocals. As a whole, it’s mesmerizing stuff: consistently pretty but disorienting, consistently engaging but palpably laid back. There are bossa nova flourishes, lounge-ready atmospherics, and ample strings. It might not be for everyone, but it’s definitely for me.
Four Howls at the Moon From 2024
Was 2024 the year of the howl? “Werewolves of London” is Warren Zevon’s signature song (my second favorite tune of his to do at karaoke—#1 is “Lawyers, Guns, and Money”) and one of the most influential tracks for indie rock this year. Let me explain. While your mind might default to MJ Lenderman’s “Bark at the Moon,” which interpolates Zevon’s iconic howl for the stunning Manning Fireworks closer, that’s not the only instance from this year. As I’m compiling next week’s Best Albums List, I keep running into “A-woos” that make some of my favorite tunes of the year stand out. While this is surely not a complete roundup, it felt important to write down.
MJ Lenderman, “Bark at the Moon”
Near the 2:30 minute mark, after Lenderman sings, “I've never seen the Mona Lisa / I've nevеr really left my room / I've been up too latе with Guitar Hero / Playing 'Bark at The Moon.'” Considering the reference to Ozzy Osborne, you might expect the “A-woo” would be more Ozzy than Zevon but you’d be wrong. He covered “Werewolves of London” a few times on tour this year too.
Real Companion, “New Moon Ave.”
Near the 3:35 minute mark. MJ Lenderman isn’t the only artist to “A-woo” in a song this year. He’s not even the only artist from North Carolina to do so. Boone’s Real Companion, the project of songwriter Seth Sullivan and multi-instrumentalist Derek Wycoff, has an excellent, charming, and relatable new album called Nü-metal Heroes. It’s a record about growing older and remembering the good times. Here, Sullivan closes out the LP highlight with subtle, Zevon-like howls.
Bnny, “Changes”
Near the 1:18 minute mark, after Jess Viscius sings, “I’m so happy I could scream.” By far 2024’s most cathartic “A-woo!” is courtesy of the excellent Chicago songwriter. According to Spotify, this is my top song of the year. While that’s a service I barely used in 2024 with only 4,000 minutes (I clocked nearly double that with just Grateful Dead on Apple Music), the algorithm is right this time. Incredible tune.
Youbet, “Vacancy”
Near the 0:22 second mark and repeating throughout. While I doubt Youbet’s frontperson Nick Llobet is going for Zevon here, the “A-woo,” albeit more a musical motif than a wolf call, is unmistakable. Perfect song.
What I listened to:
The No Expectations 093 Playlist: Spotify // Apple Music
Highlights from the year. Last playlist of 2024.
1. Good Looks, “If It’s Gone”
2. Closebye, “Lucky Number”
3. Robber Robber, “Sea or War”
4. 22º Halo, “Virtual You”
5. lake j, “Wild Wind”
6. Loving, “Uncanny Valley”
7. villagerrr, “Neverrr Everrr”
8. Bnny, “Good Stuff”
9. Ty Segall, “My Room”
10. hemlock, “Hyde Park”
11. MJ Lenderman, “Wristwatch”
12. Adrianne Lenker, “Sadness as a Gift”
13. This Is Lorelei, “I’m All Fucked Up”
14. Hannah Frances, “Floodplain”
15. Annie Williams, “Hwy 287”
What I watched:
Hundreds of Beavers
This isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea—my friends whose film tastes I trust can’t stand it—but I found Hundreds of Beavers, the recent cult sensation and throwback slapstick comedy, delightful. By now, the story behind this independent film is as notable as its conceit. Made on a shoestring budget of $150,000, filmmaker Mike Cheslik struggled to find distribution for his black-and-white movie that pays homage to Buster Keaton, Looney Tunes, and old video games. After sold-out premieres at Music Box, word-of-mouth hit a boiling point, and the flick has become the cult sensation of 2024. Shot in Michigan’s upper peninsula and northern Wisconsin, the movie follows a 19th-century apple farmer who loses his job (thanks to beavers) and becomes a fur trapper—intent on seeking revenge on the beavers and other furry critters (who are all dressed in shoddy mascot costumes). It’s stupid, goofy, and full of classic bits. As a Michigander, I’m totally on board.
What I read:
Tommy Orange, There There
In Tommy Orange’s compulsively readable debut novel There There, a character gets a grant that allows him to start a documentary project where he interviews Native Americans in Oakland about their lives, struggles, and histories. It’s the same approach that Orange takes here in short vignettes that follow over a dozen characters—all Native people—as their lives intersect at a powwow event at Oakland Coliseum. I bought this book six years ago on a whim because the title shared the name of my favorite Radiohead song (which, to my delight, is referenced here). Now, I’m bummed it took me so long. What electric prose! It’s also astounding how Orange weaves history—personal and political—and is able to deftly inhabit the first person of each figure in this novel. It’s clear this is an author who loves his characters, the good, and the bad.
Lisa Halliday, Asymmetry
Asymmetry is a novel of two halves: one deals with a May-December romance between a twenty-something associate editor at a publishing company and a septuagenarian Pulitzer-winning novelist while the other details an American-born Iraqi man’s detainment at an airport. Beyond the timeline of the post-9/11 War on Terror, there no obvious connecting threads between the two narratives. Beautifully and thoughtfully written throughout how Halliday brings the two to a cohesive whole is masterful even if you don’t read about the autobiographical details of her real-life romance with Philip Roth.
Joshua Cohen, Attention: Dispatches From a Land of Distraction
I haven’t read any of Joshua Cohen’s lauded novels yet but his essay collection Attention: Dispatches From a Land of Distraction caught my eye because I had recently written a long piece here about attempting to reclaim my focus against the scroll. While I was expecting a survey of technology-induced societal collapses in literacy and human connection, instead I got a voracious and unpredictable compendium of missives about everything from the circus, Atlantic City, Bernie Sanders, the Septuagint, Trump, a French publishing house that thrived on releasing banned books, and much more. He’s a remarkably heady but engaging writer, who through his work as a translator, gets into the nitty-gritty of words’ histories and draws connections between surprising things. That said, I found myself in the final third dragging—I wasn’t going to quit because this is a book about attention–but god damn, I wish this were about 150 pages shorter and as thrilling a read as it was in the first two sections.
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.
Really enjoying Robber Robber, thanks for that.
If I ran a dive bar, I'd have Hundreds of Beavers on the TVs... you may enjoy this Chapo pod with Mike Cheslik, a lot of Michigan-centric humor and behind the scenes on how they filmed it - https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/movie-mindset-bonus-hundreds-of-beavers-with-director-mike-cheslik
Weeks behind in my reading but let me advocate strongly for Joshua Cohen's novels. If you don't have time for the door stops in his CV, Four New Messages, his story collection, is incredible.