No Expectations 142: Wants For Everyone
Recommended new albums by Spoils, Daffodil-11, and National Photo Committee. Plus, the best documentary I've seen in a long time and a meditative hangout book set in space.
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Headline song: Slippers, “Wants For Everyone”
Thanks for being here. On Saturday, I’m going to Arizona for a few days with my girlfriend and her family to hang out by a pool, read books, and see a few friends who live out there. The trip couldn’t have been scheduled at a better time. If there’s one thing I thought this week, it’s “Oh my god, I need a vacation.” Maybe it’s the fact that I knew I’d be going out of town, but I’m perilously close to being totally fried. I’m not quite there yet, but I am looking forward to having the most stressful decision of my day be something like, “Sonoran hot dog or frybread for lunch?” Or, better yet, “Wren House Brewing Co. or Gracie’s Tax Bar for drinks later?”
Even though I’m out of the office and won’t be bringing a laptop, there is a new and full No Expectations scheduled for next Thursday. Not only does it mark the return of the newsletter’s Taste Profile interview series, but it will also feature a new playlist, as well as LP, movie, and book recommendations. In a less busy week, I might’ve conjured up some novel, measured, and convincing take on the discourse surrounding Geese, but with a few days of relaxation on the horizon, I’m not doing that to myself (or, you, the reader). So, I’ll keep the rest of this short. See you next time.
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.
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4 Albums Worth Your Time This Week
Daffodil-11, Daffodil-11
I write a lot about a group of artists from Burlington, VT (Greg Freeman, Lily Seabird, Dari Bay, and Robber Robber), but that small city punches above its weight musically with other pockets of bands, too. Take Daffodil-11, another Vermont four-piece whose subtly groove-minded and adventurous indie pop soars on their just-released debut LP. These nine songs evoke 2010s dream-pop, early aughts adult contemporary, and more contemporary mid-tempo guitar rock with effortlessly breezy melodies and subtle electronics. The punchy “Don’t Pretend” features distorted but ebullient harmonies. There are funky, atmospheric guitars on opener “Back Pocket,” and winsome, dreamy folk on highlight “I’ve Been Alone.” They have a knack for adding real depth and playfulness to music that you’d otherwise dismiss as “too chill.” These songs are so inviting that they’ll burrow into your head faster than you’d expect. Shoutout Friend of the Newsletter and Vermonter Kevin Bloom (The Dead Shakers) for posting about them. Instagram stories are still the best way to discover music on social media.
RIYL: Wild Nothing, Counting Crows, Mild High Club
My New Band Believe, My New Band Believe
Whenever I come across an acclaimed band that I don’t love, I usually write it off as “not for me” and forget about it. With Black Midi, the disbanded English experimental rock group, their music was so interesting and audacious that I kept thinking I was an idiot for not fully connecting with it. I may try again (along with the singer Geordie Greep’s solo LP), because of the astounding inventiveness of bassist and co-vocalist Cameron Picton’s My New Band Believe. While it’s just as chock-full of ideas as his prior group, My New Band Believe contains drama, an arc, and a striking emotional resonance that make it an instant favorite of 2026. Songs flow from one to the next, and with only one album cut as a pre-release single, this LP is best experienced in a front-to-back listen. Picton, who enlists the U.K. rock collective Caroline as his studio band, uses almost entirely acoustic, organic instruments on the record, but they’re all performed with maximalist flair and feverish energy. The arrangements, both nostalgic and alien, evoke musical theater, British folk, jazz, and prog. From the sweet domesticity of a track “Love Story” to the opener “Target Practice” with its menacing “Don’t cry / you deserve this,” this album somehow both sits out of time and at the cutting edge.
RIYL: Van Dyke Parks, Destroyer, Bert & John (1966)
National Photo Committee, Red Hot Photo Committee
At the very beginning of the year, I was sent a link to an unlisted YouTube video that contained the Chicago band Red Hot Photo Committee’s debut album, Red Hot Photo Committee. Even though it was an unmastered upload, I was instantly hooked. It was raucous country-tinged bar rock fronted by a gravelly and acerbic frontman, aided by spidery pedal steel. Sure, that’s more than a well-trodden genre at this point, but these eight winding tunes are refreshingly caustic, combustible, and carefree. That early link was pulled offline within a week, but now the LP has been mastered and officially released at the beginning of the month. It’s even better than I remember. Frontman Maxwell Bottner boasts a booming baritone and a conversational delivery as he sings about daily anxieties on “It’s Hard.” Following an intro of thundering chords and crashes of drums, he sings, “It’s hard to be living / it’s hard to be alive / It’s hard times coming / and they’re coming all the time.” Bottner and his bandmates allow the songs to stretch out—only one track clocks in under four minutes. On the 11 and a half minute “Gizzard,” is an epic suite of moody verses and full-throated guitar jams, while the searing and frantic “Adelaide” kicks into an even higher gear in its final third with a blistering sax solo from local shredder Curt Oren. One listen to any tune here, and you’ll know that this Chicago group puts on a galvanizing, wild, and life-affirming live set.
RIYL: Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band, if Slanted and Enchanted-era Pavement had a pedal steel, Dusk
Spoils, Mile Wide Inch Deep
Spoils, a quartet from Cincinnati, Ohio, make indie rock that’s so anthemic and immediate it’s a shock that Mile Wide Inch Deep is only their debut album. Many of the tracks here date back five or six years ago, and the band has honed their lived-in chemistry and songwriting chops across a few EPs and countless gigs. These seven songs are so airtight, they hearken back to an era of aughts alt-rock when artists made their sound as arena-filling and massive as possible. With big riffs and bigger hooks, you’ll hear shades of the Pixies (“1000”), find melodies with a swirling intensity (closer “Dark Miller”), and get impossibly infectious choruses stuck in your head (“Brain Damage”). This is no-frills rock music: professional, but not too polished, catchy, but not sugary. I kept checking to make sure they weren’t secretly signed to some big label, but this is just a talented Midwestern band doing the damn thing better than most.
