Good readers, another weekend is here. Cook a fry-up. Hit a dancefloor. Slip into a zen state watching your cat methodically clean itself.
What I’m saying here, to myself as much as anyone, is allow yourself some simple pleasures amid all the “getting shit done”. But make sure you’ve digested this week’s five great reads first.
1. National fervour meets killer instinct
For the past month Australia has had a fever and the only prescription has been more Matildas. What the fanatics, bandwagoners and confused onlookers didn’t count on was England being better than us at a sport. Much better, as it turned out.
Who better to break the World Cup semi-final down than Jonathan Liew, who talks weeping fans, Sam Kerr’s wonder-strike, and the Lionesses’ command of the dark arts.
How long will it take to read: Three minutes.
Further reading: We’ll have the Matildas’ third-place playoff and that other match covered in full through our World Cup hub.
2. Return of the ‘dumb phone’
Most of us smartphone owners celebrate the small victories, like removing the Twitter app or hitting a daily screen time average of less than two hours. (Which I thought was bad until learning the Australian average is closer to five.)
Giving up that sweet, sweet connection to everything at all times, though, sounds like crazy talk. But for Angelo Profera, a 21-year-old smartphone native, trading down to an old-school dumb phone proved an “almost spiritual” experience.
The pros? No endless WhatsApp chats.
The cons? Less contact with your friends via endless WhatsApp chats.
How long will it take to read: Four minutes.
3. The slow evolution of Steve Albini
What to do if you have produced seminal albums by the Pixies, PJ Harvey and Nirvana but are best known for being “an incendiary jerkoff”, as Jeremy Gordon puts it? If you’re Steve Albini, punk rock firebrand, you have a good, long, hard think about yourself and apologise for your ways – decades after the fact.
Still, this week’s long read captures the Chicagoan in typically quotable form, with his experience working on Nirvana’s divisive, immense In Utero still leaving a sour taste.
***
“The three members of Nirvana I have absolutely no gripe with whatsoever. Every other person they worked with was a manipulative piece of shit who was putting pressure on them, scapegoating me and shit-talking this great record they made.”
How long will it take to read: 13 (fascinating!) minutes.
4. In defence of the recorder
From the sublime to the ridiculous, and the one instrument we have all played.
This week I learned there are people among us who didn’t toss away their recorders once school finished. Kat Lister puts up her hand to defend the Marmite of the woodwind world, whose exponents are adamant it is “vastly complex” and “even a little bit dangerous”.
How long will it take to read: Three minutes.
Further reading: Even Stevie Wonder is enamoured of the harpejji – a brand new instrument that is like a metre-long cross between a piano and electric guitar.
5. ‘An avalanche injured me – and killed my friend’
The story of how Joe Yelverton emerged alive from a California avalanche almost 40 years ago is harrowing enough: broken bones, hallucinations, one of his co-climbers dead nearby. What came next was even worse. “I was completely unfamiliar with that sort of trauma,” Yelverton recalls, “and ill-equipped to deal with it.”
You can’t outrun your past: If you’ve watched Yellowjackets, you know surviving a tragedy is just the beginning. And so it went for Yelverton: PTSD, addiction, survivor’s guilt, flashbacks – and finally, he says, acceptance.
How long will it take to read: Five minutes.
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