Happy #AudioDramaSunday Folks!

Getting a late start this morning because my band Ghost Tour played a show in Time’s Square at an Irish Pub last night, and the night before I got to see Manchester Orchestra and Militarie Gun at Brooklyn Paramount, which I’ll be covering this week for Brooklyn Vegan. I’m bone tired, but last night specifically was a pretty wild experience, one I both didn’t expect anyone to show up for, but also threw me back to the days of being a little kid and visiting Manhattan on bus trips to see Broadway shows. It’s very much not my preferred place to bring anyone now that I’ve lived NYC-adjacent for ~15 years, but I can’t sit here and tell you the fact that I was performing in such an entertainment hotbed wasn’t really fun. That’s our last show on the immediate horizon at the moment, although we are doing our best to get added onto a Halloween show of some kind and already have our costumes picked out, and we’ve got our first single with this lineup on the horizon as well, so fun things are coming.

This week I went about things a little bit differently and, rather than trying to marathon any one show that I already love, or one that’s new-to-me, I tried out the pilot episodes of a couple of different series that I’ve either been meaning to check out or just stumbled across for the first time. It was a fun experience and one that I have to remind myself to do more of, since that was how so much of my podcast discovery occurred before I was so deeply entrenched in the community, with a host of collaborators and colleagues whose work I follow, and another whole host of folks who I am tangentially aware of but haven’t yet made the time to interact with. There’s also a few things that I’m going to hold off on discussing until my next date, including an upcoming Forgive Me! crossover episode and A Spark of Darkness, the new two-part BBC Drama on 4 special by the inimitable David K. Barnes, because I'll be doing a featured interview on the project, and he’s currently on a well deserved holiday. In the meantime, you should absolutely listen to it, because it is (to the surprise of no one) brilliant.

Let’s dive in:

The Amelia Project

I’ve already said a lot about this on my various social media platforms, but it bears repeating: this script is one of the most important things I’ve ever written. In a world that’s becoming increasingly hostel toward the LGBT community by the minute, I wanted nothing more than to look back on a horrific part of the Church’s past, and tell a story of continued love and perseverance amidst such abuses. We aped the Forgive Me! confessional format in order to imagine to story of Joan of Leeds, a real life historical figure who faked her own death in order to escape the convent where she’d been serving as a nun. The details of her ruse are fairly slim, and strictly told through the lens of the men attempting to catch her and force her back into service, so I delighted in imagining her story from her own perspective. The fact that Ciara Baxendale, better known as Georgie in Wooden Overcoats, happened to voice the role? A true cherry on top.

World Gone Wrong

I need to be careful with how I write about this week’s newest episode following the continued post-apocalyptic antics of best friends/roommates turned long distance podcast pals Malik and Jamie, because I want to be sure that I spoil nothing. Usually I am not a spoiler averse person: I genuinely don’t believe that knowing certain details in advance will necessarily affect my enjoyment of a piece of media… but this bit is just too good. It’s effortlessly subtle in both its simplicity and in the way that it unfurls itself for you, slowly, patiently, in such a way that when the ultimate reveal finally drops? You’ll be kicking yourself for not realizing what’s been happening from the second you pressed play. Please. I’m begging you. Listen.

Dungeon Masters

I’m going to be completely honest with you all about this new one from QCODE: after hearing the first two episodes, this show isn’t doing it for me. The Jon Hamm vehicle is inspired by the real life missing person case that landed Dungeons & Dragons directly in the crosshairs of those beset with Satanic Panic, but feels pretty tonally jarring in a way that didn’t hit. The cast does well enough of with some genuinely interesting material, but the inclusion of Will Wheaton as Gary Gygax, serving as both the show’s narrator and the de facto GM shepherding Hamm’s hapless conservative P.I. dope felt a little ham-fisted. I liked the idea of forcing the character to play the game in order to understand the boy he’s trying to find, but the constant addition of dice rolls for his every interpersonal reaction took me out of the narrative, far more than it made me feel like I was really immersed in the world it was attempting to create.

The Dead

We’re three quarters of the way through Jeremy Ellett’s Dead Ass, and boy is it so fun. The characters are unhinged, between the obsessive fan whose principal goal in life is to murder his greatest hero, the social media obsessed up and comer who can’t stop documenting the developing zombie horror in front of him, the prop comedian whose suitcase holds what might be their only tools to defend themselves, and the passed over regular whose stuck in the freezer with the dying woman who started the club in the first place. It’s a delightful entry in this series, which invites audio fiction writers to explore the world of George Romero’s The Dead universe, and god damn, do I love the big swings this story has taken.

Silvertongues

Shout out to Xperience Jay for her resource Black Audio Dramas Exist for alerting me to this one. I never got around to listening to this team’s first show The Call of the Void, but if it’s anything as gripping as the pilot for this one was? I know that I’m going to be all the way in. This series is dreamy, as protagonists Roscoe & Tavi slowly realize that things maybe aren’t as perfect as they seem on the island of Kalalani, and that they may in fact know who they are at all. The cast has phenomenal chemistry and the sound design is beautiful. Can’t wait to dig deeper on this one, and to follow The Call of the Void as well!

