October 16 - It’s such a funny thing, a mystery allure

When I started writing The Crossover Appeal I kept coming back to the word, dilletante. Generally speaking, dilletante is a derogatory term, a way to dismiss someone's interests as un-serious, uninformed, and lacking expertise. Someone who dabbles in a little bit of everything but has serious aesthetic commitment issues. It's the oft-mocked flipside to the romantic notion of the flaneur. Where a dilettante skips from one thing to the other, the flaneur - literally French for stroller, as in, one who strolls - appreciates whatever the world brings to him. He looks for the pleasure in serendipity.

This distinction between dilettante and flaneur is probably historically and culturally rich, having something to do with class and gender, but I say let's collapse the difference. Have preferences that are hard to track. Reject recommendation algorithms that see you ordering toilet bowl cleaner and says one week later, "Hello there, I notice you really like toilet bowl cleaner, have you considered more of it?" Commit yourself to loving things that feel like you weren't the target demographic. Wander the wide streets and narrow alleys of the Internet and glean what you can.

One last French word to go along with the others: glaneuse. In her wonderful, almost accidental-feeling documentary, The Gleaners and I, Agnes Varda introduces us to the artist as glaneuse, or gleaner. The creator who picks and chooses from the world around them, a sound here, a look there, a taste over yonder, and rearranges them into a rich life. If you look up advice on how to become a "content creator", uniformly people recommend finding a lane and sticking to it. Occupy a niche. Be the only one doing what you're doing as well as you're doing it. And there's probably some merit to that idea. But one of my sincerest hopes for this newsletter is that when it reaches you it breaks for a moment the hyperfocus that seizes on all of us throughout our work weeks when the only things we can find restful are the things we already know we like. We stop gleaning, we stop... dilletante-ing.

Consider this your permission for the day to stretch your legs and stroll about for a bit, metaphorically speaking. Here are five recommendations for you all. Things to listen to, things to drink, things to make and eat, and things to watch. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'd love to hear more about what kinds of recs you all like reading the most. Are you reading The Crossover Appeal for nothing more than the verve-y prose? Is it the music and playlist recommendations, the TV shoutouts (I know it's not these), the longform video essays that run in the background on your second monitor? Let me know on social what you like and what you'd like to see more of.

Recommendations

Listen: Twice - "The Feels"

Gloomy interiors and pale nights can’t make up all of the year’s waning months. You need a shot of color to break up the monotony now and then. Luckily for us, third generation K-pop legends, Twice, have made their glorious English language debut with “The Feels”, a groovy pop anthem that features some shining vocal performances, the hookiest hooks available, and a visual identity best described as Olivia Rodrigo on antidepressants. As I’m writing this I feel like I have the pre-chorus, chorus, and bridge all stuck in my head at the same time. It’s magical. My recommendation: watch the video; it’s fun, optimistic, and goofy in a pure, puppy dog way. But more importantly, add this track to whatever get-up-in-the-morning playlists you use because my God it is a concentrated shot of dopamine like very few other songs this year.

Listen: Low - HEY WHAT

Back in 2013 I listened to Low for the first time and the experience shifted my parameter for what slow, quiet music could feel like. Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker have been playing together as Low since the early nineties, making their mark first as a leader in the “slowcore” sub-sub-genre of indie rock and bedroom dream pop. That 2013 record, The Invisible Way saw them experimenting with folkier, singer-songwriter style arrangements that sounded like a coffee shop set for ghosts.

