No Expectations 103: Arrow
A double newsletter. 10 great new LPs (including five from Chicago). Plus, a 30-song playlist, ‘Eephus’ at the Music Box and more.
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: Lily Seabird, “Arrow”
Thanks for being here. I didn’t publish last Thursday because I had the flu. Not to be too controversial here, but I wouldn’t recommend that experience. I’m not a person who usually gets sick. Seasonal allergies? Sometimes. Burnout-induced rundown? Every now and again. I’ve never even knowingly had COVID-19 despite regular testing. The last time an illness knocked me out was in 2019. I was due for it, I guess. One thing I forgot about being sick is that you can’t really do anything. I wasn’t in a state to read, I didn’t have the patience to listen to much music, and I couldn’t get through a movie. Basically, I had to rest, stare slack-jawed at my phone, or fall asleep while watching one of my March Madness picks lose. It was a wasted week. It happens.
Because of the unplanned break, this newsletter is a big one. I cover the albums I would’ve written about last week and several new ones that floored me after I regained my energy. There’s a 30-song playlist that’s all heaters too. If you’re someone who defaults to shuffling playlists, I’d advise not doing that for this one (or really any of them—I listen through each week to make sure it works!) because it flows very nicely despite being nearly two hours long. Next Thursday, I’m planning an essay and two or three new recommendations. I appreciate your patience and for sticking around. It feels so good to be healthy and writing this again.
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.
10 Stellar Albums To Catch Up On
Discus, To Relate To
Discus is the Chicago band led by brothers Jake and Paul Stolz, who’ve both spent time playing in great local indie rock outfits like Varsity, Pool Holograph, and Central Heat Exchange. Compared to the ebullient pop of Varsity or the small club catharsis of Pool Holograph, Discus thrive on intricate, laid-back guitar jams and clever, character-driven songs that are sneakily enveloping. To Relate To is the band’s sophomore album and first since 2019. It’s 12 tracks of sparkling guitar pop, anchored by Jake Stolz’s warm, conversational voice. For fans of The Clientele, Wild Nothing, and Real Estate, a live band featuring multi-instrumentalist Sarah Clausen (Hannah Frances), bassist Kevin Fairbairn (Deeper), and drummer Nick Konkoli join the Stolz brothers for rich and inviting arrangements. Single “Alignment, Misattribution” soars in its outro with synth pops and woozy guitars while the sample-heavy “Coast to Coast” features Pool Holograph’s Wyatt Grant.
Dutch Interior, Moneyball
Los Angeles sextet Dutch Interior inserts golden hour twang into nervy, brooding indie rock with a freewheeling, wildly collaborative approach. On Moneyball, the band’s third album, five of the group’s six members provide lead vocal and lyrical duties throughout the tracklist. “We bring songs in, and when they’re released to the band, it’s no longer your baby: It’s the band’s," says guitarist Jack Nugent, who sings on and wrote the ghostly ramshackle folk tune “Christ on the Mast,” in an interview with Paste. For all the different singers and distinct sensibilities, this is a surprisingly cohesive full-length that can oscillate between sunny to haunting songs while never losing what the band calls its “Freak Americana” heart. The soft fingerpicking of “Sweet Time,” the galvanizing countrygaze of “Fourth Street,” and the shuffling percussion anchoring single “Sandcastle Molds” all make their case as standouts.
Eiko Ishibashi, Antigone
Over the past few years, the Japanese polymath Eiko Ishibashi has been making mesmerizing and stunning film soundtracks with director Ryusuke Hamaguchi in Drive My Car and Evil Does Not Exist. Antigone is her first pop-oriented LP since 2018’s The Dream My Bones Dream and while it’s a song-based release, it’s just as captivating and beguiling as a cinematic score work. Here, she enlists a band of her partner Jim O’Rourke on Bass VI and synths, drummer Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, bassist Marty Holoubek, accordionist Kalle Moberg, vocalist ermhoi on backing vocals, and percussionist Joe Talia. Samples, strings, and glitchy electronics weave in and out of these simultaneously stunning and chilly tunes, which often deal with present-day dystopias and digital malaise. “Trial” boasts an uplifting groove while the eight-minute penultimate track “The Model” earns its runtime with an immersive arrangement and a warped, unsettling voiceover. This is the platonic ideal of a 2025 headphones record.
