No Expectations 095: Love Takes Miles
Five of January's best LPs so far, a 15-song playlist of new music, and recapping Chicago’s Tomorrow Never Knows Fest 2025.
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Headline song: Cameron Winter, “Love Takes Miles”
Thanks for being here. It’s been blisteringly cold in Chicago this week but I still managed to catch three shows in three consecutive days last weekend because of this city’s Tomorrow Never Knows festival. Early-to-mid January is always a dead zone for live music, so in the 2000s a bunch of independent venues banded together to host a week-long indoor, multi-venue event. It’s always been one of my favorite winter traditions and I’ve seen some alltimer gigs (shoutout PUP, NE-HI, and Meat Wave at Schubas in 2015 and Deeper at Lincoln Hall in 2020). This year was no different. I wrote about that below.
I also highlighted some just-released January LPs. Entering No Expectations’ third year, I’m just now realizing that if I hear 10 great albums during the week I don’t have to write about all 10 in one newsletter. So, going forward I’ll try to cap recommendations at five, using some of the other blurbs for future blogs. This will save me time and hopefully, I’ll stop overloading you with too much new music. If anything, I probably won’t panic on Monday nights thinking, “Uh oh, what should I write about?” It’s better this way. 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.
Next week, I’ll have the “Favorite Tracks of 2025 (So Far)” playlists (with nearly 50 songs already) plus a fun Taste Profile interview with an artist whose band I wrote about a lot last year. I thought I’d publish those playlists today, but I need more time to tweak the track orders and make sure each streaming service mix is updated with the correct songs. That said, this week’s playlist is a good one and should tide you over.
5 of January’s Best LPs So Far
Blue Lake, Weft
Last week, I wrote about all the Danish music I listened to on my trip to Denmark. I thought about including Jason Dungan’s Blue Lake in that roundup but while the ambient artist is based in Copenhagen, he’s from Texas. He moved there a decade ago for his wife, a Danish visual artist whose work “Torso” serves as the cover of his latest album Weft. Much of his instrumental music traverses Americana at its most meditative and expansive. "I’m like many expats that are obsessed with their home country even though they don't live there, and I'm quite obsessed with a lot of American music," he said in a 2023 interview. "The project gets its name from a Don Cherry record. There's a lot of American jazz and folk music that I think about a lot and it isn't present here in Denmark.” The five songs on this LP stretch out over a half hour but each one threads the needle perfectly between knotty and inviting.
klark sound, This Is Music
klark sound is the solo project of Improvement Movements’ Clark Hamilton, an Atlanta-based songwriter whose welcoming and gorgeous voice is a near-exact midpoint between Labi Siffre and Robin Pecknold. Last year he released an LP titled What Is Music and this month he follows it up with This Is Music, a conversational collection of stripped-back songs. With just his pristine croon and tasteful acoustic guitar serving as the arrangements, he lets these subtle and impeccably pretty songs remain unvarnished. The whole thing’s a transportive listen but a handful of songs floored me like “See Me” and closer “Bother.”
lots of hands, into a pretty room
lots of hands is the Newcastle-upon-Tyne-based duo of Billy Woodhouse and Elliot Dryden, who are both in their early twenties and make winsome, ramshackle folk that's nostalgic and interesting. Though into a pretty room is their fourth LP, it's their first with a label on Friends of the Substack Fire Talk. “It's the first album me and [bandmate Billy Woodhouse] have truly collaborated 50/50 [on], and was so much fun to make," said Dryden in a 2024 interview. It's this chemistry and collaboration that makes these songs feel so lived in, mixing acoustic bedroom folk with flickering electronic flourishes and processed vocals. The woozy "masquerade" is a favorite and so is the early single "game of zeroes." If you're into Hovvdy, Pinback, or Alex G you'll find a lot to grab onto here.
Renny Conti, Renny Conti
Renny Conti is a Bay Area-raised, New York-based songwriter who explores indie rock’s more infectious fringes on his new self-titled LP. Back in the fall, the New York songwriter and No Expectations favorite Sofia Wolfson, who sings backing vocals on the album, sent me the first single “Room to Room” and it quickly entered my regular rotation. Throughout the following months, more and more East Coast indie rockers I know recommended Conti’s new album, and now that it’s out, it’s easy to see why he has so many fervent supporters. He writes a perfect pop song like the Andy Shauf-evoking “Formspring” or the delicate “Looking at the Geese” but my favorite lane is when he gets noisy and wonky, like on “South Star” or the opener “Workhorse.”
The Weather Station, Humanhood
In 2017, I interviewed The Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman for VICE to premiere a song off her forthcoming self-titled LP. She was a great interviewee but what I remember about that call was her explaining how compared to her previous efforts like 2011’s All of That Was Mine and 2015’s Loyalty, this album marked a turning point for her because she wrote it on piano versus an acoustic guitar. By scrapping the folksy palette of her earlier releases, she found a more fluid and expansive sound to immerse herself in. She secured a New Yorker AOTY in 2021 with the masterful Ignorance and its more stripped-down follow-up, How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars from 2022 was also excellent. But here, for her seventh album Humanhood, she leans into improvisation, patience, and lived-in arrangements. There’s effusive pop in songs like “Window” and a gitchy, voice-over-laden standout in “Irreversible Damage.” This is a songwriter who’s already acclaimed and confident, so it’s a joy to hear her settle into a groove and let these songs breathe.
