I think that it takes a certain arrogance to put pen to paper and decide that you’re going to write a newsletter about yourself. My self worth, in my recent unceremonious firing from a place I worked for about four years, is at an all-time low, and forcing myself at proverbial gunpoint to create a routine to fix that includes starting this funny little newsletter. I have been calling 2026 twenty-twenty-since, the year of sincerity, and this also sits a commitment to that ethos and in projecting earnestness to the world.
This will typically include 3 sections which encompass most of my weeks:
All the photos taken from a digital camera I got at a Goodwill with annotations from my photojournal and small context around them. I am color coding this journal so you will have to see my color coding!!!!
a 3×3 of albums from my last.fm with a brief writeup on each album including how I found it and what the album is like, because I’m a complete sucker for the social aspects of sharing music. the screenshot will be taken on Fridays each week, to give me time to write this up for (each week!) a Monday release schedule.
any films I watched/logged on Letterboxd the week before, with the accompanying star rating, dated, also documented the Friday before.
Table of Contents
Photojournal!!
hey does anyone wanna come see marty supreme i wanna see timothee chalamet get struck out on three pitches
no pictures of Kristen Stewart at the Q&A after but i promise she was there
1/14/2026 5:58pm
Coolidge Corner Theater
digital camera datestamps are so in for 2026
1/15/2026 8:29am
harvard square / 66 bus
perfectdays.jpg
1/15/2026 8:50am
harvard ave / B line
i love miss sophie the waterbus from maryland!! i would kill for her
Boston seagulls are always so pensive (ready to eat your fries)
rita :)
i like to think she’s pointing at you
look up at the sky look up at the sky look up at the sky look up at the sky
1/15/2026 11:24am
Boston Harbor, Long Wharf
3×3, or How I Learned to Love the Square
i think 3×3s are better for the week than 5×5s because they’re usually albums I listened to in full to be clear!!!!
stickerbush & heavensouls - DARKLIGHT - a very interesting two-faceted album that starts as an experimental hiphop album and fades into a precise and delicate IDM/ambient album into the back half. Shaydfd sent this to me and it immediately gripped me as an cool as hell project from a duo I hadn’t heard anything from before2.
Listen to it in full and then maybe revisit some of the individual songs after but you MUST go front to back on this!!
The Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns - Indie-rock/Americana band ironically from Canada, and they have such a specific guitar tone it rattles in my skull as one of maybe a dozen albums I have downloaded on my phone. When the Verizon outage happened this week3, it was my go-to for something to walk with.
Ballad of the RAA is such a standout opening track to me but Don’t Haunt This Place and Four Night Rider are generational.
Trigger - 车祸的幸福 - Another Shay banger (described as their first fav of 2026), I don’t have any real sourcing on where this album comes from aside from it being a really sick Chinese rock band with very cohesive songwriting, a talented female vocalist and tight guitar tracking.
Amazing title track with exciting production that sets the tone for the rest of the album. Just listen to the whole thing okay!!!!
sakanacion - Night Fishing - Shay dropped me “Night Fishing Is Good” in a text after I was a fan of the subsequent album on this list, and I ended up crushing the entire album afterwards. Very calm / slowly building into bouncy fun throughout, and the songs have a lot of length to breathe and build in a way I really love.
waiter! waiter! more night fishing please!
Cephalo - Flourite Code - If you can believe that it happened again, Shay sent me this as an exceptional shoegaze album from one of the features on a Japanese hyperpop compilation they’d found. I do not know how they source these things, and I don’t have any interest in finding out how they do, as the magic they do to find these things deserves to be preserved as a kind of little wonder that I get to experience every day having these handed to me.
Route225 and End of Summer Vacation! are my standouts if you’re not into shoegaze, but you should consider being into shoegaze and getting really into pedals this year.
I Promised the World - Fear of the Fall - Zoomers have finally recreated mall emo! I had my fears that they wouldn’t have the juice to recreate it, as most of their contemporaries are much more interested in going older, a la Stella / Ritornello Form sounding like Mineral contemporaries, or building on recent bands like Weatherday or Newgrounds Death Rugby. I Promised the World really captures the good parts of bands like Taking Back Sunday while making it feel fresh with each track.
