Some new music and some dudes wearing new football jerseys.
Getting back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Sorry for the radio silence last week. It’s Pisces season, which means both Kevin and I were busy losing our shit. No writing was our gift to ourselves. Sorry if you were bored! This week is short and simple, dishing some thoughts on new music and the massive shuffling that has overtaken the NFL offseason.
It’s almost race day. I’ll tell you what I tell people I run with: have fun, stay healthy. — Emilio
New tunes (and some old).
MIKE & Tony Seltzer, Pinball
Two guys who have not missed in years now. Probably the most underrated rapper right now linking with the most underrated producer and it does not disappoint.
Tony Seltzer is probably the only person I can think of who has outshined MIKE on his own album but he does it from behind the boards. “100 Gecs” and “Pinball” are classic Tony, an incredible mixture of newer New York drill drum patterns with some muted sounds that almost venture into snap music. “Underground Kingz” goes hard. Tony and DylVinci on the same beat (“Reminiscing”) is also incredibly my shit. Might be the best work Tony has done since the tapes he did with WiFiGawd.
Caleb said for the longest time that MIKE and Future are the same rapper and I’m starting to think MIKE might be even better. Both rap with a combination of bravado and finesse that gives the simplest one-liners so much gravity. On Skurr, he starts by asking, “Why you always by the rim but you not scorin’?” Album standout “R&B” has one of my favorites from this year so far, “I had to do a homie bad, I ain’t proud of it.” MIKE and Future would 100% be homies.
Faye Webster, Underdressed at the Symphony
I can confidently say that Faye Webster has some of the most annoying fans to ever exist. They are the most insufferable #FFFFFF people you can think of that you have to run into whether at work or because of friends of friends. That said, she is making some of the best indie music of the past decade.
Underdressed is considerably weaker than her last two albums but it contains some of the best arrangements of her career. Love the commitment to slapping a long outro to the opener of her albums and “Thinking About You” does not disappoint in this aspect. The guitar and piano riffs here are gorgeous. It’s fun to see how she integrated the orchestral work of Car Therapy Sessions into her sound. “Lifetime” is more on-the-nose in this regard whereas “eBay Purchase History” or “But Not Kiss” are fun showcases for her to incorporate wider soundstages while still flexing her guitar riffs.
I’m really interested to see where Webster’s career goes from here. She has an incredibly strong cult fanbase and it seems like she’s considered a peer of the cooler (i.e. more famous, more streamed, etc.) femme white indie artists like Phoebe, Clairo, or Mitski despite having little to no musical similarities. She’s in her own league of sad white girl indie with blues-influenced, twangy guitar riffs, far removed from the Snail Mail, Soccer Mommy, Julia Jacklin crowd.
Vampire Weekend, Modern Vampires of the City
I’ve been revisiting the older stuff after the singles for Only God Was Above Us dropped and I feel like I never had a good run with this album. After running through all their albums, I think I may have been sleeping on Modern Vampires this whole time. “Unbelievers” and “Step” are higher up the list of the band’s bigger songs and that holds up — “Unbelievers” is one of the best rock singles of that early decade — but the whole album runs beautifully, really bringing together the dense lyricism and vocals of Ezra Koenig with their Ivy League sound.
It’s funny because I don’t think I ever fully embraced their sound post-Contra because I had a fondness for their early sound. It too was “Ivy League” in how academic it was, the product of talented men who studied music but that didn’t prevent me from enjoying it. (Easier way of processing this is it was incredibly White People Shit but to me, it happened to be good.) I had a certain nostalgia for how aimless the lyrics of the first two albums are that I couldn’t appreciate the grayness of Modern Vampires. “Step” in particular speaks to me. “I feel it in my bones, I feel it in my boooonesssss.”
You might have to bother me about this again and revisit this when I’m going back to saying my favorite Vampire Weekend song is “Holiday” or “Campus.” Maybe it’ll just become one of those things where it changes with the season.
🏈 Kevin’s favorite section. 🏈
I’ve been enjoying not having to rack my brain for football takes every week but this offseason has been bonkers. Madden IRL type beat. I feel like almost every team in the league has a new running back? It’s crazy!
