Friday is the day on /r/music where the mods like to turn off the ability to post YouTube videos in the hopes of the subreddit actually becoming one for music discussion and not, say, where Reddit likes to dump it’s garbage fire taste in music. Ha. Ha ha. Well, they try, that’s the important thing.
If you tuned in yesterday, you’ll get the basic gist: I take a look at the top ten songs posted on /r/music in the last 24 hours and tell you how terrible Reddit’s taste in music is. In much rarer occasions, I’ll tell you where they get it right. Fridays will be fun because of the phenomenon mentioned above: it’s going to be a collection of those songs with the staying power to make it through the discussion posts.
Also, for the record, no I don’t plan on this being an everyday thing, but I would like it to be an everyday I can manage it thing.
Anyway…
June 2nd, 2016 (12:30 PM) to June 3rd, 2016 (12:30 PM)
#1: Mr. Bungle – “Air Conditioned Nightmare”
Reddit manages to kick it off with something weird and cool, courtesy of Mike “Weird and Cool” Patton. Goes through four different changes in tone and structure, each completely different than the one before. In anyone else’s hands, it would be a gigantic mess, but Mike Patton isn’t anyone else.
A
#2: Dinosaur Jr. – “Feel The Pain”
Sirius XMU’s favourite Dinosaur, Jr track is also Reddit’s most commonly posted DJ song. Thankfully it never gets old, although I’ve heard it three times today between the radio and this particular set. Two good tracks in a row, Reddit, maybe Fridays are your thing.
B+
#3: Beck – “Wow”
Ah, the new Beck track. The one that starts off like a generic hip hop beat, or maybe something like what Beyonce might have rejected for her self-titled 2013 album. Then Beck manages to bull through it in a display of sheer Beck-ness. Still, it feels a little empty and it’s not until 2/3 of the way through that Beck lets his freak flag fly in even a limited fashion. Honestly it feels a little like Beck chasing a hit and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Holding out opinions for the album, we’ll see.
B
#4: The Cult – “Love Removal Machine”
The Cult were an Eighties goth band that scored some hits when they decided to be an AC/DC tribute band instead. My mom knew the lead singer in high school at one point, to no one’s surprise he was a dick. Trust Reddit to go ga-ga for generic hard rock because “it has guitars”.
C
#5: A Day To Remember – “Bad Vibrations”
Why do metalcore bands have such fucking awful band names? Why do metalcore bands all recycle the same damn low-end chugging? Why do metalcore bands mistake sung choruses for depth? Why do metalcore bands insist on breakdowns that are cheesier than a Wisconsin hamburger?
Anyway, you can always tell when the pre-teens are posting, because there will be metalcore.
F
#6: The Monkees – “Birth Of An Accidental Hipster”
Okay, show of hands. Who was crying out for a Monkees comeback? Anyone? Put your hand down, dad, Jesus Christ. Wait, this is actually sort of good. I…I kind of like this. Noel Gallagher co-wrote it? I suppose that explains some things.
B+
#7: Portugal. The Man – “Plastic Soldiers”
Who gave the indie kids access to the internet? They managed to find a Portugal. The Man track that isn’t all that great. It’s about as middling a work as you can find from a middling also-ran indie act. You thought you were doing something good, but instead you fucked it all up. Good work, Reddit.
C+
#8: Soundgarden – “Rusty Cage”
The rest of the post title literally reads: “I know this has been posted before, but not for months & I think it’s well worth posting again.” Oh, well, I guess that makes sense except wait IT WAS LITERALLY POSTED YESTERDAY AS THE JOHNNY CASH COVER.
Who are you trying to fool, anyway? We all know where the inspiration to post this came from.
Decent tune though.
B
#9: Link Wray – “Rumble”
Link Wray poked a hole in his speaker cone with a pencil and invented hard rock single-handed. That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. Reddit of course knows it from its multiple pop cultural appearances, including Tarantino. At least it’s better than just posting the songs from Guitar Hero .
B+
#10: Joywave – “Nice House”
Lyrics are the only really halfway interesting part of this song, the rest is a really generic and straightforward electro-pop song, like what Hot Chip would write if they got really, really boring all of a sudden. The outro is rather nice though.
And now for a new sequence, brought to you by the…ahem…”tastemakers” of Reddit’s infamously awful /r/music community.
It’s often said that Reddit has shitty taste in music. Granted it’s usually 4chan’s /mu/ community saying that, but let’s be serious here. Whether it’s the constant love of Queen and Foo Fighters that makes me roll my eyes or the circlejerking over how superior they are because of their love of Tool, /r/music is a bottomfeeder in terms of music communities.
Or is it? I’ve decided to start an ongoing series where I listen to the top ten songs posted to /r/music in a 24 hour period and assign them completely subjective ratings based on my own insane whims and thought processes. Then we’ll see if /r/music’s taste actually sucks as badly as I’ve always thought.
Without further ado, I give to you:
June 1st, 2016 (12:30 PM) to June 2nd, 2016 (12:30 PM)
#1: Rancid – “Ruby Soho”
The most poppy and milquetoast of all of the Clash-rip-off’s poppy and milquetoast songs. /r/music loves punk rock, but only if it’s from Le Nineties and it’s been beaten to death on the radio since then.
D+
#2: The Avalanches – “Frankie Sinatra”
The first time since 2001 that Australian sample-stackers The Avalanches release new music AND it’s fucking stellar? You win this time Reddit. You win this time.
A+
#3: Dethklok – “I Ejaculate Fire”
I’d say something snarky about how the only way metal gets to the top of Reddit is in cartoon form but I can’t hate on Dethklok. This isn’t completely dildos.
B+
#4: Johnny Cash – “Rusty Cage”
The best that can be said of this is that at least Reddit took a break from jerking off over “Hurt”. At least with “Rusty Cage” I don’t have to read about how “REZNOR TOTALLY SAID THAT SONG BELONGED TO JOHNNY CASH NOW BECAUSE THE COVER WAS SO MUCH BETTER!!1!11!”. In fact, one of the top comments is the exact opposite. Thank you, Jesus.
C+
#5: The Distillers – “The Young Crazed Peeling”
Man it has been a long time since I thought of Brody and The Distillers. It still sounds like Courtney Love fronting Rancid to me, and as the years have gone by that prospect appeals to me exponentially less. Also, those fucking spikes. Jesus Brody, how much money did you shell out to get that look down just right? How punk rock of you.
C-
#6: Huey Lewis And The News – “If This Is It”
Jesus Christ Reddit, Bret Easton Ellis was being ironic. What the hell is wrong with you?
F
#7: Lagwagon – “Island Of Shame”
Apparently it’s awful pop punk day on Reddit. Lagwagon was that band that was there for you if Pennywise was too edgy for you. Completely indistinguishable from anything else on Epitaph in the mid-90s.
D
#8: Grand Funk Railroad – “I’m Your Captain (Closer To Home)”
GFR got a lot of hate back in the day from critics because, well, they’re not really that good on average. Still, they were capable of moments of brilliance, and “I’m Your Captain” is one of those. For more on Grand Funk Railroad, consult your local library.
A-
#9: Men At Work – “Down Under”
Goofy Eighties pop rock from the Gowan of Australia. I often wonder who posts these sorts of songs. Kids nostalgic for a time they never had to live through? Adults putting on rose-coloured nostalgia glasses? Mouthbreathers who listen to bland Mix FM stations at work? At least in dying you don’t have to deal with New Wave for a second time.
