The Weekender #24: Roundball Rock
Your guide to the perfect weekend is here: new records, playoff hoops, and your next cult obsession.
The Wax Museum is a vinyl-centric missive, but every now and then, we step out of the record stacks and into the wider world with The Weekender — a curated mix of must-listen tunes, must-watch gems, and must-read treasures to give your weekend a sensory upgrade. Let’s dive in!
What to Listen to This Weekend
quickly, quickly - I Heard That Noise
Stream: Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple Music
Get Vinyl: Frosted Coke Bottle
I just finished Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine, a scathing deep dive into Spotify’s dystopian playlist economy, and one section stuck with me — how ambient and lo-fi music is being overrun by AI-generated slop and ghost artists. Among the interviewed casualties was Graham Jonson, aka quickly, quickly, whose real, breathing instrumentals were being quietly erased by Spotify’s profit-driven mission to turn music into cheap, anonymous filler.
Thankfully Graham didn’t just survive the algorithm — he made an album that spits in its face. I Heard That Noise, out today on the Ghostly label, is a kaleidoscopic indie-rock gem where melody and noise tussle like old friends, lush instrumentation smashes into homespun charm, and surprises are tucked around every corner like Easter eggs.
Take lead single “Enything,” a strong contender for my Song of 2025 — it’s a shapeshifter packed with jagged guitar lines and jarring beat switches. The track swelled so much during production that Jonson had to upgrade his computer, and you can hear why: every second is crammed with delightful details, yet nothing feels cluttered. The whole album is like this — ambitious, intimate, and bursting with personality.
In a world where Spotify wants to flood our ears with anonymous, AI-generated wallpaper, I Heard That Noise is a vibrant reminder of what makes music human. Don’t let the algorithm steal this one from you.
Hannah Cohen - Earthstar Mountain
Stream: Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple Music
Get Vinyl: Translucent Yellow
After a decade of quietly refining her craft — and six years since her last album — Hannah Cohen returns with Earthstar Mountain, a radiant record that feels like sunlight breaking through the trees. Recorded at Flying Cloud Recordings, her Catskills studio with partner/producer Sam Evian (whose own 2024 album ranked among the year's best), the album stretches Cohen’s folk foundations into mesmerizing new terrain: ’70s rock warmth, dream-pop haze, and funky grooves.
Earthstar Mountain is packed with sticky choruses that bloom around rippling guitar riffs, subtle synth swirls, and psychedelic flickers. Don’t miss Clairo’s clarinet cameo on “Una Spiaggia,” nor Sufjan Stevens lending his plaintive vocals to both that track and “Mountain.” It’s an effortlessly immersive journey that proves Cohen’s patience has yielded something timeless.
Vegyn x Air - Blue Moon Safari
Stream: Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple Music
Get Vinyl: Blue (keeps going in and out of stock)
Last week, I highlighted one of my favorite albums, Air’s Moon Safari, which celebrated its 25th anniversary with a Record Store Day release of rarities, demos, and live sessions. Somehow, I missed even more Air goodness in the form of an entire Moon Safari remix album by British electronic artist Vegyn.
Joe Thornalley, the British producer behind the Vegyn moniker, breathes fresh life into every track, twisting familiar melodies into new shapes. It’s a mind bender to hear songs you’ve cherished for a quarter‑century suddenly shift keys and moods.
By remixing Moon Safari, Vegyn applies the same forward‑thinking touch that earned him credits with Frank Ocean and James Blake, infusing the ambient pop classic with crisp, contemporary beats and atmospheric flourishes.
This was my perfect entry point into his catalog — since then, I’ve binged everything from his mixtapes to his 2024 LP The Road to Hell Is Paved with Good Intentions, which I can also fully endorse.
What to Watch This Weekend
NBA Playoffs
Stream: TNT, ABC/ESPN, NBATV
Buh buh buh buh buh basketball gimme the ball cuz I’m gonna DUNK IT!
If John Tesh (and his brother) doesn’t get you hyped for playoff hoops, check your pulse. Starting Saturday, we're embarking on two months of basketball nirvana.
Last season had one clear juggernaut — the Boston Celtics, crowned champions. This year, though, we have a three‑headed monster: the Celtics looking to repeat, the surprising Cleveland Cavaliers, and the Oklahoma City Thunder, who broke basketball with a jaw‑dropping 12.9 points per game differential — smashing a record that stood for over 50 years.
Standing in their way is the Los Angeles Lakers, who were gifted a generational talent in Luka Dončić in perhaps the most inexplicable trade in sports history. The league office should have sent investigators, not congratulations. But make no mistake: the future is now, it’s wearing Thunder blue, and they are my pick to hoist the trophy for the first time in their history.
The Rehearsal Season 2
Stream: Max
No one twists reality like Nathan Fielder. In The Rehearsal Season 2, television’s most daring provocateur returns with another labyrinth of meticulously staged simulations, hilarious cringe, and existential absurdity.
The new season couldn’t be more timely, focusing on the Federal Aviation Administration, commercial aircraft safety, and the absurd theater of air travel — arriving amid real-world FAA staffing cuts and high-profile aviation disasters.
Early reviews promise brain-melting twists, with critics lobbing descriptors like “bonkers,” “gut-punch,” and “high-art mindfuck” — which, for anyone familiar with Fielder’s work, sounds like business as usual. Buckle up.
What to Read This Weekend
Bill Fox Is The Greatest Cult Hero Songwriter You Haven’t Heard Yet by Steven Hyden at Uproxx
I’ll leave you with an Easter egg hunt — the prize being a stellar new album accompanied by the legend of a mysterious artist.
Not much is known about Cleveland singer-songwriter Bill Fox. After fronting the cult garage-pop band The Mice and walking away from music in 1998, Fox resurfaced briefly in the 2000s — only to vanish again. Now, 13 years since his last release, he’s back with Resonance, a lo-fi folk-pop collection brimming with sharp melodies and wistful lyricism. It’s the kind of record that makes you wonder: Why isn’t this guy more known?
Steven Hyden attempts to get to the bottom of the enigma:
Bill Fox lyrics can be hard to find, along with any other information about him or his music. Of all the obscure singer-songwriters that have garnered even a modicum of acclaim in the past several decades, I am confident in declaring that Bill Fox is in the top one-percentile of mysterious enigmas. Though the mystery is mundane in nature. He’s not Syd Barrett locked up in an asylum or Leonard Cohen meditating at a monastery. It’s as if he tried to make everything about himself unexceptional other than his music. There’s his comically un-Googleable moniker, as well as his nondescript, every-dude appearance on his album covers. Even in the company of musical outsiders, Bill Fox doesn’t fit in.
If that really was the strategy, it worked: Bill Fox has never been written about by Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, or Spin, in his prime or otherwise. His reviews on AllMusic are light on biographical information and details on the records under discussion. With one major exception, you can’t really read or learn about Bill Fox anywhere. And, sure, you could say the same about most obscure songwriters. But not most great obscure songwriters, which Bill Fox is.
Stream Resonance below, and buy the vinyl for just $20.
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that hannah cohen is so so so good