Mayfair Watchers Society

I am fully guilty of skipping this one last year, and there was truly no reason for it other than the fact that I am secretly a Halloween Scrooge. You see, my birthday is the week before, and I’m a big treat myself kinda gal, so by the time the holiday comes around I’m usually too spent to want to engage with the season at large… but it’s been sitting in the back of my queue since the moment I saw it premiere, and I’m so glad I finally took the jump. The first episode is unsettling in the best way possible, and has me incredibly excited to dig deeper into this world of horrifying creatures, just out of view. Hoping to be all caught up before October starts this year!

Someone Just Like You

God dammit, I think this was my favorite episode yet. I am fully obsessed with the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before series (although the decision to replace Susan Johnson with Michael Filmognari for the sequels will never not be a travesty), so seeing the title alone had me knowing that I’d be in from the jump. What’s delightful here is that the horrifying things being described aren’t happening to the protagonist… but instead, she’s the one perpetrating them. Gleefully and without abandon, collecting items from past lovers that ultimately lead to each of their deaths. With a rollicking script by Amelia Stephenson, a chilling performance by Addison Peacock, and an eerie, atmospheric soundtrack, this one is a must listen.

Dream Sequence

This is one that I’m having conflicted feelings about. The general premise of the series: about a scientist who has discovered a way to record the audio of people’s dreams and nightmares, is inspired. My problem comes in with the frame in which the story is told, which is as the BTS material for a proposed podcast by the scientist’s estranged journalist sister. There’s seems to be a distinct trend in some of these Hollywood-adjacent productions that mandates that the only correct answer to the question of Why is this story being told in an audio-only format? has to be that the story itself is strictly audio in nature. I personally find that to be limiting. It, to me, feels exactly the same as asking every single film and television producer why their work is being told through the camera? As if all fictional visual media should take the form of a mockumentary because why else would we be seeing the images before our eyes?

That isn’t to say that the frame is in and of itself bad, but this is a criticism I’ve had of the industry at large since I very first entered it back in 2016. Of course there are plenty of examples of strong fiction podcasts whose hook is that they’re following the adventures of some journalist or documentarian, investigating horrors both supernatural and slice-of-life (Limetown, The Black Tapes, Tanis, Arden). But even then, the work that often excites me the most, that helps me lose myself completely in the world of an audio drama, is when I’m dropped in and allowed to fill in the blanks myself. This is a personal preference, sure, but it’s also just a desire for a production with this much firepower behind it to both take bigger swings narratively, and trust me as an audience member to go along for the ride without my hand needing to be held the entire time.

I want to be clear in no uncertain terms: I think this show is good, and I am going to keep listening to it. The scripts by creator Andrew Martin Robinson are well written, the cast anchored by Jessie Case and Alice Kremelberg is strong (although there are a few minor characters that are a bit too similar in delivery to differentiate at times), and the production and sound design are inspired. I got goosebumps while I was listening to the nightmare sequences. I got home from a concert on Friday night and stayed in my car for 10 minutes to finish the episode. I am glad that this work is being made, at this caliber and quality, by companies like Realm and iHeart Podcasts and Blumhouse. I want work like this to keep being made, and I want creatives all around the world to be given the opportunity to continue to make it, so I’m thrilled to see the show be getting the attention it deserves, but I wish that the industry at large could free themselves from the limitations of what inherently makes audio fiction as a medium work.

I also have a hard time celebrating when I see this show in the #1 slot on the fiction charts, when iHeart laid of 18 people from its Podcast division last week, 17 of whom were part of their newly ratified Union, but that’s an entirely different conversation. I have no idea if any of the people impacted were in any way involved with this production, but it’s tough to see corporations continue to pat themselves on the back while continuing to devalue, and destabilize the lives of the people whose blood, sweat, and tears go into making the work they’re so proud of in the first place.

BONUS SNACK

Cursive - Devourer

Friday was a huge music day for me this week, between this record and the self titled Foxing album, but I thought I’d give my thoughts here since my pal Andrew Sacher at BrooklynVegan already such incredible things about that one, I’d shine some light here. Cursive are a band that I’ve been in love with since high school, and have had a lot of reinventions over the years, but this record feels like both a return to form for my favorite cello-forward era of The Ugly Organ, and a completely understandable endpoint for what it means to make a new Tim Kasher album in 2024. The songwriting is frenetic, jarring, and morose, and yet has its moments where hope still manages to shine through. It’s exactly the kind of record I needed right now. I know it’s cliche to say that the times we’re living through feel post-apocalyptic, especially as here in the States the political theater continues to ramp up all around us, but every single day I open up my phone and have to scroll past the picture of another dead child, ravaged by the rampant capitalism I am supposed to see as the ultimate freedom. At least the iPhone 16 looks pretty cool, am I right?

That’s all for now, folks. Thanks for getting this far! Next weekend I’ll be off officiating my little sister’s wedding, but I’ll se you again in two weeks!