C-
#10: The Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu (aka The KLF) – “It’s Grim Up North”
Reddit’s sizeable school shooter community comes through in the clutch.
Blank Realm are an Australian band that define the term “middle-tier”. They are a bellwether of what people are talking about when they’re talking about mainstream indie – arpeggiated near-ballads indebted to the Stone Roses broken up with the occasional more uptempo number. They’ve never been anything particularly special, and Illegals In Heaven doubles down on this middle-of-the-road oblivion. The album kicks off in an exciting enough manner with “No Views”, a garaged-up number that kicks along in a more galvanizing fashion than they’ve ever really managed before. Unfortunately, it falls apart quickly after with songs that lounge and snooze rather than rally; “Costume Drama” and “Palace of Love” make an attempt at getting the party started again but it’s largely an abortive effort. Illegals In Heaven tries to trade in on mid-tempo balladry to fill out its scant ideas, and tellingly said ballads are nowhere near the league of the uptempo pieces.
“Too Late Now”, the final track, exemplifies the real problems with this album: it’s slavish Stone Roses worship with a ham-fisted attempt at being edgier with the vocal, and it only half-works. It passes the time well enough, but nothing sticks around after the fact, like a dream that gets scattered and lost upon waking.
Way way back in the 1980s – 1990, actually, but who’s keeping score? – indie shapeshifters Yo La Tengo released an album called Fakebook which was, as the name implies, a collection of covers and old Yo La Tengo songs that were reworked to fit alongside them. It was a high point in the band’s early catalog, and twenty-five years later they’ve returned to the concept for another go-around. Stuff Like That There reproduces the structure, putting covers alongside reworkings of old songs. Out of the nine featured covers, the only two that are likely to be named by the general populace is Hank William’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and The Cure’s “Friday I’m In Love”. This time around, however, the vibe is considerably laid back, featuring gentle, acoustic versions that are suited for playing on the porch, or around a campfire under a stretched-out spray of stars. Everything here is very quiet but suffused with deep meaning courtesy of Georgia Hubley’s warm, expressive voice; like Low, they’re able to get a lot out of relatively little on Stuff Like That There. The album also marks the return of guitarist Dave Schramm, who was a fixture in early Yo La Tengo and played on Fakebook. Schramm takes over the leads, leaving longtime guitarist Ira Kaplan to take on a strictly rhythm role, and the effect is pronounced. Typically, a Yo La Tengo album would feature odd, angular guitar work courtesy of Kaplan; Schramm is a much gentler, more Jerry Garcia-influenced guitarist, and the leads he glides on here are much more suited to the material.
If you ever wanted a mostly-covers Yo La Tengo album where everything sounds like a bunch of people sitting around a campfire approximating the Dead, then Stuff Like That There is going to be right where you want it to be. Otherwise it’s just another addition into the lengthy Yo La Tengo catalog, and not a particularly essential one at that.
Once upon a time I had high hopes for Colleen Green. When she put out her first super lo-fi tracks, back when Milo Goes To Compton was a thing, I thought she was the coolest person in indie rock. She was living proof that all you needed was a guitar, a drum machine, and a bag of weed, and you too could make emotionally connecting pop music. It was freeing in a way that made me instantly fall in love. Then her “actual” debut, Sock It To Me, came out and it fell kind of flat. Sure, the quirks that made up her songwriting style were there, but everything sounded too professional, as though some hidebound engineer had been sitting in the studio saying “OK Ms. Green, that’s cool and all, but we need these to sound like actual songs.” I Want To Grow Up is kind of like that as well, but it’s a bit better in that she seems to have grown used to having to write actual songs that normal people can listen to and not be weirded out by. This makes for some great moments – the two-parter “Things That Are Bad For Me” being the best – but the overall effect is of a jaded Los Angelite channeling Red Album era Weezer. In other words, a decent listen but pretty ho-hum for all of that.
Just the other day I was saying, “you know what there isn’t enough of in modern music? Inoffensive, vaguely charming indie rock bands who play electric guitars like they’re folk rockers and play with twee boy-girl harmonies in a laid-back, cabin-in-the-woods sort of way”. Then I came down.
It’s not like Twerps are actively offensive; if they tried a little more, they might be, but the biggest problem is that they just don’t try hard enough to be anything. Three chords, some harmonies, and the blandest lyrics this side of Mumford and Sons. This is just the Feelies, watered down through the ages and rendered toothless, sort of like how Melvins got diluted into Theory of a Deadman at one point. It’s all very fresh-faced and earnest, like they had a residency in Stars Hollow and were playing the bandshell every night. Look for them to pick up banjos and make the transition to modern rock format FM radio soon.
Belle And Sebastian – Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance
★★★☆
19 years, nine albums, and a problem: a venerable indie band that was in danger of falling into self-parody. While albums like If You’re Feeling Sinister and The Boy With The Arab Strap set the standard for indie pop in the 1990s, by 2010’s Belle And Sebastian Write About Love it seemed like they were simply putting in work. Solid work, it must be said, but still, it seemed as though Belle And Sebastian were a job more than a band. Five years between then and now, the band has reinvented itself radically. There is a much bigger focus on rhythm than there ever was on previous albums, to the point where tracks like “The Party Line”, “Enter Sylvia Plath”, and “Play For Today” fuse their particular songwriting style with indie-disco to make what for all intents and purposes is great dance music. In fact there are really only a couple of songs – most notably the sweet, string-laden “The Cat With The Cream” – that harken back to previous Belle And Sebastian records. It’s a different kind of album that still manages to hold its own in the band’s discography, a revolution in their sound, a Belle And Sebastian reboot. It works in exactly the same way that Tegan and Sara’s rather similar reboot didn’t; it layers on a slicker, dancier, more fun kind of sound, but it doesn’t sacrifice an iota of their integrity to do so.
The last major outing for Noah Lennox – Animal Collective’s Centipede Hz – was a rather disappointing album. The stakes, therefore, were pretty high for this new Panda Bear album. Would Mr. Lennox find his footing again, or would it turn out to be another case of diminishing returns from a once-hot artist who managed to change the rules for a brief, shining period in the Oughts? Spoiler alert: it’s the former.
Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper returns to the same sort of sounds that made Person Pitch such a delight. Unlike his last Panda Bear album, 2011’s Tomboy, it eschews a stripped-down focus on guitars and drums and returns to the sampler and the synthesizer. It’s electronic pop with a severely experimental bent, like Caribou took a lot of acid and played Pet Sounds with abandon. That last bit is maybe a bit more of a red herring this time around; while Lennox’s vocals on Person Pitch were strongly influenced by the Beach Boys, his work over the last eight years has made those sounds his own, and so now they sound less like the Beach Boys, and more like Panda Bear in its own right. The songs don’t cloak themselves in studio weirdness like on Centipede Hz, where all of Animal Collective’s tricks served to distract rather than enthrall. Instead, they get right to the point and stay there, allowing the weirdness to enhance your quality of life. There’s a bouyancy on these songs that cannot be denied, a quality that’s easy to spot on the singles “Mr. Noah” and “Latin Boys” but is also present on the slower, sadder tracks “Tropic of Cancer” and “Lonely Wanderer”. They’re cloudy songs with hope, and while they break up the joyousness a bit, the overall effect of the album leaves you feeling cleaner and happier than you were when you went into it.
