Welcome to The Weekender, where I gather up the records, movies, shows, books, and assorted internet detours worth carrying into the next few days. Consider your weekend sorted.
I come bearing good news: Bandcamp Friday is back, which means Bandcamp waives its revenue share for the day and more of what you spend goes directly to the artists and labels. It started as a pandemic-era lifeline back in 2020 and, six years later, remains one of the easiest ways to turn “I love this record” into something more useful than another fraction of a streaming penny.
So I went digging. There are 10 Bandcamp Friday record-mendations in this issue, ranging from one of my favorite rock records of the year to blown-out shoegaze, woozy neo-soul, devastating folk music, and a few bands you should probably get familiar with now.
Also in this issue:
four horror classics I’ve never seen become our October movie project
festival jams from the couch all weekend long
my return to East of Eden after rereading Steinbeck’s brick
and our October Book Club pick goes deep into old-school cosmic horror
Thank you for supporting human curation. Now let’s spend some money on Bandcamp.
The Listening Room
10 Bandcamp Friday record-mendations for your weekend.
Greg Freeman - All Set The Bone
Stream: Bandcamp
Get Vinyl: Clear Pink
Genre: Indie Rock
The top spot each week is reserved for my favorite new Friday release, and this week that belongs to Greg Freeman’s All Set The Bone, an album that opens with a song title I went my entire life not knowing and have now seen three times in the last few months: Cahokia. That’s some Baader-Meinhof for my dumbass. I first saw it in Luke Kemp’s Goliath’s Curse, then again in Devin Thomas O’Shea’s The Veiled Prophet, which I’m currently reading, and now Freeman is yelling Cahokia at me through my headphones.
For anyone else late to Cahokia, it was a massive Native American city just across the Mississippi from present-day St. Louis. At its peak around 1050 to 1150, it held 10,000 to 20,000 people and was the largest pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico. Then it declined and was abandoned, leaving behind the Cahokia Mounds that still sit there today. Freeman uses that vanished civilization as a metaphor for ours: debt, consumption, political impotence, and the nagging question of why we assume our civilization will be any different. “If doomsday came and went for everybody else, I wonder,” he sings before ending the song by repeatedly shouting Cahokia! A cheerful way to start a record.
That tension runs through All Set The Bone. Freeman writes songs that sound huge and alive while the guy at the center of them is looking around wondering what the fuck is happening. I already thought last year’s Burnover was excellent, but this another level: the guitars hit harder, the songs are stickier, and some credit has to go to producer John Congleton, who’s helped make a few personal favorites of mine over the last decade, including Alvvays’ Antisocialites and Manchester Orchestra’s A Black Mile to the Surface. But Freeman is the main attraction, writing about the cost of surviving in the present moment.
Maybe reading two books about civilizations, collapse, and American history has me especially susceptible to an album like this right now. Or maybe Greg Freeman just made a fucking great rock record. Either way, All Set The Bone is the first thing you should listen to this weekend.
Trinity Ace - Learning to Be a Cowboy on the Horse That Broke My Arm
Stream: Bandcamp
Get Vinyl: N/A
Genre: Folk Rock
If you’re listening closely to All Set The Bone, you’ll hear some gorgeous low harmonies tucked underneath Greg Freeman’s creaky yelp, courtesy of San Francisco songwriter Trinity Ace. Freeman wanted someone who could “sing with me and make it sound good,” and Ace’s deeper range does exactly that.
I was already hip to Trinity Ace thanks to essayist Jacob Austin of the excellent publication Gnostic Pulp (and if you like Gnostic Pulp, I think you’ll dig this month’s Book Club pick at the bottom of this issue).
Her debut EP, Learning to Be a Cowboy on the Horse That Broke My Arm, came out back in May and is an EP mostly on a technicality. It runs 41 minutes, longer than plenty of albums now, and it flies by. Devastatingly beautiful stuff. Get in on the ground floor, buy stock now, whatever metaphor we’re using for “you should know this person’s name.”
Wishy – Nature’s Pill
Stream: Bandcamp
Get Vinyl: Painter’s Palette | Black Ice with White Cornetto | Devils Blush Pink
Genre: Power Pop
Indianapolis five-piece Wishy arrived on the scene fully formed with their 2024 debut Triple Seven, which earned the highly prestigious Waxy Award for Rookie of the Year.
Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites are absurdly good at writing anthems, and Nature’s Pill is packed with huge guitars, infectious choruses, and melodies engineered to get stuck in your head. “Lovesick,” “Sensational,” “Shift,” take your pick. I’m betting a lot more people are about to find out how good this band is.
And I’m just getting started: seven more Bandcamp Friday record-mendations, a mini-series I’m stoked on, four classic horror films I’m finally watching for the first time, and the October Book Club pick are waiting on the other side.
The Weekender drops every Friday exclusively for paid subscribers. Your $5 a month or $50 a year gets you one of these every week, plus the full archive and $10 off in the Gift Shop. More importantly, it gives me an excuse to spend an unreasonable amount of time digging for things worth recommending to you.