atomicules

Mostly walking the dogs

March Music

Well, the first quarter of the year anyway. Sooooo much music, my music picks of 2025 playlist is already over two hours long.

January seemed to be country and girly pop inspired, interestingly.

Notable mentions (there is actually more than this!), mostly albums:

  • Lambrini Girls: Who Let the Dogs Out. Always going to love some angry shouty girls (it’s why I love A). Five tracks from this make my picks of 2025 so by volume this should be my album of the year.
  • Moonchild Sanelly: Full Moon. Big Booty is my favourite.
  • Ethel Cain: Perverts. It’s a bit like listening to an art installation, not that that in itself is a bad thing, but Vacillator is the closest to an actual song.
  • Rose Gray: Louder Please. Cross between Dua Lipa and Charli XCX? Which is a pretty good thing. Free, Party People and Switch are really, really good.
  • Geowulf: The Child. I only really like Stay Baby.
  • Willow Avalon: Raising Hell. It’s country music so not my thing, but for some reason I love Something We Regret.
  • Alessi Rose: for your validation. An EP. Start Wll Over is great. Pop, but great. Ikyk is great too.
  • Jasmine.4.t: You are the Morning. Yay for Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation having a surprise Phoebe Bridgers appearance (and having a great song name).
  • Déyyess: Claire. Another EP. More pop perfection. If I Was Ur Boy is just utterly superb.
  • FKA Twigs: Eusexua. Perfect Stranger and Striptease are the obvious standouts for me. And Childlike Things, well, much like Jessica Winter’s L.O.V.E. I can’t actually decide if it is really really good or really really bad.
  • Heartworms: Glutton for Punishment. Probably going to be my album of the year emotionally, it’s just superb. I only actually have Just Ask To Dance and Mad Catch in my playlist so far, but I do actually love the whole thing.
  • John Glacier: Like a Ribbon. I didn’t know what it was going to be like, but not like this? A female CASISDEAD? Maybe? Emotions and Ocean Steppin’ are the ones I like best. This deserves more listens.
  • The Wombats: Oh! the Ocean. I like Blood On The Hospital Floor and I Love America And She Hates Me the most. It ‘s not bad (at all) it’s just not A Guide to Love, Loss and Desperation.
  • Mallrat: light hit my face like a straight right. Via little M. Pavement and Hideaway are the best. For some reason I feel a bit too old to be listening to this.
  • Saya Gray: Saya. H.B.W is good, but Lie Down is the stand out to me and how I discovered the album - which makes you wait until the end.
  • Marie Davidson: City of Clowns. Sexy Clown and YAMM (both versions) are my favourites although Fun Times is fun times too.
  • The Architects: The Sky, The Earth And All Between. This is pretty great. I loved Whiplash and Curse from last year and they probably remain my favourites.
  • Antony Szmierek: Service Station At The End Of The Universe. I like it, but not as much as Circle of Light and Working Classic which aren’t on this. Rafters is maybe the nearest? Crashing up is good too.
  • Divorce: Drive to Goldenhammer. All My freaks, which I knew about before hand, is heads and shoulders above everything. It is such an amazing track that it makes all the other good stuff on the album seem a bit bland in comparison.
  • Housewife: Girl of the Hour. A lot of this I heard last year. I like everything on here. Maybe I like I Lied and Divorce most of all.
  • Fust: Big Ugly. More country, but Spangled is a tune.
  • HotWax: Hot Shock. Hard Goodbye has just such a great opening sound.
  • Freak Slug: I blow out big candles (but with a cherry on top). Spells is superb.
  • Chloe Qisha: 21st Century Cool Girl and Sex, Drugs And Existential Dread. Both are singles. Both utter pop perfection.
  • Sacred Paws: Jump into Life. For me, not hitting the heights of Almost It from Run Around The Sun.
  • Snapped Ankles: Hard Times Furious Dancing. Probably Raoul is best, but despite the great album name there’s nothing that furious. Where’s the Caganar is pretty good too. All in all probably not really my thing.
  • Sleeper’s Bell: Clover. Really pretty beautiful, but Room is the standout for me.

And then there is stuff I’ve not got to around yet and will have to roll over into April:

  • Japanese Breakfast: For Melancholy Brunettes (and Sad Women). I’ve given it one quick listen, but not properly.
  • Greentea Peng: Tell Dem it’s Sunny. Same.
  • Perfume Genius: Glory.
  • Panda Bear: Sinister Grift.

Probably said superb too much. Oh well.

And The Fear Slithered Off Me

"He dropped his arm over my shoulder and the fear slithered off me and dropped behind like a discarded skin."

— Monkey Grip by Helen Garner

From a prose point of view I wish that was the ending. Although Nora is probably lucky it wasn’t even if she didn’t think it at the time.