The National are a band that filter the mischances of love through a thick layer of whiskey in an upscale Soho bar. Transplanted from Cincinnati at the end of the 1990s, the band members came to New York mostly to chase the dot-com boom that was still a viable way to make good money as a designer. In between their regular jobs, they had regular lives filled with regular human relationships – meaning there was light and darkness in equal measures, love and infidelity, lust and long walks on the arc-sodium-glittered city streets late at night. Even after they found enough success to quit their jobs and pursue their music full-time, this basic conceit never changed. They are a band obsessed with the deep problems of stable people: growing old, losing the wild days of youth, finding and losing love, getting too drunk too often and wondering where your life is headed. This is the same territory mined by Tom Waits, but the National play it straight, avoiding the gutter and crafting lush, graceful creations instead of pushing the envelope. They’re also a perfect example of a band’s struggles along the way to success. When they put out their first album, way back at the end of the dot-com bubble, they thought that it was their ticket to stardom. When they began playing strings of shows to audiences that ranged from little to none, they realized that success in music, especially in the age of p2p software and the share-everything culture of the internet, is a product of luck, talent, and heaps of hard work. They possessed all three in spades; by the time Trouble Will Find Me was released in 2013, debuted in the top five of the Billboard 200 was old hat. The path between, however, is one of the greatest success stories in modern indie rock.
THE NATIONAL (2001)
★★★
After two years of individually playing free shows at the Luna Lounge on the Lower East Side, The National put together a debut album that was partially indebted to the country-tinged pop of Wilco and the Jayhawks, but also very much a beacon for where the band would go throughout the first decade of the 21st Century. Matt Berninger sang like an on-tune Tom Waits, spinning sodden tales of love and lust through the whiskey-soaked lens of reclaimed Americana. Some at the time dismissed them derisvely as being a bar band; what they should have recognized was that the band simply played songs that seemed most at home in the hopeless crush of a neighbourhood bar. Songs like “Cold Girl Fever” and “American Mary” are unmistakably The National; “29 Years” was reused later on Boxer‘s “Slow Show”. Before they made the album they’d never played live together as a unit; they told Drowned In Sound that the album was the sound of them making introductions to each other. Afterwards they went out on tour with stars in their eyes; thinking that they’d earned the right to play out their dreams on tour, they played to very small crowds throughout the U.S., including one show in Orange County that was attended by precisely no one but the venue’s staff.
SAD SONGS FOR DIRTY LOVERS (2003)
★★★☆
Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers would be the first band with multi-instrumentalist Bryce Dessner and producer Peter Katis, and would have the overall bones of the sound that they would perfect on their subsequent four LPs. After the Wilco-studded bar-country of their debut, the band expanded their horizons into what they termed “a pastiche of…different genres”. Their second album remains their most experimental, featuring codas that go on for whole fifths of songs, synth moments, and some rather intense hard rock moments from Matt Berninger, who would never after go as hard as he did on “Slipping Husband” or “Available”. While they stuck primarily to the country-rock forms of their first album, indie folkists Red House Painters and then-critical darlings The Shins are other apparent influences throughout. Lyrically the album is exactly as advertised on the tin: Berninger spins sad stories of infidelity and relationship holding patterns. “Slipping Husband” relates a man getting lost in himself, dreaming of an important life he feels he should have had while his wife gets lonely and finds comfort outside their marriage. “Murder Me Rachael” is an exercise in self-castigation (or maybe admittance of violence) after seeing a lover with someone else. “Available” wakes up the morning after and wonders if it’s been used. “Trophy Wife” and “Cardinal Eyes” share a similar sentiment, about sleeping with the wild wives of unknown men. Unlike later albums, however, when the band slows down here they tend to wander off into boredom, especially on “90-Mile Water Wall”, “Thirsty”, and “Patterns of Fairytales”. Still, there was enough strong tracks on the album to make the critics sit up and take notice; Uncut and the Chicago Tribune would place it in their year-end lists and Hipster Bible Pitchfork reviewed it favourably. More importantly, people were turning out to shows, particularly in France where the band was picking up a following.
CHERRY TREE (EP) (2004)
★★★
Cherry Tree is the point the band credits as their turning point, the moment where their sound as The National came together. Certainly the first three songs – “Wasp Nest”, “All Dolled-Up In Straps”, and “All The Wine” (which would be recast on Alligator) are all top-notch indications of the glory that would be due the band by the next year. “Cherry Tree” and “About Today” both outlast their welcome by a wide margin, however, and “Reasonable Man (I Don’t Mind)” gets over that only by liberal usage of violinist Padma Newsome. The live version of “Murder Me Rachael” is nice enough but largely unessential. While the actual EP is so-so, it did get them a spot on tour with The Walkmen, who were riding on the success of “The Rat”; the tour would also see them signed to UK tastemakers Beggars Banquet, who would release their breakthrough follow-up.
ALLIGATOR (2005)
★★★★
The band’s first album for Beggars Banquet is their breakthrough, and it’s a major leap forward for them. It’s on Alligator that you can hear The National, as they were meant to be: slow-burning songs that verge on being hymns at times, drum-driven, mournful tracks about doomed relationships, exhausting materialism, and the propulsive power of love. Matt Berninger’s lyrics fall flat here and there, but they still display a certain sort of power, the kind of feeling you get on the city streets after the bars let out and you realize that you’ve grown tired of the hard pavement and the harder hearts of the yearning couples that surround you. They are very much lonely songs; “Well, whatever you do, listen, you better wait for me / No, I wouldn’t go out alone into America” he sings on “Karen”, before collapsing and saying “Karen, put me in a chair, fuck me and make me a drink, I’ve lost direction and I’m past my peak”. “Val Jester” warns that “you should have looked after her better / you should have looked after her more / you should have locked the door”, while he murmurs “Break my arms around the one I love and be forgiven by the time my lover comes” on “Daughters of the Soho Riots”. “Abel” and “Mr. November” are the most uptempo tracks on the album; “Abel” questions its writer’s sanity, while “Mr. November” was originally written for John Kerry and became an anthem for Barack Obama’s initial 2008 Presidential run. A lot of the anxiety and loneliness on the album stems from the band’s changing fortunes; they quit their jobs to focus on writing, recording, and touring behind the album, and the free-fall that they found themselves in drove them into a sort of paranoid state. By the time the next album would arrive, that anxiety would pay off huge dividends.
BOXER (2007)
★★★★★
Boxer is where it all comes together – this is The National, and it’s the sound they would spend the subsequent two albums perfecting. To be truthful, their sound arrives perfect to begin with; there isn’t a mediocre song on here, and more than a few people have suggested that it is at the very least among the best albums of the 2000s and quite possibly among the greatest albums ever released. The band’s newfound mastery of it’s particularly soaring form of indie rock is evident from the beginning: the dual-time-signature piano measure that opens “Fake Empire” leads slowly into an orgasmic drum sequence and a post-coital coda whose swirling instrumentation can be best described as utopian. “Mistaken For Strangers” was the band’s strongest uptempo number to date, and was used in any number of pop-cultural moments (including an advertising campaign for the UK version of Skins). The string arrangments found throughout (especially at the end of “Brainy” and “Squalor Victoria”) add a baroque nature to the songs that counterbalances the mournful baritone Berninger brings to his usual tales of fading or faded love. There’s a sense that youth is slipping away through the album. “Guest Room” is my favourite for this: “We miss being ruffians, going wild and bright / In the corners of front yards, getting in and out of cars / We miss being deviants”. “Green Gloves” has another moment like this: “Falling out of touch with all my / friends are somewhere getting wasted / Hope they’re staying glued together / I have arms for them”. Sufjan Stevens shows up in two places – “Racing Like A Pro” and one of the album’s lesser-referenced highlights, “Ada”. One thing that’s always stood out to me about Boxer – and to a somewhat lesser extent about their two following albums – is how much of a drummer’s record this is. The drums are light and quick, but they hit hard and carry more of the songs than is typical with indie rock. They form a snappy undercurrent that sets the album – and the band – apart from their contemporaries just as much as Berninger’s baritone does.