Our first post-Super Bowl content on the blog is a fun list of lists. I have a list of ten moves, five that I liked and five I didn’t like. As simple as it sounds. I’m giving every move a thumbs up or thumbs down. This offseason has been a lot of fun and I am also trying to distract myself from the dumpster fire that is the Chargers, though the flames of that fire are slowly fading. Very slowly.
👍🏽 Brian Burns to the Giants
Good move, good player, but the logistics make this a great move. The Giants only had to give up a second and fifth round pick — the same two picks they received in the Leonard Williams trade — for one of the best pass rushers in the league outside of the elite tier and now have a guy who allows them to pressure the quarterback without relying on the blitz. (Giants offense was a top 3 in blitz usage under Wink Martindale.) Shane Bowen, fresh off of three years as the Titans defensive coordinator, can coordinate his defense mostly the same having swapped Jeffery Simmons, Teair Tart & Denico Autry for Burns, Dexter Lawrence & Kayvon Thibodeaux.
👍🏽 Texans defensive line upgrade
Speaking of Denico Autry, he’s now part of a revamped Houston pass rush. They added Autry, Foley Fatukasi, and Danielle Hunter on pretty decent deals. Similar vibes to Burns ending up in New York, I think upgrading their pass rush like this makes the rest of the defense better. I appreciate that they didn’t get headstrong with their cap space and addressed their defense rather than doing the sexy thing and trying to upgrade their already-great offense.
👎🏽 D’Andre Swift to the Bears
This move is kind of baffling. I like Swift but this is a wild overpay — 3 years, $24m with $14m guaranteed — and can’t help but feel like he’ll just turn out like Miles Sanders did for Carolina playing behind a line other than Philadelphia’s. There are better running backs out there who signed contracts worth several millions less — Zack Moss only got 2 years, $8m from Cincinnati — but Bears gonna Bear.
👎🏽 Josh Jacobs to the Packers
Similarly, this one also shocks me a bit. Aaron Jones actually finished the year really strong — #1 in success rate among all qualified running backs — and the Packers looked like they had their backcourt (of sorts) in Jordan Love and Jones. Now they’re paying Josh Jacobs $48m over 4 years coming off a season where he had the lowest total scrimmage yards and lowest yards per touch in his career. Jacobs is younger, I guess, but I don’t know if that makes the GM brain behind this move any better.
👍🏽 Kevin Byard to the Bears
When the Eagles traded for Byard last year, I thought he would be a good spark for a secondary that needed help. Instead, they used him in the box more than they should have and had him playing physical and he looked like total shit. I’m giving this a thumbs up in good faith assuming Chicago will let him cook and flex his ballhawk skills like we saw during his best years in Tennessee. (Seriously, what was that Eagles defense last year?)
👎🏽 Ravens re-signing Nelson Agholor
No offense to Agholor, just would have liked to see Baltimore put more effort into finding someone on the market or even drafting another receiver in one of the later rounds. I guess they like the continuity.
👍🏽 Zack Moss to the Bengals
At the risk of sounding biased, probably the best bargain in the running back market other than Gus Edwards to the Chargers. Amidst the Jonathan Taylor contract talks, Moss helped the Colts offense stay afloat post-Anthony Richardson injury and he actually finished the year with nearly identical stats to Taylor.
👎🏽 Gabe Davis to the Jaguars
I think Davis is kind of overrated by fans at large but objectively he’s a viable WR2/3. This is also a good, old-fashioned overpay. I guess to be fair, the Christian Kirk deal was questionable at first too but I don’t know if lightning will strike twice.
👍🏽 Carlton Davis III to the Lions
One thing I appreciate about the Lions front office is they don’t puff up their chests and show up to press conferences saying, “We’re good at our jobs and we have good players and we just need to work.” The amount of moves they’ve made to address their secondary is a clear indicator that they understand it’s an area of need. Look no further than one of the pillars of one of the league’s best secondaries of the past few years. Davis will turn 28 before the end of the year. Just enough time to turn around one of the worst secondaries in the league.
👎🏽 CJ Gardner-Johnson to the Eagles
You can’t fool me, pal. I know who you are.