It's time to put some respect on The Fray's name
is god sneaking back into pop culture through reappraised CVS core?
Happy Friday everyone. This week I listened to a lot of music (and made a playlist of my best songs of 2025 so far), saw four movies, spent time in the Google Doc (as per usual), got rockegnized at Trader Joe’s, and read my Mötley Crüe book by the pool. It’s hot and I don’t want to work, I want to eat frozen grapes at the beach, but these five hour podcast episodes aren’t going to make themselves.
The best part of my week by far was this new Waxahatchee and Kevin Morby cover of The Fray’s biggest hit, “You Found Me.” It was made for Lena Dunham’s new show Too Much, which is about a woman who starts a new life in London after a completely disastrous break-up, and I am certain I will love it, as a woman who wants to start a new life in London after a completely natural disaster. (I will watch it as soon as I get through the new Bosch spin-off Ballard). I’m so glad people are rediscovering the beauty and magic of some of our greatest CVS core songs - the early to mid 90s music of acts like Dave Matthews and Hootie, Counting Crows and Goo Goo Dolls, who proliferated in the fatigue from the intensity of grunge, who sold very well but largely were punchlines in culture, until they gave way to the late 90s/early 2000s radio rock juggernauts like Fuel, Five For Fighting, and fellow Grey’s Anatomy denizens Snow Patrol, amongst others, when there was basically no monoculture left to mock them. Last year Slow Pulp covered Lifehouse’s “Hanging By A Moment”, another stone cold banger in this genre.
A thing that truly delights me is when a “cool” artist covers an “uncool” song and makes it plainly obvious how good the composition actually is - I’m thinking now of White Fence’s 2016 cover of “Allison Road” by the Gin Blossoms (and also thinking about my lost square green 7 inch of “Hey Jealousy” may it rest in peace). I keep threatening to write something more robust about covers and I will but not today. (That White Fence cover comes from a compilation of covers from Aquarium Drunkard called The Lagniappe Sessions Vol 1 which also features another favorite kind of cover, when someone takes something hard and makes it soft, which Kevin Morby does with the Germs song “Caught In My Eye”).
There’s also something happening here around spirituality (The Fray and Lifehouse are, if not “Christian rock bands”, Christian rock bands). “You Found Me” is a song about faith that comes off as a love song (many such cases, see most of U2’s early discography). Lead singer Isaac Slade said of the lyrics: “It demands so much of my faith to keep believing, keep hoping in the unseen. Sometimes the tunnel has a light at the end, but usually, they just look black as night. This song is about that feeling, and the hope that I still have, buried deep in my chest.” These days Slade owns the only record store on Vashon Island and seems to be thriving. (Incidentally The Fray also has a new single coming out July 18th called “My Heart’s A Crowded Room” and I WILL be checking for it).
I wonder if this is all part of a growing cultural current in that direction, not just with the boom in internet trad-Catholicism (sure), but also Cameron Winter bleating (beautifully) that “God is real” while performing in churches, the buzz around the film Conclave last year, the re-release of Kevin Smith’s Dogma earlier this year, and Aziz Ansari’s forthcoming film Good Fortune in which Keanu Reeves plays an angel named Gabriel (though not the angel Gabriel, shades of Nicholas Cage’s “Seth,” I do love angel movies).
Justin Bieber surprise released an album today, and I’m still listening to it, but two tracks jumped out at me: “GLORY VOICE MEMO” (kind of “You Found Me” coded tbh - the lyrics read “But I, I reach out my hands, I'm beggin' You for mercy/Please, Lord, would You please?”) and also the last track, “FORGIVENESS” which is written by Christian songwriter Rick Founds and performed by gospel singer and Pastor Marvin Winans (there’s no production credit but it feels Mk.gee-ish to me for sure). Pop culture and particularly pop music have both been borderline aggressively secular for so long, so I’m interested to see how this is going to continue to play out.
One thing that is crystal clear to me is that the punishing isolation brought about by the internet age is starting to drive people back towards connection in any form, and one of those forms is definitely going to be spirituality and/or religion.
Related - I really loved this note from
. (Unrelated - her post about cotton activewear is excellent, we should not be working out and sweating in micro-plastic laden leggings!!!).