Boxer is also my wife’s favourite album, full disclosure.
THE VIRGINIA EP (2008)
★★★☆
An odds-n-sods collection comprised of B-sides, demos, and live tracks, The Virginia EP is better than it really has a right to be. The Boxer sessions were obviously a hotbed of great songs, since “You’ve Done It Again, Virginia”, “Santa Clara”, “Blank Slate”, and “Without Permission” are all winners. The demos are decent, if rather lo-fi and half-finished, but the live tracks are another real strength of this EP. The Daytrotter Session of “Lucky You” adds some reverb to the original arrangement that breathes new life into it and reminds people who got on circa Boxer that The National existed well before Alligator. The cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Mansion On The Hill” seems tailor-made for the band as well, and they acquit themselves well in their live version of it. Most mop-up compilations are unessential and The Virginia EP is no different, but it’s a trifle better than most.
HIGH VIOLET (2010)
★★★★★
From Beggars Banquet to Beggars Group, courtesy of new label 4AD, and from critical acclaim to commercial success: the backstory of High Violet is the story of a band in motion. Boxer capitalized on the curiosity brought about by Alligator to debut on Billboard at #68. High Violet had the pure goodwill generated by Boxer to jump off of, and it debuted at #3. The album would create a huge amount of critical praise as well, and with good reason. High Violet is easily the equal of Boxer, if not the superior album. Point to a less-than-stellar song here – you can’t, because there isn’t one. Every song has hooks that bite in deep and don’t let go, most of them driven by the snippets of Berninger’s lyrics that take up residence inside of your head. “Sorrow found me when I was young, sorrow waited, sorrow won” he sings on the aptly named “Sorrow”, and it sounds as though you’re listening to a contemporary short story writer sketch out another classic tale of urban ennui. This is the closest comparison point to the songs on High Violet – they are tales of modern life in the city when you’re sort of well-off and chasing the kind of life you think you’re supposed to have. They’re songs about stable people, and the unstable feelings they have in the pursuit of that stability. “Livin’ and dyin’ in New York it means nothing to me,” Berninger sings on “Lemonworld”, “I gave my heart to the Army/The only sentimental thing I could think of/With cousins and cousins somewhere overseas/But it’ll take a better war to kill a college man like me”. Elsewhere, he admits to being afraid of everyone and not having the drugs to sort it out, gets obstinante about being led into the flood, and gets carried back to Ohio on a swarm of bees. There’s a richness of detail that outdoes everything the band accomplished before, and by the end of “Vanderlye Crybaby Geeks” there’s a sense that you’ve just listened to an album people will still be putting on and studying thirty years hence.
TROUBLE WILL FIND ME (2013)
★★★★☆
A lot of bands will take success as a sign to change up the way they do things; the fabled Breakthrough Album is typically the moment where everything switches gears, for better or for worse. For The National, though, the mainstream breakthrough of High Violet was a sign to double down on their sound. Trouble Will Find Me is a refinement of the sound that they’ve been developing in earnest since Boxer, and to a lesser extent since their 2001 debut. These are lush songs, simple on the surface because of the space that Berninger’s baritone takes up but possessed of a dizzying array of subtle details. Some of these are instrumental – the woodwinds, the strings, the carefully crafted tone of the piano. Some are the impressive guests – Sufjan Stevens shows up of course, but contemporary indie darlings St. Vincent, Sharon Van Etten, and Richard Reed Perry of Arcade Fire. The first five songs on the album are as unimpeachable as anything on either Boxer or High Violet. Opener “I Should Live In Salt” harkens back to Berninger’s days of self-castigation (this time with his brother Tom in mind, in a preview of the 2013 documentary Mistaken For Strangers), but it glides by on such a slowly soaring wave that it’s hard to feel bad for him. Lead single “Sea of Love” is as driving a number as they’ve ever written, and it constrasts nicely against the more relaxed pace of “Demons” and “Don’t Swallow The Cap”. “I Need My Girl” and “Pink Rabbits” are both modern classics that bolster the last half of the album against some moments that drag a bit – mostly on “Heavenfaced”, “Slipped”, and “Hard To Find”. Aside from that, this is a remarkably consistent album that streamlines the band’s sound. On previous albums the band spent much of the recording sessions arguing; these sessions were spearheaded by the Dessner brothers and were much more relaxed than usual. Like its predecessor, Trouble Will Find Me debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200, and met with widespread critical acclaim. In the hands of a less talented band, an album like this would have engendered scorn and derision, with talk of diminishing returns and a dearth of creativity. With The National, though, there is a sense that they’ve struck a rich vein of inspiration and are content to mine it for as long as is necessary. Still, though, rumour has it that the band is changing up their songwriting process the next time around, so the next National album could be quite different.
The instant USA Today bestseller by Chuck Tingle about what it takes to succeed in a world that wants you dead.
“Brilliantly bloody, wildly fun, and extremely scary, Bury Your Gays brings a sledgehammer down on tired tropes and makes a masterpiece of their guts.”―Rachel Harrison, national bestselling author of Black Sheep
Misha knows that chasing success in Hollywood can be hell.
But finally, after years of trying to make it, his big moment is here: an Oscar nomination. And the executives at the studio for his long-running streaming series know just the thing to kick his career to the next level: kill off the gay characters, “for the algorithm,” in the upcoming season finale.
Misha refuses, but he soon realizes that he’s just put a target on his back. And what’s worse, monsters from his horror movie days are stalking him and his friends through the hills above Los Angeles.
Haunted by his past, Misha must risk his entire future―before the horrors from the silver screen find a way to bury him for good.
One of the Best Horror Books of 2024 by Esquire!
One of the Best Books of Summer 2024 by Paste, HuffPost, Esquire, and Publishers Weekly!
Forgotten Sisters
Forgotten Sisters
Cynthia Pelayo (Thomas & Mercer)
A city’s haunted history and fairy-tale horrors converge for two women in an addictive novel of psychological suspense by a multiple Bram Stoker Award–nominated author.
Sisters Anna and Jennie live in a historic bungalow on the Chicago River. They’re tethered to a disquieting past, and with nowhere else to go, nothing can part them from their family home. Not the maddening creaks and disembodied voices that rattle the old walls. Not the inexplicable drownings in the area, or the increasing number of bodies that float by Anna’s window.
To stave off loneliness, Anna has a podcast, spinning ghostly tales of Chicago’s tragic history. But when Anna captures the attention of an ardent male listener, she awakens to the possibilities of a world outside.
As their relationship grows, so do Jennie’s fears. More and more people are going missing in the river. And then two detectives come calling.
They’re looking for a link between the mysteries of the river and what’s housed on the bank. Even Anna and Jennie don’t understand how dreadful it is―and still can be―when the truth about their unsettled lives begins to surface.
The instant USA Today bestseller from CJ Leede, author of Maeve Fly―a scorching and sweeping new novel about the end of the world as we know it.