Listen to Fear of the Fall, but they also just put out an EP on the 16th that is worth saying you got in on the ground floor for!
SMTK - Siren Propaganda - I am endlessly addicted to clicking on the little Apple Music recommendations underneath bands. When I was younger, I would find one band I liked from a blog like Sophie’s Floorboard, and then go into hours-long rabbit holes finding similar bands so I could fill up my iPod Classic or my Zune that I got in 2016 very late to the party.
This album comes from clicking through on a Dos Monos album, probably because the first track has a Dos Monos feature, but the production is surprising from beginning to end and has a lot of interesting turns that I’m not spoiling as I think it would be a disservice if I tried to grasp at straws to describe it.
If you like this, my recommendation as your lawyer is to listen to Dos Monos or any of the artists with features on here, as they absolutely deserve your time.
stickerbush and heavensouls - afro-surrealism - Standout glitch-hop EP from my most listened to artist this week. I am probably going to be digging through their discography together for weeks to come just to see the upper bounds of what they have to offer as such detailed collaborators.
Catch Up (heavensouls mix) is the perfect dessert at the end of this EP and I will be slamming it all week so expect to see this again next week!
Comfort Object - Pinnacle Hill - Emocore from Rochester, New York, home of the garbage plate and beautiful scenic Lake Erie. Have only just started this one, but it scratches such a perfect emocore itch in my brain that you can also expect to see this album back next week as I continue to dive into it.
Rochester I love you and if you had significantly better bus service I would live there in a heartbeat just to sit by one of the Great Lakes every day and blog about weird little emocore albums.
On Cinema, at the Cinema
But I’m A Cheerleader (1999)
But I’m a Cheerleader (1999)
***** / *****, watched on 1/12
Electroplay bitches stay winning! Campy, fun, unabashedly queer romcom. Natasha Lyonne is a perfect lesbian down to the facial acting of getting woozy thinking about women, and Clea Duvall is her perfect foil.
Blue Hill Avenue (2001)
Blue Hill Avenue (2001)
***** / *****, watched on 1/13
Boston forever baby!!!!!!!!!!!!! Underappreciated crime thriller, filmed mostly in Boston and Canada. Canada makes a very convincing Boston in the interior shots, and it’s a very well-woven story that I’ll be thinking about for a long time. I think one of the things we’ve lost over the years is casting children as children; the impact of having a bunch of boys who actually look 14-15 getting sucked into a life of crime was really compelling and added a layer to the movie that you don’t get when you have Euphoria casting abound.
Watched on Tubi, which is a perfect service for simulating throwing on a movie during the day on cable in like 2010 and watching it straight through with a bunch of ads that you ignore. It truly adds to the ambiance!
Chronology of Water (2025)
Chronology of Water (2025)
***** / *****, watched on 1/14
Haunting portrait of a woman recovering from familial abuse shot in a way that will make any abuse survivor sick to their stomach with familiarity. The way the movie portrays the ways in which abuse permeates every part of your life, after giving you the visual and auditory language in which to understand what has happened to her, is an unbelievable triumph. I will never watch this one again but I will be singing its praises forever as a stunning directorial debut from someone who I hope makes one million more movies.
(Kristen Stewart if you’re reading this I would give anything to see you adapt a Sarah Walters novel, I just think you’d crush it okay!!)
I am very thankful to you if you’ve made it this far (and I love you, personally you) and I do recommend subscribing if you want to see this again next week, as I will be doing this until at least the end of the calendar year as my one true love football fades away for the season the next few weeks4. xoxo
1 Shay’s name will be coming up a lot in this section week over week, as they are a huge influence on me for the social power of sharing music.
2 They send me so much cool stuff through the week that many of these weeks will be filled to the brim with their influence.
3 booooooooooooo verizon boooooooo
4 i hope the patriots LOSE