The Weekender #27: Long Weekend Edition
A supersized July 4th Weekender stuffed with new music and physical media recs.
You’ve got to love when the Fourth of July lands on a Friday and hands us a proper long weekend—and you’ve got to love even more when The Wax Museum blesses your inbox twice in the same week! If you missed the megapost earlier, I counted down my 33 favorite albums of 2025 so far. It’s a banger, if I do say so myself.
Today we got a jam-packed edition of The Weekender — a curated mix of must-listen records, must-watch gems, and must-read pieces to give your weekend a sensory upgrade. Let’s get into it.
What to Listen to This Weekend
Greet Death - Die in Love
Get Vinyl: Poltergeist | Ritual Black Marble
Stream: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp
This spot usually goes to my favorite Friday release, but since only Kesha had the guts to drop today, I’m rewinding a week to Die in Love, the latest from Flint’s Greet Death. Known for their brooding slowcore, they’ve pivoted to love songs—yes, love songs—inspired by none other than Paul McCartney. Maybe if Paul wrote “Maybe I’m Amazed” after a long Michigan winter… While the doomy, shoegaze haze is still here, the sadness is now shaded with some tenderness instead of nihilism. With a fuller lineup and a sound that’s brighter, dreamier, and more expansive, Greet Death proves that even the darkest bands can find new light. One of the most exciting acts in shoegaze today.
Superdrag - Regretfully Yours
Get Vinyl: Pink
Stream: Spotify | Apple Music
It’s a light day for reissues, but this one’s worth your attention: Regretfully Yours, the 1996 major-label debut from Superdrag, finally returns to wax—on colored vinyl, no less. Long out of print and pricey on the resale market, this cult classic blends ‘90s rawness with some of the sharpest power-pop of the era. From the opening riff to the seamless transition into “Phaser,” it’s wall-to-wall hooks, capped by the anthemic single “Sucked Out.” For a fun time capsule, watch them rip it on Conan, where Conan mock-extinguishes the smoking guitar at the end.
Too Slow to Disco Neo - The Sunset Manifesto Volume 2
Get Vinyl: Yellow and Oxblood
Stream: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp
I’m a big fan of the Too Slow To Disco universe, and The Sunset Manifesto Volume 2 is their latest compilation, out today. The series returns after a five-year pause with a globe-spanning collection of slow-motion disco, Balearic soul, and sun-drenched smoothness that feels tailor-made for golden hour. Think West Coast vibes and mellow electronic production to put you in a summer state of mind.
The Wax Museum Playlists — Best Songs of 2025 and The Cookout
We do a lot of playlists around here and here’s two I want to highlight. The Best Songs of 2025 (So Far) playlist just crossed 200 tracks and 500 followers—a running archive of my favorite songs this year. Filter by Date Added, save it to your profile and you’ll never miss a gem. (Spotify | Apple Music)
And if you’re heading outside this weekend, The Cookout playlist is your soundtrack: 33 classic and future classics built for long afternoons with cold drinks and good company. (Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube)
A quick intermission to say if you like what I do around here, consider a $5 donation. You’ll unlock full archive access and get a $10 coupon to our Gift Shop, which might be just the sign you needed to grab one of these sweet Weekender bags. Thanks for supporting human curation. 😊
What to Watch This Weekend
My July 4th tradition - Oliver Stone’s JFK
Get Blu-Ray
Vinyl collecting has become my gateway drug straight down the Blu-ray rabbit hole, and one of the first discs I hunted down was Oliver Stone’s JFK—a stone cold classic and my annual July 4th viewing ritual.
Few films feel more American: you vote for change, they kill the guy you chose, and six decades later we are no closer to the truth. Stone’s paranoid epic is a dizzying, three-hour middle finger to the military-industrial complex, and its prescience grows scarier each year in our age of nonstop conspiracy and creeping collapse.
My Holy Trinity of Criterion Music Docs
From now until the end of July, most Criterion Collection films are 50% off! Over 1700 titles, including many box sets and preorders (Barry Lyndon coming next week!) Walk into your local Barnes & Noble, or visit Amazon who’s price-matching the event. If you’re looking for recs, here’s three essential music documentaries that look and sound incredible.