Free Range, Lost & Found
Subtlety is Sofia Jensen’s strength as the songwriter behind Free Range. The 21-year-old bandleader packs so much emotional resonance in each plainspoken, vulnerable line with their longrunning folk-rock band that it channels Elliott Smith or Adrianne Lenker. On Lost & Found, the follow-up to one of this decade’s best local debuts in Patience, Jensen eschews some of the more rock-oriented propulsive arrangements for subdued, intentional writing that demands a clear focus on the lyrics. “Service Light” features a feather-like arrangement that belies the anxiety at the track’s core while “Tilt” slowly builds into a goose-bump-inducing apogee. Even when the material gets loud like on the single “Hardly,” Jensen’s devastating words are hard to ignore like when they sing, “You hardly notice when I glance at you / but I do / or at the shelves and bottles I was so used to / they broke me it’s true / and turned me into someone I’d never ask for.” While using a less maximalist palette, Jensen finds something more perceptive, more mature, and ultimately more confident.
Hannah Cohen, Earthstar Mountain
The Castskills-based Flying Cloud Recordings, which is run by Hannah Cohen and her partner Sam Evian, has been the studio behind so many phenomenal ‘70s-indebted indie rock records from Liam Kazar’s Due North, Kate Bollinger’s Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind, and a part of Big Thief’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You (not to mention Cohen and Evian’s recent oeuvre). There’s a distinct sensibility and a kindred, inviting spirit to each LP that comes out of there, and Cohen’s latest, Earthstar Mountain, encapsulates it perfectly. Produced by Evian, Cohen enlists collaborators like Sufjan Stevens, Clairo, Liam Kazar, Oliver Hill, and Sean Mullins for songs that split the difference between Dusty Springfield, Gal Costa, and Carole King. There’s an infectious bass thump to the single “Draggin’” while “Summer Sweat” deals in hazy psychedelia and sumptuous soul. It’s a total treat throughout.
Lucky Cloud, Foreground
Chicago’s Chet Zenor has spent years as a sideman guitarist for newsletter favorite acts like Minor Moon, Squirrel Flower, and Hannah Frances but with Lucky Cloud, he lends his nimble and knotty leads to lush and mesmerizing singer-songwriter fare. Foreground is his debut and it showcases Zenor’s wonderfully unorthodox melodic sensibility. Named after an Arthur Russell song, Lucky Cloud features its namesake’s playfulness as well as Thom Yorke-like proclivity for moody atmospherics and falsetto (“Vacant Eyes” sounds like an OK Computer b-side). There’s jazz-inflected chords, muted twang, and even songs that evoke Jeff Buckley without the theatricality (opener “Undertow” could have been on Grace). I’ve been lucky enough to hear these songs in different contexts live—with a full band and with Zenor totally solo—and it’s clear these confounding and exemplary tunes broadcast a singular talent.
Macie Stewart, When the Distance Is Blue
Macie Stewart is one of Chicago’s most multi-faceted artists. As one-half of Finom, she’s local art rock royalty but she’s also one of the city’s best improvisers, treading the waters of jazz, classical contemporary, and experimental ambient throughout her career. Where her first solo effort, 2021’s Mouth Full of Glass, highlighted her expansive singer-songwriter fare, When The Distance Is Blue is an eight-track song cycle that mines her versatility as a composer and bandleader. Out physically now via the great label International Anthem (and streaming in full April 10), it’s a lush mixture of field recordings, collage-like piano compositions, and fully improvised jam sessions. In the press materials, Stewart calls it “a love letter to the moments we spend in-between.” Few musicians I know are more versatile and few are more adept at finding evocative moments of tenderness in open musical space.
Pond 1000, daffodiL
Katie McShane fronted the great art-rock band Spirits Having Fun, where half of its members were split between Chicago and New York. Now that the band is on pause (members moved away and guitarist Andrew Clinkman joined Moontype), the now Maine-based McShane along with SHF bandmate Jesse Heasly have started a new project called Pond 1000. Their debut daffodiL is a heady dose of swirling guitars and airy melodies. Songs undulate with looping grooves, slow-burning intensity, and the occasional squall of noise. Highlights like “rivulet” start and stop with a woozy rhythm while bursts of distortion and an elliptical bassline anchor “the shelf,” where McShane coos, “speak to me softly in the meadow.” It’s an indie rock record that feels like a salve to cookie-cutter shoegaze and toothless Spotifycore.
Sharp Pins, Radio DDR
Radio DDR isn’t exactly a new album. Kai Slater, the Chicago musician behind Sharp Pins as well as the caustic noise-rock trio Lifeguard, put this LP out in May 2024 as a Bandcamp/cassette only release. This year, he’s added three songs and an official streaming release. Because I was at the Sphere when this first came out, I didn’t get to it then. I’ve loved his pitch-perfect take on Guided By Voices-power pop and Nuggets-era songwriting for years, including his debut Turtle Rock in the No Expectations 2023 EOY list. Since then Slater’s only gotten more adept at channeling the Beatles, Big Star, and Cleaners From Venus. But where a lesser songwriter would only come up with sheer facsimile, Slater adds pristine, air-tight hooks and all-consuming thoughtfulness to this material. New song “Storma Lee” is basically perfect and the rest of the tracklist is breezy, jangly bliss.
