Friday Five: April 10, 2026
- 4 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Side A:
Side B:
Friday Fav:
"Rejoice (feat TD Jakes)" • Steve Angello Where do I begin with this one? HUMAN is a vanity project and something of a fuck-you to the pop sensibility Angello courted as one-third of Swedish House Mafia. Its leading track is built around a 7min spoken-word quote by preacher T.D. Jakes and tickles my fascination with motivational speakers and their persistent Venn diagram with Christianity, capitalism, New Thought movement, and bootstrapping mentality. There's also this persistent thing DJs seem to have with spirituality, modelling albums after Dante's interpretation of heaven and hell. This isn't the place to unpack all my thoughts about it but I'll offer "Rejoice" as an example of the kind of artistry I'm meditating on lately.
April 10, 2026
Friday Five exists as a little challenge to me: five new albums, five new stories per week. They're here for you to enjoy (or not!) No summaries or in-depth criticism. But here are a few notes:
Thinking about how where you first experience an album can impact your relationship with it, for better or worse. How strange, for instance, to first experience mewithoutYou in an empty barroom.
I'll be thinking a long time about Cassidy Menard's "Tell Me..." for a number of reasons: alienating yourself in a city far from home; the painfully accurate portrayal of well-meaning but clumsy allies and cultural appropriation as a method of distancing from learned racism; portrayal of passive aggression in government environments. Also noodling on prevailing themes in CanLit and CanLit's persistent refusal to engage outside its context.
I do love a good road trip narrative; Nick van Odsel's "Things I thought about..." is about as good as they get, in terms of emulating fleeting thoughts about things that pass along the way, and how those thoughts compete with the ones we can't escape. Everywhere you go, there you are.
Looking forward to turning out Major 7th's next volume at the end of April, after having gone through the submissions from last round. Thank you, everyone, for your kind words and continued interest in the project. I appreciate it more than you know.
xo,
Kirsti