No Expectations 105: Real Estate Agent
Five new albums from Mamalarky, Neu Blume, Brown Horse, and more. Plus, a 15-song playlist. Don’t sleep on these recs.
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Headline song: Kitchen, “Real Estate Agent”
Thanks for being here. It’s already that time of year when I look at my calendar and see it fill up. There’s a wedding downstate, a stretch at the end of the month of three consecutive shows, and an upcoming Vegas trip with friends to return to the Sphere for Dead & Company, to name just three. Individually, these are all things I’m really excited about, but taken as a whole, they give me anxiety. I’m a person who, each week, needs a day to do absolutely nothing so I can recharge, watch sports, and turn my brain off. (I also need at least a free night to write this newsletter). This weekend, I have the house to myself and no firm plans except to catch up on movies, books, and a backlog of new albums. I’m stoked to keep it lowkey and start these busy few weeks on a solid note. Hope you can find a moment to chill too.
If you’re new to No Expectations, here’s a short explainer of what you signed up for. 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.
As always, you can sign up for a paid subscription or tell a friend about a band you read about here. 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 I’m grateful you’re still reading and supporting this writing project. Next week, I’ll have a Taste Profile interview with one of the artists featured below.
5 Albums Worth Your Time This Week
Brown Horse, All The Right Weaknesses
Brown Horse are from Norwich, England, and they unequivocally made one of the finest country-rock records of 2025. It’s urgent, galvanizing, and chock-full of memorable hooks. On All The Right Weaknesses, the wildly collaborative sextet (five out of its six members penned songs on the LP) combines energetic and soaring guitars with blissful pedal steel and earnest vocals from Patrick Turner and Phoebe Troup. It’s a winning formula that the band calls “slacker twang.” Across the 11 songs here, which evoke Greg Freeman, Wednesday, and Neil Young. Despite their UK roots, there’s no put-upon affectation or cowboy cosplay—just undeniable and raw songs played with enthusiasm and an unselfconscious love for American musical traditions. “Dog Rose” is a masterclass in building tension to a cathartic guitar solo, while “Corduroy Couch” splits the difference between lyrical vulnerability and pop infectiousness. There’s not a single dud on the record. Once they tour stateside, I’ll be the first to buy a ticket to their Chicago show.
Casper Skulls, Kit-Cat
Several years ago, my friends in the Toronto punk band PUP introduced me to their Canadian peers Casper Skulls, an indie rock group who were their openers during their 2019 tour. They’re a hell of a live act and the sweetest people who have topped themselves with their latest LP Kit-Cat. It’s a record that channels their love for college rock radio. You’ll hear Pavement, R.E.M., and Superchunk in these songs, and it broadcasts the lived-in chemistry between songwriters and singers Melanie St. Pierre and Neil Bednis. Though it’s a thrilling and charming listen front-to-back, the album truly opens up on its second side. The stretch from “Numbing Mind” to closer “The Awakening” features some of my favorite songs they’ve ever written, from the atmospheric, Cocteau Twins-evoking “Kihl” to the bright guitar chords that anchor “Living.” Since their last full-length from 2021, St. Pierre and Bednis had a kid, and the band experienced several life changes and transitional periods. This LP showcases a group picking up right where they left off: creatively energized and falling in love with playing music together again.
Finnish Postcard, Body
Finnish Postcard is the Pasadena-based duo of Leo Dolan and Trey Shilts, who at their quietest remind me of Elliott Smith, Pinback, and Owen. While there are low-key folk songs on their debut Body, this is an incredibly dynamic LP that can burst with raging guitars and emo-evoking leads as well as adventurous samples and synths. One listen and it’s obvious that Dolan and Shilts have a solid friendship and a tangible creative partnership. Their harmonies are natural and engaging. While their palette is expansive and all-over-the-place, it always sounds organic and intentional. “Asking” was the first song I heard off this album, and it floored me. It boasts the same homespun appeal as some of Villagerrr’s best tunes and has a chorus so meaty that you could bury yourself in it. Elsewhere, “Strawberry Smell” builds on a striking sense of foreboding energy, “Kolesq” is an immersive electronic excursion, while “Nightstick” features zipping, lightning-fast guitar leads. Whatever the mood, this duo will likely win you over.
Mamalarky, Hex Key
Whether they’ve been based in Austin, Atlanta, or now Los Angeles, Mamalarky are one of the most exciting indie rock bands of the decade. I first heard them in early 2020, when Fire Talk put out their single “How To Say.” Everything they’ve put out since has been excellent, like 2022’s Pocket Fantasy, which I raved about in the first-ever No Expectations writing, “Livvy Bennett, who fronts Atlanta’s Mamalarky, is, in my opinion, the most inventive and interesting guitarist in indie rock right now.” The quartet’s latest full-length, Hex Key, might be less reliant on Bennett’s dexterous and mathy riffing, but it levels up the band’s songwriting with their most immediate and pop-forward collection yet. Here, they lean into hazy psychedelia and subtly enveloping grooves like on the synth-heavy “Won’t Give Up” and lead single “Feels So Wrong.” It truly shines when the band gets loud like on “Anhedonia,” “#1 Best of All Time,” “MF,” and “Blow Up,” while never losing their playfully experimental ethos. Before the release of this LP, Bennett and bandmate Michael Hunter wrote and produced “Soft,” a single on R&B star Lucky Daye’s The Algorithm. It’s clear their winning chemistry and ease at setting a hypnotizing atmosphere can translate to any setting.