Speaking of covers (we were, remember?), there’s an album of Jason Molina covers called I Will Swim To You: A Tribute To Jason Molina coming out via Run For Cover on 9/5. I’m surprised it’s taken this long for a big Molina/Songs:Ohia resurgence to bubble up given the outsized impact his music (along with David Berman’s) has had on so much of what is big in indie music today, most notably MJ Lenderman, whose cover of “Just Be Simple” was released yesterday (along with Sun June’s version of “Leave The City”). Other artists featured on the compilation include Horse Jumper of Love, Hand Habits, and Friendship.
🎶 What I’ve been listening to:
I am spiritually still in London and have had this little two minute (exactly) ditty by London duo Most Things called “Shops” (it’s about going to the shops) on repeat all week. Actually the whole album is good, they’re kind of doing this angular, just bass and drums, speak sing, post punk thing that really works and also they have good haircuts. And they just toured the UK with Elias Rønnenfelt? I’m late (my finger is not on the pulse thank GOD) but I’m bought in.
A reader in our chat put me on to this band forty winks and their EP Love Is A Dog From Hell (great name) and I’ve been listening to it a lot since. The song “commie bf” is particularly good. I think they’re from Pittsburgh?
Google tells me that Office Magazine called him “the baby diva of Avant Pop” in 2022 but I only just discovered Clyde Crooks yesterday from Jordan Patterson’s IG (I really like her music too - it’s genuinely odd). His new song “hairgrow” is summery and vibey and does the same sort of musical lobotomy thing that bladee’s music does for me. A welcome feeling!
Georgia Maq of Camp Cope’s solo stuff is really something else - especially this song
📺 What I’ve been watching:
This was technically last week but I saw Eva Victor’s first feature film Sorry Baby (she wrote, directed, and stars in it) and I fucking loved it. I was apprehensive because it’s really difficult to make a film that involves trauma as part of the storyline that isn’t cloying or flat or cheap (despite best efforts) and this was none of those things. It was smart and beautiful and moving and funny in exactly the right measures. The color palette!!! Also so many gorgeous sweaters. There’s a thread here with the Michelle Williams/Jenny Slate Hulu show Dying For Sex - centering these incredibly meaningful friendships over all else is something interesting and cool to me.
In advance of interviewing director Alex Ross Perry for an episode of Bandsplain about his movie Pavements (the episode comes out next week but you can stream Pavements now on MUBI) I watched his 2014 film Listen Up Phillip because I had never seen it. Really good!
I saw Materialists in the theater and I know I’m late and (mercifully) the discourse on it has set sail but I truly don’t know what everyone was on about. It’s good! “People don’t talk like that.” Yeah babe it’s called art. It was fun and funny (I laughed out loud and hard) and the writing was sharp and the premise is both classic and modern. Also if anyone knows that lip combo the make-up artist was using on Dakota Johnson please do get in touch.
📚 What I’ve been reading
When I haven’t been annotating The Dirt for work, I’ve been sneaking chapters of Dangerous Muse: The Life of Lady Caroline Blackwood by Nancy Schoenberger (a rec from
’ Gift Guide a while ago) and it is so satisfying. I’m extra preoccupied lately with the idea of musedom in general (there’s some lengthy talk about it in the Jane’s Addiction episode of Bandsplain with Jessica Hopper, in relation to Perry Farrell’s former partner, the artist Casey Niccoli who had an outsized impact on that band’s whole shit, muses are rarely not also artists themselves). I’ve started collecting books about muses so if you guys have any other recs (my net is broad here) please leave them in the comments.
👠 Loose Fit
That’s right, a new little fashion corner for you. Multitudes, etc.
Here’s an outfit from this week? Why not. I call this type of dressing “name three songs core.” It’s actually very difficult for me to put together a look without leaning on a band t-shirt (probably need to discuss this with my therapist, something to do with not wholly embracing my femininity) and I am trying to force myself to grow and expand, at the same time I’m working on rebuilding my collection and I thought this white on white U2 moment was pretty good.
Also we didn’t talk about this (months old?) Zara Festival collection by Kate Moss and Bobby Gillespie but it’s time for me to come clean and say - I would wear some of the pieces. I’m not above it. (You can tell I suck at influencership bc this is just free promo for Zara?). Anyway get your bag Bob.
See you next week xx
Im so glad i found your substack. also i cant get dressed without a band tee either, just perpetually 15 yrs old.
Have you read The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex & Controversy in the 1980s by Paul Elie? He’s talking a lot about “crypto-religion” that artists, particularly musicians (he talks a lot about U2) infuse into their work in a way that indicates faith and religion without overtly declaring themselves Christian artists. I don’t the term is his… borrowed from another text but it’s interesting! I’m about halfway through right now. Love the pod! ✨