Derry Girls season 3

The show's humanistic heart shines through, as does its 90s heart. I didn't think this season was quite as funny as the ones before it, but it has a couple of particularly good episodes - the one about their mothers, and the last one - and it's certainly just as nice as those earlier seasons.

Strange World

Pretty good if somewhat muddled messages ('the farmer' possibly isn't the best stand-in for humanity's exploitation of our natural environment); pretty good diversity and representation; slightly better than pretty good animation via the imagining and realisation of the 'strange world' itself; slightly worse than pretty good story pacing. Having said that I don't really know where the Disney curve for grading ought to lie.

(w/ L)

"Playlist for Marissa R. Moss' book Her Country"

A proper canon of country music by women, available on spotify as lovingly listed in the book. Across 75 songs and 4 1/2 hours it doesn't falter, with many songs and artists that are part of my personal canon - older and more recent. 

The book already introduced me to the joys of Maren Morris and Mickey Guyton, and prompted me to go back and listen to Same Trailer, Different Park; beyond them, my favourite discoveries are "Harper Valley PTA" (Jeannie C Riley, 1968), "I'm Not Lisa" (Jessi Colter, 1975), "Faraway Look" (Yola, 2019), "Daddy Lessons" (Beyonce, 2018 - one I'd heard before but not paid proper attention to), "You Are My Home" (Amanda Shires, 2016), "You're Not Alone" (Our Native Daughters, 2019), "New Kind of Outlaw" (D'orjay The Singing Shaman, 2020).

Arcade Fire - We

Epic has always been the Arcade Fire's thing, but there's epic and there's quoting (melodically, lyrically or both) John Lennon's "Imagine" and U2's "One" in the same song - that would be "End of the Empire I-III", which I have to admit is listenable but is also just too much ... as is the album as a whole, although I do like "Age of Anxiety II (Rabbit Hole)".

Black Country, New Road - Ants From Up There

The sound is less 'kitchen sink' than it at first appears; the anthems are unabashed and the melodies are clear. But there's also no denying the sideways slant of this outfit's take on (art-) rock. Some great stuff here.

Taylor Swift - Midnights

Taylor Swift albums always feel like they might be an Event, but this one's a bit indistinct.

Our Native Daughters - Songs of Our Native Daughters

This is one of those albums that comes along every once in a while and just feels like its own affair. Our Native Daughters is Rhiannon Giddens, Allison Russell, Amythyst Kiah and Leyla McCalla, all wielding banjos and, more to the point, all bringing their own voices and visions to a record that's unified by their collective talent and its links to the various roots of American music - in that respect, its closest predecessor is maybe Raising Sand, which turned out to be a classic, still getting better with time - and specifically Black music. So it ranges widely, encompasses several songs that don't sound much like anything else on the album (most of them, really), and yet feels all of a piece. All up, it's a bit remarkable.

House of the Dragon season 1

The stakes feel lower, given we already know what's going to happen some 200 years later, but this is still spectacle tv and it still feels like Game of Thrones, give or take.