The Weekender #28: Now That's What I Call Curation!
What I’m digging right now: albums, playlists, movies, shows, and books worth your time.
Welcome to The Wax Museum’s monthly exhibit The Weekender, your curated dose of must-hear records, must-watch gems, and must-read pieces to give your weekend a sensory upgrade.
In a world drowning in AI slop and algorithmic noise, curators are the last line of defense, digging for the good stuff that actually moves you.
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What to Listen to This Weekend
Racing Mount Pleasant - Racing Mount Pleasant
Get Vinyl: Burgundy (sold out) | Black
This spot is usually reserved for my favorite Friday release, which I was expecting to be a tough battle between Boston indie rockers Pile and Tallahassee emo band Pool Kids, both with strong albums worth your time. But then I pressed play on Racing Mount Pleasant, the eponymous debut from the Michigan-based seven-piece, and it knocked me sideways.
Formerly known as Kingfisher, this Ann Arbor collective has reemerged with a lush, wildly ambitious record. Fans of Black Country, New Road will feel right at home here, but Racing Mount Pleasant carve out their own space, melding soft-spoken vocals, intricate instrumental layering, and sudden, sweeping crescendos. Released via R&R (home to Mk.gee and Dijon), the record is filled with lilting time changes, weeping sax lines, and a bruised energy that cuts through even the album’s most soaring peaks. It’s one of the prettiest albums I’ve heard all year, and one of the most promising debuts in recent memory.
Blush - Beauty Fades, Pain Lasts Forever
Get Vinyl: Pink
I want to shine a light on a band more people need to hear: Singapore’s Blush, who quietly dropped one of the year’s best shoegaze records in Beauty Fades, Pain Lasts Forever. Their 2023 debut Supercrush landed at #17 on our year-end list, and this follow-up levels up in every way. Blush continues to blur the lines between shoegaze and dreampop, now with sharper production, more confidence, and a willingness to push their sound into new territory. Swirling guitars, velvety vocals, jangly undercurrents.. it’s all here, and it all hits.
Gregg Allman Band - Uncle Sam’s (Live from Hull, MA | July 1983)
Get Vinyl: Trippy Tangerine
The inaugural release from Gregg Allman’s posthumous Sawrite Records label may have dropped last year, but I finally spun the vinyl this week and I’m happy to report Uncle Sam’s is a certified banger.
Recorded live at a packed club in Hull, Massachusetts on July 1, 1983, this is the sound of Gregg launching his solo ’80s era with swagger. Backed by Dan and Frankie Toler and a punchy horn section that sharpens every groove, the band is locked in and Allman’s vocals are in top form. The recording is remarkably crisp, and you can hear the Massholes hootin’ throughout the songs like they’re right next to you at the bar.
As far as first dips into the Gregg Allman vault go, this one sets the bar high — and if you’re hungry for more, One Night in D.C. from 1984 just dropped in June.
Monthly Mixtape: Weird Scenes Inside The Canyon
Stream: Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube Music
Earlier this week, I went deep into the 1960s Laurel Canyon music scene, trying to untangle the web of covert government ops, mysteriously protected criminals, and suspicious military ties circling the whole thing. Was it all a staged production meant to redirect dissent and defang radical politics? I don’t know. But I do know I came out the other side with a killer mixtape. Enjoy this hazy, haunted blend of paranoia, cult vibes, and cosmic melancholy from one of the strangest chapters in American music history.
The Best Songs of 2025 (So Far) Playlist
The Best Songs of 2025 (So Far) playlist just crossed 240 tracks and 750 followers — a running archive of everything I’ve loved this year. Filter by Date Added, save it to your profile, and you’ll never miss a gem. (Spotify | Apple Music)
What to Watch This Weekend
Eddington
Get Blu-Ray | Streaming: Prime Video | Apple TV
After grossing just $11 million on a $25 million budget, A24 rushed Eddington to digital, where it’s now streaming on Prime Video and Apple TV. Meanwhile, Jurassic World Rebirth has raked in $800 million and counting.. We say we’re sick of sequels and remakes, but when something bold and original like Ari Aster’s latest shows up, we leave it to die. That’s a shame, because Eddington is a spectacle to behold — a pitch-black COVID-era Western where the guns eventually come out, but the deadliest weapon is still the glowing screen in your pocket.
Set in Eddington, New Mexico, Aster’s fourth feature (after Hereditary, Midsommar, Beau Is Afraid) is a slow-burn satire of 2020 that’s as bleak as it is darkly hilarious. A looming data center watches over the town like a modern monolith, as characters spiral into algorithm-fed half-realities. The film is saturated with screens, capturing the vertigo of a world slipping further into delusion. It all builds to a bloody third act that you’ll never forget.
Families Like Ours
Streaming: Netflix
Families Like Ours is one of the most thought-provoking shows I’ve seen this year, and is now streaming on Netflix for a much wider audience. Directed by the great Thomas Vinterberg (Another Round), this six-part Danish miniseries imagines a near-future Denmark on the brink of total evacuation due to rising sea levels. But rather than leaning on spectacle or disaster clichés, it homes in on what really collapses when a nation unravels — identity, privilege, and the illusion of stability.
Vinterberg flips the refugee narrative on its head, following wealthy white Danes as they become the displaced, forced to rebuild their lives in countries like France, the UK, and Romania. When the privileged become the displaced, generosity dries up and bureaucracy bites back. The show asks how it feels to lose everything you thought protected you, and whether empathy survives when comfort doesn’t.
What to Read This Weekend
The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces by Seth Harp
Seth Harp’s The Fort Bragg Cartel dropped this week, and I devoured it in two sittings. It’s a jaw-dropping piece of investigative journalism disguised as a military thriller, packed with so many shocking revelations that I audibly said “oh my god” twice on the first page. Harp, an Iraq war veteran turned reporter, follows a grisly double murder at Fort Bragg into a far more disturbing rabbit hole: drug trafficking, mysterious overdoses, and a pattern of violence and impunity festering inside America’s most elite military units.
At the heart of the book is a damning portrait of special operations units operating entirely outside civilian oversight, military law, or basic human decency. Harp uses trial transcripts, police reports, and hundreds of interviews to expose how these soldiers have devolved into something closer to organized crime, fueling and profiting from narco-trafficking, participating in military cover-ups, and perpetuating the global chaos they were sent to contain. The Fort Bragg Cartel is a furious account of how endless war corrodes everything it touches, leaving behind a trail of bodies, silence, and institutional rot that no one seems willing to clean up.
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Another amazing issue. We’re so lucky to have so much great music, all the time. I can’t even keep up. Also, I gotta start using those Bandcamp miniplayers in my own newsletters!
This would make a great tote bag!…..to haul all those new vinyl purchases