One of Esquire and Vulture’s Best Horror Books of 2024 • A GoodReads and Publishers Weekly Editors’ Pick • An Indie Next Pick!
“A blistering, feverish ride through a uniquely American apocalypse.”―Chuck Wendig, New York Times bestselling author
A virus is spreading across America, transforming the infected and making them feral with lust.
Sophie, a good Catholic girl, must traverse the hellscape of the midwest to try to find her family while the world around her burns. Along the way she discovers there are far worse fates than dying a virgin…
“I’ve loved Maggie Thrash’s work for years, and Rainbow Black is going to set so many new hearts aflame—murder, intrigue, queer love, dark humor AND satanic panic? Welcome to the Maggie Thrash Fan Club, world!”—Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow
For readers of Donna Tartt and Ottessa Moshfegh comes a brilliant, deliriously entertaining novel from the acclaimed author of Honor Girl. Rainbow Black is part murder mystery, part gay international fugitive love story—set against the ’90s Satanic Panic and spanning 20 years in the life of a young woman pulled into its undertow.
Lacey Bond is a 13-year-old girl in New Hampshire growing up in the tranquility of her hippie parents’ rural daycare center.
Then the Satanic Panic hits. It’s the summer of 1990 when Lacey ’s parents are handcuffed, flung into the county jail, and faced with a torrent of jaw-dropping accusations as part of a mass hysteria sweeping the nation. When a horrific murder brings Lacey to the breaking point, she makes a ruthless choice that will haunt her for decades.
As an adult, Lacey mimes a normal life as the law clerk of an illustrious judge. She has a beautiful girlfriend, a measure of security, and the world has mostly forgotten about her. But after a tiny misstep spirals into an uncontrolled legal disaster, the hysteria threatens to begin all over again.
Rainbow Black is an addictive, searing, high-octane triumph, an imaginative tour de force about one woman’s tireless desire to be free.
Twenty four years ago, Olive and Stacia went into the woods. Only Olive returned, with no memory of what happened. Now, Olive’s father has vanished, leaving behind research which indicates that he has found out what lives in the woods.
It wakes up every twelve years, taking only children. It has been doing so for at least two hundred years. And it is waking again.
Forced to return to her hometown, Olive finds her memories returning.
What she remembers from the days leading up to Stacia’s disappearance is magical, almost impossible to believe, but she knows that she must return to the woods–to face what lurks there, to save her father, and to find out what happened to Stacia.
“Beautiful, poetic, and gutting. Hollow Girls is a captivating novel that will lure you deep into the woods where magic and darkness entwine. There is so much heart to this story of friendship and blood where oaths and secrets continue to unravel until the very last page. Bring an offering to the Fae, and come along on this memorable journey.”
–Sara Tantlinger, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Devil’s Dreamland.
Winnie Campbell is sixteen and a burgeoning serial killer. Her father blames her for her mother’s death, dotes on her little sister, and executes increasingly cruel punishments meant to humiliate Winnie. As the punishments morph into torture, she begins fantasizing about regaining some semblance of power, eventually working through her rage by killing small animals.
When her violent games escalate and she accidentally kills an infant while babysitting, Winnie gets a taste of a power she doesn’t want to let go of. Her obsession with killing grows, and so does her fascination for Leigh, a girl that reminds her of her younger self.
Winnie wants to kill. She wants to die. She wants to be someone other than herself. And killing Leigh, a symbolic suicide, could be the key to her metamorphosis.
“A shocking and utterly harrowing examination of the creation of a murderer. Although Crushing Snails excels in many areas, this novel is perhaps most skillful at effectively illustrating the very human compulsion for violence and depravity. Murray’s excellent novel showcases the very human possibility of carnage—the horrifying prospect of brutality—when curiosity is sated and when we finally surrender to our most feral desires.”—Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
“Masterfully executed and chilling to the core, Crushing Snails is a terrifying look into the darkest depths of the human mind and the ways in which monsters are formed. With the intensity level set to high, Murray draws you into complicity as you witness one girl’s spiral into obsession and depravity, culminating in a horrifying conclusion you’ll never forget.”—Kelsea Yu, Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of Bound Feet
“A nightmare of power and control, or perhaps even something more wayward. Crushing Snails is provocative and demanding, spiraling and unapologetic. Emma Murray is an exciting emerging voice in horror challenging what is normal and what is safe.”—Cynthia Pelayo, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Crime Scene
“Sick, twisted, and compulsively readable—Emma E. Murray’s Crushing Snails is a coming-of-age story that goes to dark and darker places, leaving me constantly hanging between two modes of thought: one-more-chapter and holy-fucking-shit.”—Carson Winter, author of The Psychographist
A woman checks herself into an insane asylum to solve the mystery of her sister’s murder, only to lose her memory and maybe her mind.
From the subversive voice behind The Phlebotomist comes a story that combines the uncanny atmosphere of Don’t Worry Darling with the narrative twists of The Last House on Needless Street
What would guilt make you do?
Hadleigh Keene died on the road leading away from Hollyhock Asylum. The reasons are unknown. Her sister Morgan blames herself. A year later with the case still unsolved, Morgan creates a false identity, that of a troubled housewife named Charlotte Turner, and goes inside.
Morgan quickly discovers that Hollyhock is… not right. She is shaken by the hospital’s peculiar routines and is soon beset by strange episodes. All the while, the persona of Charlotte takes on a life of its own, becoming stronger with each passing day. As her identity begins unraveling, Morgan finds herself tracing Hadleigh’s footsteps and peering into the places they lead.
The terrifying reality of The Redemption of Morgan Bright unfolds over the course of chapters told from the points of view of both Charlotte and Morgan, police interviews, and text messages.
Once there were four Lasco siblings banded together against a world that failed to protect them. But on a hellish night that marked the end of their childhood, eldest brother Shawn died violently after being dragged behind closed doors. Though the official finding was accidental death, Nathan Lasco knows better, and has never forgiven their mother, Stella.
Now two decades later, Stella promises to finally reveal the truth of what happened on The Day of the Door. Accompanied by a paranormal investigative team, the Lasco family comes together one final time, but no one is prepared for the revelations waiting for them on the third floor.
The final installment in the most lauded trilogy in the history of horror novels picks up four years after Don’t Fear the Reaper as Jade returns to Proofrock, Idaho, to build a life after the years of sacrifice—only to find the Lake Witch is waiting for her in New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones’s finale.
It’s been four years in prison since Jade Daniels last saw her hometown of Proofrock, Idaho, the day she took the fall, protecting her friend Letha and her family from incrimination. Since then, her reputation, and the town, have changed dramatically. There’s a lot of unfinished business in Proofrock, from serial killer cultists to the rich trying to buy Western authenticity. But there’s one aspect of Proofrock no one wants to confront…until Jade comes back to town. The curse of the Lake Witch is waiting, and now is the time for the final stand.
New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones has crafted an epic horror trilogy of generational trauma from the Indigenous to the townies rooted in the mountains of Idaho. It is a story of the American west written in blood.
“Simply put—and I do not say this lightly—Incidents Around the House is the most purely effective horror novel I have ever read.”—Neil McRobert, Esquire (Best Horror Books of 2024, So Far)
A chilling horror novel about a haunting, told from the perspective of a young girl whose troubled family is targeted by an entity she calls “Other Mommy,” from the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box
“This book isthe monster that lives inside your closet.”—Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House
To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?”
When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the question over and over, Bela understands that unless she says yes, her family will soon pay.
Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe, but other incidents show cracks in her parents’ marriage. The safety Bela relies on is about to unravel.