My Heart Spread Out

"My heart spread out and escaped from its hard embattlements."

— Monkey Grip by Helen Garner

I Fell In Love With His Long Legs

"I fell in love with his long legs, saw him getting smaller in the distance, felt him pulling one of those long strings out of my heart."

— Monkey Grip by Helen Garner

Loved it. Has been on my list for some time. I didn’t know anything about it, but didn’t realise it’s a cross between Trainspotting and Normal People, but set in Australia (I’m sure people would hate me for saying that). And of course pre-dating either of those by years. I find anything “relationshipy” incredibly stressful and this stressed me to the max (but I still thought it was great).

The Secrets To Dressing Well In Your 40s

"Remember: There is power in being in your 40s. Your body may have changed in the past decade, but so too have your budget and your confidence. This is the era in which you buy nice clothes that make you look good. It should be the best you've ever dressed."

Made me LOL and then stop reading the article. I had more of a clothing budget when I was a teenager. On a related note, I have just bought some running shorts from Vinted for £3. Mostly to go over the top of my worn leggings so I don’t get done for indicent exposure. Has taken me about 30 months to “save” for them.

A quote not from a book! I’ve nearly finished my next book though.

Maybe in my 50s?

The Snow Did Not Look Like A Killing Blanket

"And, today, the snow did not look like a killing blanket but like a tender coverlet designed to keep the cold away from germinating seeds."

— Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

Sarah Walters says in the forward “it’s also the most engaging and accessible of her fictions” and I was going to say “but I can’t remember The Magic Toyshop being this bonkers”, and yet it turns out I did say just that.

Why A Woman Should Want To Murder Her Husband

"There are many reasons, most of them good ones, why a woman should want to murder her husband."

— Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

I mean, in the grand scheme of things, she’s not wrong.

From Water That Holds Within It The Entire Sky

"Outside the window, there slides past that unimaginable and deserted vastness where night is coming on, the sun declining in ghastly blood-streaked splendour like a public execution across, it would seem, half a continent, where live only beads and shooting stars and the wolves who lap congealing ice from water that holds within it the entire sky."

— Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

Beautiful.

And From The Coffin Of Your Madness There Is No Escape

"Farewell, old man. And from the coffin of your madness there is no escape."

— Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

First book of the Christmas book haul done. Since then I’ve got another two. Due to the rest of life getting in the way I could see it taking me until near the end of the year to get through all these.

LINK: Drinkaware

I’m not doing dry January (why make an already hard month more miserable than necessary?) so this post is just coincidentally in January - I actually started using Drinkaware last year, but only got around to writing about it now.

These are my uncollected thoughts on it:

  • As far as doing what it says on the tin I can’t fault it: It does make you very aware.
  • It would be nice if it worked offline / without an account.
  • It would also be nice if it didn’t nag every time about enabling notifications.
  • And further, if you could edit existing entries (names, percentages, volumes, etc) rather than having to delete and replace.
  • The unit goals can only go down which I find a bit silly. Ok, yes, I am trying to stick to 14 units a week, but if I only have 10 units one week I can’t then set a goal of 14 for the next week.
  • Related: It’s not the most positively re-enforcing app. It tends to want to tell you you’ve “significantly increased your drinking” if you’ve gone from a week with 0 units to a week with 10 whereas I feel it should be saying “well done, you are under 14 units”.
  • 14 units a week is not a lot at all.
  • Also, that the 14 units is a rolling seven days, which of course it should be, but that makes things even trickier and actually harder to spread things out.
  • What’s more, 8 units in a session (any more is technically binge drinking and a session is a whole 24 hours) is really not much at all. That’s less than four pints at 4.5%. If you had two pints at lunch on a Saturday and then two in the evening you’d be a binge drinker (technically).
  • It’s really made me aware how strong drinks are. It’s hard to find craft beers under 4%. It’s easy to find beers over 5%. Similarly it’s so much easier to find wines at 13% than 10.5% (and it makes a lot of difference: You can do a whole bottle of wine at 10.5% and stay under 8 units).
  • I’ve found a new found appreciation for “bests”: Bellhaven Best and Caledonia Best are only 3.2%
  • Of course there are lots of great alcohol free beers nowadays, but I also wish there were more around 3%. Similarly with lower alcohol wines (alcohol free wines are… not good).
  • I could probably give up drinking for myself, but, like everything else in my life, I’m trying to stick to these guidelines as a compromise.
  • But I’m also doing “everything in moderation, including moderation” - I.e. I didn’t bother over Christmas (I did have a very light New Year though just by accident).

[EDIT: 2025-02-28] Mentioned the rolling seven days.

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