What I listened to:
The No Expectations 095 Playlist: Spotify // Apple Music // TIDAL
1. Rose City Band, “Radio Song”
2. Tobacco City, “Autumn”
3. Dead Gowns, “Wet Dog”
4. Neu Blume, “Power”
5. Renny Conti, “South Star”
6. Lutalo, “I Figured”
7. Horsegirl, “Switch Over”
8. lots of hands, “masquerade”
9. Echolalia, “Blood Moon”
10. Sleeper’s Bell, “Room”
11. The Weather Station, “Mirror”
12. Sean Thompson’s Weird Ears, “Storm’s Comin’ Tonight”
13. Sylvie, “Lady Full of Dreams (Cathy Hamer Cover)”
14. klark sound, “See Me”
15. Blue Lake, “Oceans”
Gig report: Lutalo, Runo Plum, Sleeper’s Bell at Schubas (1/16)
Back in October, I saw the Minnesota-raised, Vermont-based songwriter Lutalo Jones open for Nilüfer Yanya at Metro. Then, they had a backing band trio including bassist Lily Seabird and drummer Micah Rubin to play songs off their 2024 AOTY contender The Academy. But for their headlining Tomorrow Never Knows fest set at Schubas, they had an entirely new band: a quartet of New York-based indie rock musicians who added a different urgency and energy to these songs. Could not be more stoked for whenever Jones finishes the follow-up to one of last year’s best efforts. Special shoutout to opening sets from Minnesota’s Runo Plum, whose forthcoming LP was produced by Jones, and Chicago’s Sleeper’s Bell. The latter act has an album coming out next month that I’ll be writing about very soon.
Gig report: V.V. Lightbody, Morinda, Lily Seabird at Gman Tavern (1/17)
I’ve been writing about Vivian McConnell's music for a decade at this point, from her old band Santah at the RedEye in 2015 to VICE write-ups on her solo music as V.V. Lightbody, to writing the bio for her side project with Daniel Villareal Valebol last year, and catching her play with the iconic Chicago band Finom. She’s an anchor of the local music community here, a stellar person, and a phenomenal songwriter. (I still think “If It’s Not Me” is one of the best doomed love songs of the past decade). For her headlining TNK show at Gman, she played mostly new material from a forthcoming LP. Every song felt like a bonafide hit sitting there in the room. A perfect show from one of this city’s secret weapons. As a bonus, I’m so stoked I got to see Morinda—the project of Friko’s Bailey Minzenberger play their first show since March 2023.
Friend of the Substack Lily Seabird was the first of three and I hadn’t seen her perform totally solo since the first night I ever saw her play in February 2023. She’s about to announce a new LP (I think by the time this newsletter runs) and it’s so good I want to write about how it rocks as soon as possible. She’s a songwriter and person I wholeheartedly believe in and I can’t wait for y’all to hear it.
Gig report: Cameron Winter, Racing Mount Pleasant at Sleeping Village (1/18)
Geese is a band I’ve been ahead of the curve on and late to the party. In 2021, before the New York rock band released their debut album Projector, I interviewed them for a Noisey Next profile at VICE. While I was laid off by that company before the piece ever ran, I was an ardent champion of how they funneled aughts indie rock into something kinetic and volatile. Two years later, when they released 3D Country, I didn’t get it at first. The leaps they took were too wild and too earnestly rendered that it took months for it to click (I think it’s genius now). But with Cameron Winter’s debut solo album, I instantly thought it was brilliant. I’m grateful I was one of the last publications to run a year-end list, which thankfully featured Heavy Metal.
For his sold-out TNK set at Sleeping Village, Winter was totally solo—just armed with a piano that wasn’t facing the crowd. While he’s a solid player, his biggest asset is his voice, which boasts a dynamic range that can undulate theatrically between guttural wheezes and commanding falsetto. Hearing songs like “Love Takes Miles” in this context was honestly pretty jaw-dropping—that’s a song I now realize I will be listening to decades from now. An alltimer. Opening the show was sort of the opposite vibe—a seven-piece band from Ann Arbor, MI called Racing Mount Pleasant (fka Kingfisher) who specialize in cathartic and orchestral folk with grand arrangements and emotional songwriting. It was a gorgeous show–their songs seem made for Tiny Desk Concerts—and I’m looking forward to hearing what they’ll release in the following months.
What I watched:
Pachinko (Season 2, Apple TV+)
The third entry in No Expectations was on the best TV of 2022 and topping that list was AppleTV+’s adaptation of Lee Min Jin’s masterpiece novel Pachinko, which follows a multi-generational Korean family who settled in Osaka. No series in the past decade felt more affecting or astoundingly beautiful than this one. It made me devour the book it's based on (its first season is especially faithful to the source material) and made me a lifelong fan of director Kogonada (whose films Columbus and After Yang are alltimers). I revisited the novel before I embarked on its follow-up season and while I didn’t enjoy the second installment as much as the first (there were too many conjured plotlines expounded on that felt at odds with the characters Min Jin lovingly rendered in writing), the cinematography and performances were so superlative it almost didn’t matter.
What I read:
Pachinko (by Lee Min Jin)
AppleTV+’s Pachinko adaptation made me read Lee Min Jin’s National Book Award finalist and I decided to revisit it before I watched the follow-up. It’s still excellent, emotional, and gut-wrenching. A story of family, displacement, colonialism, trauma, and shame, it’s so vividly laid out by the author’s palpable humanism and grounded imagery. It's a fascinating document to read while you’re watching the TV show and while the first season was one of the best television experiences I’ve ever had, I still prefer the novel.
Not sure when you added a Tidal link to your listened to playlist, but it's much appreciated. Thank you!
This Blue Lake album is so good. Thanks for the rec!