But Other Mommy needs an answer.
Incidents Around the House is a chilling, wholly unique tale of true horror about a family as haunted as their home.
A chilling twist on the “cursed film” genre from the bestselling author of The Pallbearers Club and The Cabin at the End of the World.
In June 1993, a group of young guerilla filmmakers spent four weeks making Horror Movie, a notorious, disturbing, art-house horror flick.
The weird part? Only three of the film’s scenes were ever released to the public, but Horror Movie has nevertheless grown a rabid fanbase. Three decades later, Hollywood is pushing for a big budget reboot.
The man who played “The Thin Kid” is the only surviving cast member. He remembers all too well the secrets buried within the original screenplay, the bizarre events of the filming, and the dangerous crossed lines on set that resulted in tragedy. As memories flood back in, the boundaries between reality and film, past and present start to blur. But he’s going to help remake the film, even if it means navigating a world of cynical producers, egomaniacal directors, and surreal fan conventions—demons of the past be damned.
But at what cost?
Horror Movie is an obsessive, psychologically chilling, and suspenseful feat of storytelling genius that builds inexorably to an unforgettable, mind-bending conclusion.
A visceral and heartbreaking work of gothic horror about small town mysteries, local folklore and the things we leave behind when we’re gone, from the Bram Stoker Award winning author of Queen of Teeth.
What really happened to Cabrina Brite?
Ivory’s life changes irrevocably when she discovers the body of Cabrina Brite on the sands of Cape Morning, along with a mysterious poem. How did she die, and why does it seem she was trying to swim to Ghost Cat Island, the center of so many local mysteries?
Desperate to uncover the answers surrounding Cabrina’s death, and haunted by her discovery, Ivory begins to see the pale ghost of Cabrina, only to shake it off as a mere hallucination. But Ivory is not alone. Cabrina’s closest friends have also seen a similar apparition, and as they toy with occult possibilities, they begin to unravel the truth behind Cabrina’s death.
Because Cape Morning isn’t a ghost town, but a town filled with ghosts, and Ivory is about to discover just what happens when you let one in.
From New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author T. Kingfisher comes A Sorceress Comes to Call―a dark reimagining of the Brothers Grimm’s “The Goose Girl,” rife with secrets, murder, and forbidden magic.
*The hardcover edition features a foil stamp on the casing and custom endpapers illustrated by the author.*
Cordelia knows her mother is . . . unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms―there are no secrets in this house―and her mother doesn’t allow Cordelia to have a single friend. Unless you count Falada, her mother’s beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him.
But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren’t evil sorcerers.
When her mother unexpectedly moves them into the manor home of a wealthy older Squire and his kind but keen-eyed sister, Hester, Cordelia knows this welcoming pair are to be her mother’s next victims. But Cordelia feels at home for the very first time among these people, and as her mother’s plans darken, she must decide how to face the woman who raised her to save the people who have become like family.
Embark on a darkly humorous journey of reality TV meets the macabre. On the set of The Groom, a group of women must compete for the heart of Midwestern bachelor Tristan by spending a week in a haunted house. Divorcee Linda, resigned to her role as the show’s underdog, finds her resolve cracking when she begins to fall for fellow castmate Charity. Meanwhile, Sabrina, groomed by her witchy mother to deliver their family from poverty by marrying a rich man, sees winning the competition as her predestined path.
But after a shocking demise, the game takes a sinister turn. As the remaining contestants grapple with their desires for love and survival, they uncover dark secrets within and without the house’s walls. Trapped in a twisted new competition, they must confront their own demons or face elimination.
Sixty-three-year-old Los Angeles stoner, Hank Wallace, is just trying to get by and get high when he takes a gig distributing ads for a local company. But the job quickly turns into more than it seems. Hank begins hearing voices and experiencing strange visions while passing out the ads. Before he knows it, he’s fallen prey to his employer, a demon from another world.
Possessed by the demon, Hank absorbs nightmares from others living in his corner of LA. He becomes a conduit that feeds anxiety and dread to the demon. The nightmares pour in, but they aren’t enough. The demon requires more sustenance than the nightmares provide.
And the demon is in luck. Hank learns that his estranged sister, Carla, his only living relative, is terminally ill with cancer. He has steered clear of close relationships with family for decades, but he cannot avoid it any longer. The demon insists. Carla and her family’s grief is a siren’s call.
Hank drives to Sacramento bearing an invisible gift. The demon can erase their grief, but at what cost? Unless Hank can get his head together and snap out of it, the demon will consume every last one of them.
From New York Times bestselling horror writer Stephen Graham Jones comes a classic slasher story with a twist—perfect for fans of Adam Cesareand Grady Hendrix.
1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, and shared sense of unfairness of being on the outside through the slasher horror Jones loves, but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.
In this “stunningly visceral” (New York Times Book Review) novel, a group of young men seek vengeance after one of their mothers is murdered in a Puerto Rican slum; STAND BY ME with a haunted, obsidian-dark heart.
One of B&N’s Best Horror Books of the Year
For childhood friends Gabe, Xavier, Tavo, Paul, and Bimbo, death has always been close. Hurricanes. Car accidents. Gang violence. Suicide. Estamos rodeados de fantasmas was Gabe’s grandmother’s refrain. We are surrounded by ghosts. But this time is different. Bimbo’s mom has been shot dead. We’re gonna kill the guys who killed her Bimbo swears. And they all agree.
Feral with grief, Bimbo has become unrecognizable, taking no prisoners in his search for names. Soon, they learn Maria was gunned down by guys working for the drug kingpin of Puerto Rico. No one has ever gone up against him and survived. As the boys strategize, a storm gathers far from the coast. Hurricanes are known to carry evil spirits in their currents and bring them ashore, spirits which impose their own order.
Blurring the boundaries between myth, mysticism, and the grim realities of our world, House of Bone and Rain is a harrowing coming of age story; a doomed tale of devotion, the afterlife of violence, and what rolls in on the tide.
From Gretchen Felker-Martin, the acclaimed author of Manhunt, comes a vicious new novel about a group of teens who must stay true to themselves while in a conversion camp from hell.
“A soaring, boundless ode to queer survival. It’s flat-out mesmerizing.”―Paul Tremblay, author of The Pallbearers Club
Something evil is buried deep in the desert. It wants your body. It wears your skin.
In the summer of 1995, seven queer kids abandoned by their parents at a remote conversion camp came face to face with it. They survived―but at Camp Resolution, everybody leaves a different person.
Sixteen years later, only the scarred and broken survivors of that terrible summer can put an end to the horror before it’s too late.
The fate of the world depends on it.
“Tense and frighteningly visceral, Cuckoo is a masterwork of body horror thrumming with high octane viciousness.” ―Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
A woman builds her lover from carefully scavenged pieces and parts. A young girl is groomed for madness by one who loves her most. A neurodivergent boy organizes his life, and loss, by the ticking of a clock. And love can be the most splendid and destructive force in the entire world.
Love is a Crematorium and Other Tales is a collection of seventeen stories that are both bleak and beautiful, devastating and sweet. Enter the crematorium to experience grief, starlit nights, and gorgeous tragedy that make our souls burn from the inside out.
One of Paste Magazine’s “Most Anticipated Horror Books of 2024”
It’s about to get very dark.
Bram Stoker Award-winning author Laird Barron returns to the dark and dreadful with his fifth horror collection, which weaves sixteen weird tales into a mosaic of the bloody and the macabre.
