I was primed to love the new Clipse album Let God Sort Em Out.

Last week, Bruce Springsteen dropped the long-awaited Tracks II: The Lost Albums, a sorta sequel to the box set Tracks that came out in 1998. While the original Tracks was an odd-and-sods collection culled from a bunch of different corners of the Boss’ recording career, Tracks II is actually seven fully-realized albums that Springsteen wrote, recorded, mixed and mastered and then stuck in a drawer for one reason or another.

When Haim dropped “The Wire,” the killer single that announced their arrival in the mainstream from their debut full-length Days Are Gone, I assumed they would become the next big thing.

Brian Wilson passed away. I like the Beach Boys fine but have never been super invested in them (though I definitely like them more than Noel Gallagher does). But I wholly acknowledge Wilson’s contributions to pop music, and I don’t think his talent or his influence can be overstated. His life seemed tough and sad and strange, but it also seemed like he had access to joy.

My Beach Boys interest is basic as hell, and though I’d like to flex about loving some deep cut from Holland, the fact is my favorite Beach Boys song is “God Only Knows.”

Sacha Jenkins passed away over the weekend. He was 54 years old.

On my very first day as an editorial assistant at Spin, I didn’t do a whole lot of work. Does anybody do much of anything on their first day? You meet some people, you settle into your space, you get a spiel from IT about your computer, and otherwise you’re just setting up your e-mail signature and waiting for people to ask you to do stuff (which they don’t feel comfortable doing yet because they have known you for all of 22 minutes).

For reasons beyond my understanding, there are a handful of recent-ish reviews of my deeply out of print book up on Goodreads. They all basically give the proper assessment: it’s not especially good or even coherent, but the enthusiasm is there. There is one sentiment that popped up that I thought deserved further exploration: that I was too mean to Stone Temple Pilots.

Pulp have returned! They’ve actually been back a couple of times since disbanding shortly after the release of their 2001 album We Love Life, but this time they’ve got a new album with a great new single.

I’ll write about it soon, but today I’ve got one of Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker’s solo joints stuck in my head.

Despite my longtime devotion to ‘90s Britpop, I was late to Suede.

I don’t think they were ever my favorite band (none of their albums are in my top 100 list), but there was definitely a period of my life when I was a very intense apologist for They Might Be Giants.