With HEY WHAT, their newest record, the slowness is still their, but whatever quiet they’ve embraced before has been traded out for gigantic, fuzzy distortion and compression along with a hefty helping of glitchy textures. Atop this fractured soundscape, however, Sparkhawk and Parker have laid some of their most beautiful vocal harmonies to date. The opening verses on “White Horses” are a haunting callout:

There isn’t much past believing
Only a fool would have had the faith
Though it's impossible to say I know
Still, white horses take us home

Meanwhile, “Disappearing” sees the pair spinning a plaintive siren call out of the misty, throbbing instrumental that sears even in the dank. On the nearly eight minute epic, “Hey”, Low invites you to stay for a while in the sub basement of your headphones’ low-end, taking breaths from Mimi’s occasional angelic vocal passages. There’s an undeniable tension in this record, not between its two members, but between the keening humanity of their songwriting and the alien, mechanical anxiety of their arrangements. HEY WHAT is an album made for weird dreams and haunting your loved ones. I think it’s among the most essential listens you could have this year.

Watch: Tenebrae (1982) - Dario Argento

With all the streaming services, all the film guys on YouTube, all the movie buff podcasts, and all the platforms for movie discussion, auteurs like Dario Argento, known for his bloody, trippy approach to psychological horror, have risen back up in pop culture in ways that might have seemed unimaginable a few years ago. Myself, I’m new to Argento, but after seeing Tenebrae, a taut, gory thrill, I’m planning on spending a bit more time with his brand of fractured, kaleidoscopic violence. Tenebrae is a vicious little number - more than half a dozen murders transpire across its brief 90 minute runtime. Each successive death escalates the stakes, spattering across the scene with a backdrop of a dark, synthy score and an economical but flashy cinematographic approach. The plot twists and turns, and there are some gestures toward moral philosophy, but none of that amounts to more than set dressing for the main attraction. This is David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive if it didn’t have a genuine idea in its noggin, and honestly, I think I prefer it for that.

Drink: Suze

This year I’ve been experimenting with some zero or low ABV cocktails and that journey has brought me to Suze, a bitter French aperitif that’s been floating around since the late 19th century. While lesser known and less favored by American cocktail folks than, say, its herby cousin Chartreuse, Suze brings some of the same flair to your drinks as that much more expensive green liqueur. It’s a beautiful, saffron color and its nose is a complex bouquet of vegetal notes that give way to a sweet mustiness that will make you think of roasted root vegetables and hard candy at the same time. It’s primarily made from gentian root, a bitter, medicinal herb prized for its capacity to soothe the stomach, heartburn, and troubled digestion. That bitterness comes through on the palate, but there’s sweetness too. It’s sharp, but without the acidity or crispness of a more citrus forward bitter like Campari. Instead it’s got the warm mystery of more wintery liqueurs like Benedictine and Pernod. Use it in any cocktail that benefits from a hit of herbal sweetness, needs an undernote of earthy color, or could use a mellow counterpoint to bright aromatics. Or, just sip on its own before a big dinner party - it’s bracing and comforting all at the same time.

Make: Claire Saffitz’ Brownies

Speaking of comforting, it’s brownie season baby. Or at least, it has been at my house for the past couple weeks. Generally I’ve been content to just go with the box stuff, but today I’m recommending you put out a tiny bit more effort and give this Claire Saffitz recipe a shot. It distinguishes itself in two ways. First, it incorporates malt powder (you can substitute Yahoo if you’re stuck with slimmer grocery pickings) which gives the brownies a sturdy, even texture unlike the crumbling softness of most box recipes, but avoiding the dreaded cake-iness that some homemade brownie recipes fall into. Second, it asks you to refrigerate your brownies before digging in. Yes, refrigerate. This is anathema to me, a warm brownie fan who microwaves his brownies before chucking some ice cream on top, but I’m telling you, something about this approach “cures” the brownie into a new creation. Don’t trust me, trust Claire on this one. I’m not saying it will replace the brownies you’ve always loved up to this point, but it will give you pause the next time you’re about to pick a box mix off the shelf.

That's all for this weekend folks. I'm throwing a little dinner party tonight - it should be a nice, warm affair. Hope you all find some rest and warmth this weekend as well.

As always, thank you for reading, and if you liked any of what you see here, let me know - or better yet, let your friends know that they should be subscribed to The Crossover Appeal too. It would help us out so much.

Jordan Cassidy