Today the new Weyes Blood album is out! If you’ve known me for the last few years, you will know that I am very annoying about the following things: Slowdive, the 2017 film Phantom Thread, vegan cheese, my cat Lulu, and Weyes Blood. I have put on And In the Darkness, Hearts Aglow on for the fourth time today because I love being autistic. Also because I stayed up until midnight to listen to it, which I rarely do these days. Anyway if you have Spotify you can listen to it here below. If you don’t… well, I suppose there’s YouTube or Apple Music or Tidal. Tidal is a bastard to work with though. And then when you’re done listening to that, go listen to Titanic Rising, her previous album which I played to death and annoyed countless people about in 2019. No regrets though.

I am coming towards the end of the semester here in my job at the University of Galway, where I’ve been employed as a lecturer since the start of the year. Which means that I’ll shortly be moving to Queen’s University Belfast to take up a Marie Skłowdowska-Curie Research Fellowship in the new year. I will be writing in due course about the research I’ll be undertaking there, but it’s more Irish Shakespeare performance, more actors, more celebrity. I am very excited about having more time to focus on my research; to move to a place as beautiful, communal, and vibrant as Belfast; and to work with mentors and colleagues who have made and make me feel like my work — and myself as a person — matter. I can’t express how much that means to me.

The following things I will miss about Galway: my friends, students, and colleagues; coffee places in town like Coffeewerk + Press and Fairhill, and the nice baristas on campus; the West End of the city centre in general. The following things I will not miss: the Salmon-Weir Bridge; the paucity of public transport infrastructure for Galway county; how it is nigh impossible to find anywhere affordable to live in the city.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Low lately, in the wake of Mimi Parker’s passing from ovarian cancer. The loss of Mimi is devastating: you cannot replace her in a band like Low, which was built on the creative partnership of herself and her husband Alan Sparhawk. Now I had really liked Low, but I really got into them with the release of 2018’s Double Negative: it is a scuzzy, beautiful masterpiece of an album. I love it so much. 2021’s HEY WHAT is arguably a refinement of that aesthetic, and it has been sobering to revisit it in the last few weeks (see ‘More’: ‘I saw more than what I ever sought / I should have asked for more than what I got’). I regret that every chance I could have seen them in concert in Dublin over the years, I didn’t take it or didn’t try to make it work. (Even though, logistically and financially, it probably couldn’t work, but I digress.) Anyway, I’ve found myself delving further into their back catalogue these days, particularly 2001’s Things We Lost in the Fire and 2011’s C’mon. Here’s ‘Nothing But Heart’ from the latter: And here’s ‘Sunflower’ from the former: And, one of my favourites, ‘Always Trying To Work It Out’ from Double Negative: Also, it is a fact that Low also recorded the best Christmas album out there. Sorry to the A Christmas Gift For You fans but they know I am right (especially you, Jenda, you know this in your heart). Blast this on December 1 and raise a toast to Mimi:Rest in peace, Mimi Parker. And thanks for everything.

This year in the run-up to Christmas, I am experimenting with giving my cat an advent calendar. Lulu could either love the catnip and yoghurt treats, or she will turn up her (tiny pink) nose completely. There is no in-between with her. More on this anon.