Don’t take our word as gospel, but we’re counting in with some fab picks this week.
LISTEN
Four Favourite Track 4s
Joni Mitchell - “Carey”
From the 1971 album Blue.
The hand drums and bass groove here is impeccable and Joni’s in a good mood as she flutters about giving toasts to her temporary tourist town home and the “bright red devil” she met there who makes it hard to leave.
Bruce Cockburn - “Burden of the Angel/Beast”
From the 1994 album Dart to the Heart.
Dart to the Heart might’ve been the first of many Bruce Cockburn albums from my dad’s collection that I grew to love thanks to its array of beautiful folk rock musings like this one.
Eminem - “Cleanin’ Out My Closet”
From the 2002 album The Eminem Show.
A deep, brooding dive into Eminem’s tumultuous and traumatic family history that is probably my favourite track on the album—coming in surprisingly early for such a moody track on a lengthy album at #4.
Waxahatchee - “Right Back to It”
From the 2024 album Tigers Blood.
Just gorgeous—the yearning lyrics, the perfect voices, the tickling banjo, the steady folk groove. What a quietly and slowly stunning video too. This track 4 is number 1 in my heart.
-JB
Go check out the tracklistings of some of your favourite abums. Any track 4s stand out to you?
WATCH
Four Favourite Four-Character TV shows
It only seems right to do another Letterboxd-style Four Favourites here, except I’m going to go with TV instead and up the thematic ante by focusing on shows that have four characters at their core.
All Creatures Great and Small
My wife introduced me to this show a while ago and we’re still only on Season 2 but I already hold great affection for the core four of upstanding James, crotchety Siegfried, cheeky Tristan, and all-knowing Mrs. Hall who holds them all together. My favourite moments are those ones usually at the end of an episode when they’re all just sitting around the fire or at the dinner table together, enjoying each other’s company. Dream life!
Schitt’s Creek
The four Roses aren’t really the type of people to have slow and cozy family time together like the charming All Creatures Great and Small crew, but they end up being just as loveable over the course of the show’s six seasons.
Stranger Things
By Season 5 (I’m still only halfway through so no spoilers please!) the amount of main characters has grown exponentially but the whole thing starts with just four middle school boys playing D&D in a basement, and this sort of collaborative and adventurous spirit remains even as more and more people join the tight-knit real-life-monster-fighting crew.
Seinfeld
30 years later and there are more than a few jokes and plotlines that haven’t aged well, and in my current rewatch I’ve just started skipping Jerry’s mostly unfunny stand up bits at the start and end of each episode, but one thing that can’t be denied is the strength of its core four characters. The whole show is basically just these four people that externalize their extreme insecurities and incessantly complain about all their weird little pet peeves and in doing so alienate themselves from pretty much everyone else in New York City (and that’s a lot of people)—but they always have each other: they call each other on the phone, they “pop in” to each other’s houses (well, mostly Jerry’s), they go shopping together, they carpool, they scheme, they meet for coffee and meals on a regular basis. They’re in contact with each other pretty much on the daily and I can’t help but envy that sort of consistent and committed friendship.
-JB
READ
My four most anticipated reads this year
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (2009)
I chose this one for my office book club, and my copy is still on its way in the mail.
Here’s why:
Tokarzcuk won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2018.
A story about a reclusive woman who’s obsessed with William Blake sounds right up my alley.
It’s short enough that I felt OK asking my coworkers to read it, even if it seemed a little too weird for their taste.
Vigil by George Saunders (2026)
Vigil was officially released this past Tuesday. You don’t get much newer than that! George Saunders writes one of my favourite newsletters, he was the first living author I became a true fan of, and his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, was spectacular, so there’s very little chance I won’t love this book. Hoping to pick up my copy at The Next Page this weekend.
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)
This is one of those books that anyone who’s serious about 20th Century lit is supposed to read. A lot people who like the same types of books as me list this one as a favourite, so I’m expecting good things.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (1967)
This is probably the most suggested book in my life that I have yet to read. Friends, colleagues, the New York Times, basically every area of influence in my life besides my family has told me to read it. Better get on it then, I guess!
-AK
The conductor’s putting down his hands. Next time, we’re getting our hands dirty as we dig up our culture’s take on
Love this format. The Seinfeld observation about consistent committed friendship is something I think about way too much. That level of daily contact with friends feelsimpossible now but also so needed. The carpool and pop-in culture they had was peak community tbh. Also Carey is a perfect track 4,such a vibe.
Impressive TV list!