RIYL: Momma, Indigo De Souza, Slow Pulp
What I listened to:
The No Expectations 142 Playlist: Apple Music // Spotify // Tidal
Spoils, “Brain Damage”
youbet, “Undefined”
Slippers, “Wants For Everyone”
proun, “Miracles”
Daffodil-11, “I’ve Been Alone”
Mei Semones, “Kurage” (ft. Don Semones)
My New Band Believe, “In the Blink of an Eye”
Nara’s Room, “Lizzie mcguire”
beaming, “Stuck (here)”
Crazier, “Bye Bye”
Ben Auld, “From Now On”
TV Star, “Out Of My Bag”
National Photo Committee, “It’s Hard”
Brown Horse, “Total Dive”
Tasha, “Summer”
Gig recap: Lily Seabird, Minor Moon at Hideout (4/11)
Just two months ago, Lily Seabird played a show in Chicago at Schubas, opening for Dean Johnson with a set entirely composed of brand new songs from a still-unannounced record. (A month ago, she dropped the sprawling and cathartic rocker “Demon In Me,” which gives a solid hint at her new direction with this material). Where that February gig was Seabird entirely solo, this headliner at the Hideout featured a full and new four-piece band for the Burlington, VT, songwriter. To round out her quartet, she brought former Dari Bay drummer Daniel Snyder, Mikaela Davis and Southern Star bassist Shane McCarthy, as well as the Wormdogs’ guitarist Rick Soszynski. Throughout, Seabird played searing lead guitar, leading her band into sinuous, pummeling jams that brought a newfound edge to her already impeccable live set. I’ve seen Seabird countless times and in so many different iterations, but this is the hardest I’ve ever seen her rock and the best I’ve ever seen her. Get ready for Lily’s shredder era.
Friends of the Newsletter Minor Moon kicked off the night to celebrate the release of their excellent new live LP, Live at Thawed Out. During their set, Lily turned to me and said, “This is my favorite Chicago band,” and it’s hard to argue with that. If you’re ever lucky enough to see them live, buy a ticket: you will be floored.
What I watched:
My Undesirable Friends: Part I - Last Air in Moscow (directed by Julia Lotkev)
In 2021, two young Russian journalists were designated by their government as “foreign agents” due to their reporting that documented the Putin regime’s abuses, failures, and pervasive corruption. This meant that if they didn’t routinely fill out arduous paperwork, disclose their status with every social media post, article, television appearance, and public statement with a mandatory disclaimer, they could lose their careers, face fines, and endure strict prison sentences. Instead of wallowing in despair, these two reporters started a defiant and funny podcast called “Hi, You’re a Foreign Agent.” The New York Times covered their story in 2021, which led director Julia Lotkev, a Russian-American filmmaker behind tense narrative films like The Loneliest Planet and Day Night Day Night, to travel to Moscow and document their daily lives with an iPhone. The five-and-a-half-hour documentary My Undesirable Friends: Part I - Last Air in Moscow follows several journalists designated as “foreign agents” in the lead-up to the Russian-Ukrainian war of 2022. In addition to the two women who started a podcast, Loktev immerses herself in the lives of other subjects who are TV and print journalists. By the end of the first part of this documentary, all of them are forced to flee the country due to the political repression and draconian laws of their government. It’s a towering achievement of political filmmaking that highlights the bravery of these journalists and the importance of opposition and alternative media. But it’s also a human portrait of how, even across the world and facing horrific situations, people are more alike than they are different. Sure, these journalists are brave and commendable, but they’re also normal people who laugh with their friends, love Harry Potter, and are doing their best despite impossible circumstances. Harrowing and urgent, there’s a line that’ll stick with me for a long time: “In Nazi Germany, people also sat and waited and hoped things would be OK.” It’s worth getting a MUBI subscription for this film alone.
What I read:
Orbital (by Samantha Harvey)
Since 2000, people have been living in space. The International Space Station launched as a gesture of global goodwill: a joint venture between the United States, Russia, and several other countries. They’ve been running experiments, charting the human body’s resilience out of the Earth’s atmosphere, and conducting enough research to eventually launch deep space missions. It’s going to be decommissioned in 2030 and deorbited in 2031, which is another symbolic grace note to the recent collapse of the post-Cold War liberal order. Samantha Harvey’s Booker Prize-winning novel Orbital takes place on the ISS, but it’s more of a meditative nature novel than a plot-driven sci-fi. (As with my taste in movies, I do not care in the slightest if there’s propulsive action in fiction: give me a beautiful sentence, insight into the human condition, something to think about long after I’ve put this thing down, etc!) It spans one full 24-hour day on the orbiting structure, which amounts to roughly 16 full rotations around the Earth. She homes in on the interior lives of the six astronauts and cosmonauts as they rotate around the globe, do their daily tasks, and ponder the world they’ve departed. It’s a deliberately patient read: there aren’t aliens, massive technical dysfunctions, or interpersonal drama between the crew. Instead, Harvey brings philosophical revelations, perceptive musings, and graceful prose to what only a few hundred people in history have experienced. While I wouldn’t have picked this up without the Artemis II NASA mission being in the news, I’m glad I did, and I’m glad they made it home safe.
The Weekly Chicago Show Calendar:
The gig calendar lives on the WTTW News website. You can also subscribe to the newsletter I produce there called Daily Chicagoan to get it in your inbox a day early.