It is in the darkest moments, during the loss of hope, that the language of crows is most clearly heard. The words are as menacing as piercing beaks, the events as perilous as a sea of black feathers. The corvid tongue spreads diabolical thoughts and devious visions.
Legend has it that crows prophesize offenses of the worst kind, their harsh tones are harbingers of horror. Collectively, crows are a murder, and they call out orders about their own name. The Language of Crows and other stories contains dark fairy tales, historical horror, and psychological horror in voices of the violent and the violated. It is a collection of witches’ spells, monsters’ murmurs, and voices within one’s head.
A brand-new collection of four intense, claustrophobic and terrifying horror tales from the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated and Splatterpunk Award-winning author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke.
THIS SKIN WAS ONCE MINE
When her father dies under mysterious circumstances, Jillian Finch finds herself grieving the man she idolized while struggling to feel comfortable in the childhood home she was sent away from nearly twenty years ago. Then Jillian discovers a dark secret that will threaten to undo everything she has ever known about her father.
SEEDLING
A young man’s father calls him early in the morning to say that his mother has passed away. He arrives home to find his mother’s body still in the house. Struggling to process what has happened he notices a small black wound appear on his wrist. Then he discovers his father is cursed with the same affliction.
ALL THE PARTS OF YOU THAT WON’T EASILY BURN
Enoch Leadbetter goes to buy a knife for his husband to use at a forthcoming dinner party. He encounters a strange shopkeeper who draws him into an intoxicating new obsession and sets him on a path towards mutilation and destruction…
PRICKLE
Two old men revive a cruel game with devastating consequences…
From legendary storyteller and master of short fiction Stephen King comes an extraordinary new collection of twelve short stories, many never-before-published, and some of his best EVER.
“You like it darker? Fine, so do I,” writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life—both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King writes to feel “the exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind,” and in You Like It Darker, readers will feel that exhilaration too, again and again.
“Two Talented Bastids” explores the long-hidden secret of how the eponymous gentlemen got their skills. In “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” a brief and unprecedented psychic flash upends dozens of lives, Danny’s most catastrophically. In “Rattlesnakes,” a sequel to Cujo, a grieving widower travels to Florida for respite and instead receives an unexpected inheritance—with major strings attached. In “The Dreamers,” a taciturn Vietnam vet answers a job ad and learns that there are some corners of the universe best left unexplored. “The Answer Man” asks if prescience is good luck or bad and reminds us that a life marked by unbearable tragedy can still be meaningful.
King’s ability to surprise, amaze, and bring us both terror and solace remains unsurpassed. Each of these stories holds its own thrills, joys, and mysteries; each feels iconic. You like it darker? You got it.
A young queer man finds love at a magical clothing shop-and the courage to stand up to the homophobic cops. A witch who makes custom nightmares wonders why all her victims are connected to the Black Panthers-and who she’s really working for. A soon-to-be father encounters a mysterious hitchhiker who tries pulling him back to the days of his violent past. A brand-new vampire, freshly hired at the blood bank, delights in her heightened sexual desire and superhuman strength.
Cynthia Gómez’s debut collection is a magic-soaked love letter to Oakland, brimming with feminist rage. Its twelve stories center ordinary people-Latine, queer, working class-as they wield supernatural powers against oppression, loneliness, and dread.
Christi Nogle has established herself as a modern Ray Bradbury, this collection adds fantasy, slipstream, and fabulism to her canon.
One Eye Opened in That Other Place collects Christi Nogle’s best weird and fantastical stories. The collection focuses on liminal spaces and the borders between places and states of mind. Though you might not find a traditional portal fantasy here, you will travel across thresholds and arrive at other places and times that are by turns disquieting, terrifying, and wonderful. Get up close with the local flora and fauna, peruse the weird art exhibits and special shows, and consider taking a dip in the mossy, snail-filled tank of water. Make sure to bring your special glasses
This new collection will appeal to readers of Jeff VanderMeer, Charles Wilkinson, Steve Rasnic Tem, M. Rickert, Lynda E. Rucker and Stephen King’s novel Lisey’s Story.
The Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author returns with a new collection of literary horror and weird fiction that glitters with startling prose and tortured souls.
Invaginies is an invasion, it is a perception that is bodily and transcendent creating holes, paths, or pockets of alternate truth-and not always voluntary–enlightenment.
Every line sings and strikes like grotesque poetry of the possessed. With 17 disturbing tales exploring plagues, possessions, gender & corruption, set in apocalyptic eras not much unlike our own, Joe Koch brings the terrors of a postmodern world into vivid focus.
Haunting and beautiful, Koch takes their place among the great names of the weird like Brian Evenson, exploring the queer perspective in horror as Billy Martin and Clive Barker, and contemporary rising voice, Eric LaRocca.
Literary prose meets the grotesque in this collection of stories to galvanize lovers of horror and weird fiction. With a growing cult audience, this collection is sure to shoot to the top of readers’ tbr piles.
At a Halloween party in 1999, a writer slept with the devil. She sees him again and again throughout her life and she writes stories for him about things that are both impossible and true.
Lima lures readers into surreal pockets of the United States and Brazil where they’ll find bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of people who are not dead. Once there, she speaks to modern Brazilian-American immigrant experiences–of ambition, fear, longing, and belonging―and reveals the porousness of storytelling and of the places we call home.
With humor, an exquisite imagination, and a voice praised as “singular and wise and fresh” (Cathy Park Hong), Lima joins the literary lineage of Bulgakov and Lispector and the company of writers today like Ted Chiang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil includes: “Rapture,” “Ghost Story,” “Tropicália,” “Antropógaga,” “Idle Hands,” “Rent,” “Porcelain,” “Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory,” and “Hasselblad.”
A great next read for fans of Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties and V. E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.
Recommended reading by Chicago Review of Books, Electric Literature, The Kenyon Review, and more!
Zip up your human suit and set sail, imbibing every perspective you can
in order to perfect the persona.
Push to the outer edges. Document your travels, and forget to return.
There will be a test.
Learn what it means to be human.
Forget what it means to be human.
Learn what it means to be human.
Forget what it means to be human.
Do not panic.
BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror, Volume Two encompasses the finest Weird speculative fiction published in (roughly) 2023. Edited by Alex Woodroe.
Table of contents:
Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas – Lullaby for the Unseen
Thomas Ha – In That Crumbling Home
Hussani Abdulrahim – The Library Virus
Patrick Malka – Show Me
Eirik Gumeny – A Balanced Breakfast
David Simmons – Food is Poison
Premee Mohamed – Quietus
Perfect Kiss Strickoll – punctum (o baked alaska for you i am a former american)
LC von Hessen – Transmasc of the Red Death
Simone le Roux – The Man Outside
KS Walker – River Bargain Baby
M.M. Olivas – The Prince of Oakland
Amitha Jagannath Knight – My Mother, The Exoskeleton
Rachael K. Jones – The Sound of Children Screaming
Judith Shadford – Endless Yearning
Daniel DeRock – Guest Opinion: We must take action regarding the [REDACTED] High School janitor
Geneve Flynn – A Box of Hair and Nail
Anemone Moss – Everything You Dump Here Ends Up in the Ocean
Karlo Yeager Rodríguez – Up In the Hills, She Dreams of Her Daughter Deep In the Ground
If books have no power, why are they trying so hard to keep them from people?
4,240 unique book titles were targeted for censorship or banning in 2023 alone.