Monterey Pop (1968)
Get Blu-ray
Criterion’s 50th anniversary edition of Monterey Pop lets you relive the 1967 festival that ignited the Summer of Love in pristine 4K restoration, capturing career-making sets by Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Simon and Garfunkel, the Who, Ravi Shankar, and more through D. A. Pennebaker’s fly-on-the-wall lens.
Alongside iconic moments like Pete Townshend’s guitar smash and Hendrix’s flaming Strat, the disc packs two extra hours of previously unseen performances—from Jefferson Airplane to the Grateful Dead—making it an essential document of a weekend that changed rock history.
Gimme Shelter (1970)
Gimme Blu-ray
Gimme Shelter is the 1970 doc of The Rolling Stones’ tour that ends in tragedy with the fatal stabbing by a Hells Angel. The tour was captured by the renown Maysles brothers of Grey Gardens and Salesman fame; Albert Maysles was also one of the cameraman at Monterey Pop.
While the music is expectedly great, the movie is filled with bad vibes. Here’s the last seven minutes, where Mick Jagger watches a replay of the death in horror, while Maysles behind him can’t help but smile knowing he’s struck filmmaking gold.
The Last Waltz (1978)
Get Blu-ray
Get Vinyl: Black
Filmed on Thanksgiving 1976 at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom, Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz captures The Band’s farewell in a single electrifying evening that feels like rock history unfolding in real time.
Backed by Allen Toussaint’s horn arrangements, The Band blaze through their catalog while a parade of musical giants—Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Dr. John, and more—join them onstage. Revisiting the film after the recent loss of guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson heightens its power: the performances glow with camaraderie, virtuosity, and a sense that an era is ending even as the music lives on.
What to Read This Weekend
Illinois Turns 20 by Chris Deville of Stereogum
Get Vinyl: Black
One of my favorite albums, Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois, turns 20 tomorrow. A sprawling concept record about the history and mythology of the Prairie State, Illinois blends lush orchestral pop with Stevens’ poetic storytelling filled with ghosts, presidents, aliens, and serial killers. at Stereogum just published a wonderful retrospective that captures the album’s emotional and cultural depth through a modern lens.
It’s not for nothing that on “Come On! Feel The Illinoise!” Stevens assigned backing vocalists Katrina Kerns and Shara Worden to wonder out loud, “Are you writing from the heart?” But if Illinois can often be nerdy and twee, there’s little doubt that he poured his whole self into these songs along with Mary Todd Lincoln, John Wayne Gacy, the wasps, the zombies, and Superman. His religious interests are woven throughout; the chorus of “Chicago” is practically evangelistic. “Come On! Feel The Illinoise!” — a high-concept multi-part anthem about the World’s Columbian Exposition, a visitation from the ghost of Carl Sandburg, and the cost of so-called progress — includes the line, “I cried myself to sleep last night.” Even humble short stories like “Casimir Pulaski Day” are startlingly personal, and reflecting on Gacy’s twisted crimes inevitably leads back to Sufjan grappling with his own sin. At the top of the tracklist, he invites the rest of us to reckon with our own complicity with references to the displacement of the indigenous population and the rampant capitalism that followed — though not until after the UFO touches down.
“Because America is a nation of immigrants, it seemed appropriate to begin with a supernatural visitation,” Stevens told Gapers Block. “My parents were certain, in the mid-’80s, that they were Star People. This would make me an alien offspring, so of course I’ve always been obsessed with outer space. Who isn’t? In general, the Illinois record gives an overarching survey of the history of civilization in that particular region, from the Cahokia Mounds to Native Americans to European immigration to the Industrial Revolution. I needed to step back and get a view from the moon, so to speak. I figured that an inquiry into the civilization of mankind requires the most objective vantage point, namely that of an alien. We are all aliens here.”
Hey, thanks for visiting The Wax Museum! If you enjoyed your stay, forward this to a friend who needs their weekend upgraded.
Leave a comment card on your way out and I’ll catch you next week!