Taxidermists, 20247
The Massachusetts-based duo of Cooper B. Handy (LUCY) and Salvadore McNamara recorded the new Taxidermists LP in the middle of winter next to a space heater in a garage. The icy setting informs but doesn't mar the explosive and casual indie rock on 20247, 12-tracks of no-frills, lo-fi riffs, and palpable rambunctiousness. While much of the tracklist ramps up aggression and angst (like the punchy “Shoot” and the single “Needles to Say,”) opener “Sweet Guilt” finds a dirgelike tempo, “Love You” slurs to a stumble while the slacker rock of “2099” thrillingly meanders. It’s literal garage rock but it also shows two thoughtful and perceptive songwriters who make the most out of a simple setup.
What I listened to:
The No Expectations 103 Playlist: Apple Music // Spotify // Tidal
1. Gold Dust, "An Early Translation of a Later Work" (feat. J Mascis)
2. MJ Lenderman, "Dancing in the Club" (This Is Lorelei Cover)
3. Colin Miller, "Porchlight"
4. Moontype, "Four Hands ii"
5. Discus, "A Rosy Picture"
6. Mamalarky, "Anhedonia"
7. Foxwarren, "Listen2me"
8. Dutch Interior, "Sandcastle Molds"
9. The Bug Club, "Jealous Boy"
10. Esther Rose, "Had To"
11. Samia, "Hole In A Frame"
12. Sparklmami. Les Sons Du Cosmos, "TOUCH"
13. Eiko Ishibashi, "Trial"
14. Red Stamp, "Dancing With My Baby"
15. Wishy, "Over and Over"
16. Lunar Vacation, "Lights Off"
17. Kid Charleroi, "What Feels Right"
18. Friendship, "All Over the World"
19. Fealty, "Flint St."
20. Alex Riegelman, "There's Nothing Left to Imagine"
21. Hannah Cohen, "Summer Sweat"
22. pond 1000, "rivulet"
23. Lucky Cloud, "The Birds"
24. sink, "part time losers (full time fools)"
25. Taxidermists, "Good Job Done"
26. Free Range, "Big Star"
27. Macie Stewart, "Spring Becomes You, Spring Becomes New"
28. Half Gringa, "The Kármán Line"
29. Moon Mullins, "Lobby Music"
30. Sharp Pins, "With A Girl Like Mine"
What I watched:
Eephus (directed by Carson Lund, in theaters)
On Friday, March 21, I caught the Chicago premiere of Carson Lund’s directorial debut and baseball comedy Eephus at the Music Box. The film documents the final rec league game at Soldiers Field, a humble ballpark in New England that’s about to be torn down so a school could be built. A lesser film would’ve made it about its lovable loser players fighting the evil developers but instead of a bank or an oil refinery, it’s literally a school, complicating the easy narrative. The entire movie takes place on the baseball diamond, going through each inning of the unimpressive play: the men on the field are mostly aging, past their prime, dealing with injuries and the limits of their beer-filled bodies. Gorgeously shot and thoughtfully filmed, the ensemble cast is incredible and features cameos from Uncut Gems heavy actor Keith William Richards and real-life Red Sox hero Bill Lee (who was an oddball highlight of the Ken Burns Baseball series). This was so impossibly up my alley. It’s a quiet, self-aware film about loving something that’s no longer cool, about the shared experiences holding up tenuous relationships, and the little things that matter, even if it feels silly to admit it.
What I read:
Erasure (by Percival Everett)
I really liked the Jeffrey Wright-starring and Oscar-winning 2023 film American Fiction but had never read the novel it’s based on, Erasure by Percival Everett. The source material is just as engaging, if not funnier, more scathingly satirical, and affecting than what ended up onscreen. It’s a novel that uses the personal upheaval of its artist protagonist Thelonious “Monk” Ellison to excavate fascinating and uncomfortable ideas about art, commerce, race, familial expectations and obligation, and integrity. While this is Everett’s most popular novel and I was floored by it, I’ve heard from friends that some of his other novels are even better. I can’t wait to dive in.
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.
Trees by Percival Everett is my fave. I'm a nobody though. Fellow Chicagoan John Warner (The Biblioracle Recommends) who has read most of Everett's bibliography agrees with me: https://biblioracle.substack.com/p/the-definitive-entirely-subjective?utm_source=publication-search
Seek it out! It's a stunner