Shadows in the Stacks was published to raise funds for the Books Unbanned Initiative through the Library Foundation SD. All proceeds from sales go to the Library Foundation SD.
This collection of terrifying tales was edited by Vincent V. Cava, James Sabata, and Jared Sage, with a foreword by Laurel Hightower, and features all-new stories from…
Kevin David AndersonZachary AshfordS.A. BradleyBridget D. BraveKel ByronVincent V. CavaClay McLeod ChapmanRebecca CuthbertAlexis DuBonJamie FlanaganDouglas FordEvelyn FreelingAi JiangLucy LeitnerJonathan MaberryJ.A.W. McCarthyTim McGregorJohn PalisanoJames SabataWilliam SterlingAlvaro Zinos-Amaro
Each limb tells a story. Every organ shares a secret.
A woman saves the leg of her dead child. A man leaps from soul to soul, trying to find a pure heart. Uteri wander, skin peels back, and human bodies liquify all over this world.
Slice into the anatomy of this collection to discover all the unseen horrors the human body can deliver.
Brand new stories from Alex Wolfgang, Ai Jiang, Mary Rajotte, Julie Sevens, Christopher O’Halloran, Sasha Brown, Bridget D. Brave, Taylor Ketterer, Demi-Louise Blackburn, Lindsey Ragsdale, Emma E. Murray, Johnathon Heart, P.L. McMillan, Rachel Searcey, Bryan Young, Kai Delmas, and David Worn, with a foreword from Paula D. Ashe.
Bury Your Gays: An Anthology Of Tragic Queer Horror
Bury Your Gays: An Anthology Of Tragic Queer Horror
Ghoulish Books
A manifestation of ecstasy, heartache, horror and suffering rendered in feverish lyrical prose. Inside are sixteen new stories by some of the genre’s most visionary queer writers. Young lovers find themselves deliriously lost in an expanding garden labyrinth. The porter of a sentient hotel is haunted within a liminal time loop. A soldier and his abusive commanding officer escape a war in the trenches but discover themselves in an even greater nightmare. Parasites chase each other across time-space in hungry desperation to never be apart. A graduate student with violent tendencies falls into step with a seemingly walking corpse. Featuring stories from Cassandra Khaw, Joe Koch, Gretchen Felker-Martin, Robbie Banfitch, August Clarke, Son M., Jonathan Louis Duckworth, M.V. Pine, Ed Kurtz, LC Von Hessen, Matteo L. Cerilli, November Rush, Meredith Rose, Charlene Adhiambo, Violet, and Thomas Kearnes.
It’s the question asked of any story about a haunting: why didn’t you just leave? But if accounts of people who have stayed in haunted houses are any indication … it’s never that simple.
In this book, you’ll find twenty-two all-new stories about the reasons people don’t leave scary situations-parents who stay in haunted houses to protect their children, convicts who literally can’t leave their prison, retail workers who need a paycheck even if it’s from a haunted workplace, trauma survivors suffering from agoraphobia, and more.
Featuring Shauntae Ball, I.S. Belle, Die Booth, Max Booth III, Christa Carmen, Raquel Castro, Alberto Chimal, Gabe Converse, Lyndsey Croal, Victoria Dalpe, Alexis DuBon, Corey Farrenkopf, Cassandra Khaw, Joe Koch, E.M. Linden, Steve Loiaconi, R. Diego Martinez, J.A.W. McCarthy, Suzan Palumbo, Tonia Ransom, Rhiannon Rasmussen, and Eden Royce. With illustrations by Luke Spooner, Yves Tourigny, and Yornelys Zambrano.
We Mostly Come Out At Night: 15 Queer Tales of Monsters, Angels & Other Creatures
We Mostly Come Out At Night: 15 Queer Tales of Monsters, Angels & Other Creatures
Running Press Kids
An empowering cross-genre YA anthology that explores what it means to be a monster, exclusively highlighting trans and queer authors who offer new tales and perspectives on classic monster stories and tropes.
Be not afraid! These monsters, creatures, and beasties are not what they appear. We Mostly Come Out at Night is a YA anthology that reclaims the monstrous for the LGBTQA+ community while exploring how there is freedom and power in embracing the things that make you stand out. Each story centers on both original and familiar monsters and creatures—including Mothman, Carabosse, a girl with thirteen shadows, a living house, werebeasts, gorgons, sirens, angels, and many others—and their stories of love, self-acceptance, resilience, and empowerment. This collection is a bold, transformative celebration of queerness and the creatures that (mostly) go bump in the night.
Contributors include editor Rob Costello, Kalynn Bayron, David Bowles, Shae Carys, Rob Costello, H.E. Edgmon, Michael Thomas Ford, Val Howlett, Brittany Johnson, Naomi Kanakia, Claire Kann, Jonathan Lenore Kastin, Sarah Maxfield, Sam J. Miller, Alexandra Villasante, and Merc Fenn Wolfmoor.
The Black Girl Survives In This One: Horror Stories
The Black Girl Survives In This One: Horror Stories
Flatiron Books
Be warned, dear reader: The Black girls survive in this one.
Celebrating a new generation of bestselling and acclaimed Black writers, The Black Girl Survives in This One makes space for Black girls in horror. Fifteen chilling and thought-provoking stories place Black girls front and center as heroes and survivors who slay monsters, battle spirits, and face down death. Prepare to be terrified and left breathless by the pieces in this anthology.
The bestselling and acclaimed authors include Erin E. Adams, Monica Brashears, Charlotte Nicole Davis, Desiree S. Evans, Saraciea J. Fennell, Zakiya Dalila Harris, Daka Hermon, Justina Ireland, L.L. McKinney, Brittney Morris, Maika & Maritza Moulite, Eden Royce, and Vincent Tirado. The foreword is by Tananarive Due.
Howls From The Scene Of The Crime: A Crime Horror Anthology
Howls From The Scene Of The Crime: A Crime Horror Anthology
Howl Society Press
A death row cell that recounts the dark stories of its inmates. An informant who consumes shards of crystallized skulls to see the past. A world where to speak of the dead is a violation of an unjust society’s rules. Heists, drugs, cults, detectives, murder, monsters, revenge.
Commit yourself to Howls from the Scene of the Crime, an anthology of crime horror laced with blood, secrets, and occult compulsions from some of the best established and emerging horror authors writing today. Featuring a foreword by Bram Stoker Award(R) winning crime horror author, Cynthia Pelayo.
Beyond The Bounds Of Infinity: An Anthology of Diverse Horror
Raw Dog Screaming Press
Welcome to a world of horror viewed through a kaleidoscope lens. Embark on a journey to untangle the writhing tendrils of human terror in a dimension where the possible and impossible blend-an unstable realm where comfort can be found in the coldest pits, and dark gods feast upon the sweetest suffering-where infernal sounds birth silent letters that drift along midnight shores and the unexplained lurks beneath crumbling urban structures. Step over the edge of what you think you know, and find yourself…Beyond the Bounds of Infinity!
Featuring stories by L. Marie Wood, S.A. Cosby, Jessica McHugh, and Mary SanGiovanni-alongside newer voices like Cassius Kilroy, Jessica L. Sparrow, and Vicky Velvet-Beyond the Bounds of Infinity offers a collection of weird fiction and cosmic horror stories that are diverse down to the cellular level. From Taíno folk horror to the horror of identity in a world that just doesn’t understand, from cozy to apocalyptic, and everything in between, let these authors show you what fear really is, and what it means to them.