Neu Blume, Let It Win
Detroit is home to an excellent indie rock scene that can oscillate from commanding post-punk like Protomartyr to krautrock-and-jam-adjacent experimentation like Winged Wheel or conversational folk-rock like Bonny Doon (to name just three). Neu Blume operate in the latter camp. Back in 2022, the group led by Mo Neuharth and Colson Miller (who both used to be in the great Arizona band Nanami Ozone) released a “mini-album” called Softer Vessel, seven songs of stellar, ramshackle, and midtempo jangle. Let It Win, their debut full-length, sounds like a truly confident band staking out their own lane. The songs feel warmer, crisper, and more open, like on the first tune, “Cold Strange,” which is buoyed by delicate harmonies. There’s a casual, gentle twang throughout. Even when the songs get brooding, like on “Mitsubishi (II),” Neuharth and Miller perform it with such an inviting grace. Elsewhere, the ambling rhythm of “Car to Go” and the breathy opening to “Wood Pile” make this a perfect road trip record. An early favorite of 2025 that proves the Midwest is best (even if these guys are from Phoenix).
What I listened to:
The No Expectations 105 Playlist: Apple Music // Spotify // Tidal
1. Florry, "First it was a movie, then it was a book"
2. Kitchen, "Real Estate Agent"
3. Finnish Postcard, "Asking"
4. Neu Blume, "Let It Win"
5. Cash Langdon, "Lilac Whiskey Nose"
6. Brown Horse, "Dog Rose"
7. Stereolab, "Aerial Troubles"
8. Mamalarky, "MF"
9. Dazy, "Pay No Mind (To The Signs)"
10. Frankie Cosmos, "Vanity"
11. Bleary Eyed, "Heaven Year"
12. Punchlove, "Today You Can Learn the Secret"
13. Slippers, "Guess I Started A Band"
14. Casper Skulls, "Living"
15. Wandering Years, "Ride to Robert's (feat. Kevin Copeland)"
What I watched:
Kneecap (streamed on Netflix)
My girlfriend has a joke that my favorite kind of film is one where “people talk and not much happens.” That’s true: I’m mostly at home watching something by Hong Sang-Soo, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Kelly Reichardt, or Aki Kaurismäki. Hell, I still love mumblecore! Kneecap, the semi-autobiographical movie about the boundary-pushing Northern Irish rap trio, couldn’t be more outside my wheelhouse, but I had such a blast it didn’t matter. I first listened to the group, whose lyrics are primarily in Gaelic and advocate for Irish republicanism, Palestinian rights, and anticolonialism, when I worked for VICE six years ago. They’re hilarious, brash, and a total trip that I still need to see live. Their rambunctious energy and staunch antiauthoritarianism translate perfectly onscreen here. The rappers play themselves and kill it, especially J.J. Ó Dochartaigh aka DJ Próvaí, who onstage always wears a tricolour balaclava. There are some of the best drug-themed bits I’ve ever seen. As much as they can be crude and hedonistic, it’s hard not to be totally endeared by these artists who are fighting for their indigenous language and culture. It’s honestly very wholesome. There are two types of people: lads and peelers. Don’t be a peeler.
What I read:
Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (by Quinn Slobodian)
Canadian historian, Boston University professor, and recent Guggenheim Fellow Quinn Slobodian has become a recent favorite author who has helped me better understand the current moment we're living in. Earlier in the year, I breezed through his 2022 book Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy, which focused on the history of radical libertarian ideas for the future in charter cities, free ports, tax havens, and special economic zones championed by Peter Thiel and others. With the other week's tariff developments, I decided to try his earlier work, Globalists, to learn more about the intellectual history behind those advocating for free trade and market liberalization and how the World Wars, the Great Depression, and decolonial movements shifted and evolved these perspectives. Few writers are as well-equipped as Slobodian to synthesize neoliberal Geneva School and Mont Pèlerin Society thinkers like Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Wilhelm Röpke for someone who mostly thinks about Grateful Dead live recordings and indie rock bands inspired by Neil Young. At its core, it’s a narrative about how certain libertarian economists have always thought that economic rights should trump democracy. My reading habits fluctuate wildly: some months it’s only novels, others only music biographies, and now I’m deep in the political history world, which might not make for the most exciting blurbs in a music newsletter, but I find it all fascinating.
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.