Dinner Music #138: The weekly lineup

with special guest Catherine Lacey

Jun 16, 2025

This week we’re talking to and taking recommendations from author

. The way her work intersects with music was on my mind after I read her novel, Biography of X, which felt like a deep excavation of the fault lines between reality and unreality and the feelings that writhe between the two (“But I know now a person always exceeds and resists the limits of a story about them, and no matter how widely we set the boundaries, their subjectivity spills over, drops at the edges, then rushes out completely. People are, it seems, too complicated to sit still inside a narrative, but that hasn’t stopped anyone from trying, desperately trying, to compact a life into pages.”). One of the characters in the book is Connie Converse (Dinner Music 131), mythic in reality, a bit more human in Lacey’s re-telling. I could write a lot more about the way her work sounds, the words and sentences themselves (she has so many good ones, like this favorite of mine: “I was young and therefore insane.”) and her depiction of sound, music and otherwise. An image from Biography of X that I think of often is someone sleeping underneath a piano. There’s an East Village punk bar. David Bowie makes an appearance.

A little while back, I reached out to Lacey after she posted a link to a playlist for her upcoming novel, The Möbius Book, from her Substack, Untitled Thought Project. And now, we’re here and I feel very lucky to have her be a part of this project. She’s chosen some great albums and I’m recycling her excellent playlist for the Dinner Music weekly.

Her book, The Möbius Book, comes out tomorrow. Buy it. Buy all of her others, while you’re at it.

The playlist: Spotify / Apple Music

“[This is] a very autobiographical mix, one that reminds me of mixtapes I used to make for myself and friends when I was a teenager who hoped I might someday be a busy adult.”

- via

Untitled Thought Project

How does music fit into your life?

I can’t really sing or play an instrument, and I feel this ignorance gives me a pure excitement for listening to music that I don’t have with other art forms. Songs are like utter magic to me; I have so little clue how they come to be, even though I am friends with a fair number of musicians. I tend to listen to albums obsessively, and sometimes I’ll spend half a day just listening to one single song over and over. In the last few years I’ve also been writing bios for musicians’ upcoming albums. They’re just short write ups of how a certain album came to be, which means listening to it months before it’s released and talking to the musician about their process, their lives, how the record came to be. It’s a side hustle that I really enjoy.

Can you describe what it’s like for you to listen to a very good song?

Visceral. Obsessive. Transporting. I absolutely become, in my mind, the speaker of the song (even if it’s a wordless song). It feels a bit like writing fiction, to be honest, but someone else is mysteriously doing all the work.

What’s the relationship like between music and writing for you?

I often listen to albums or single songs on repeat when I work. And once a book I’m writing takes over my life, which they always do, I make it a playlist which isn’t the music I listen to when I write, but rather a mix I’m giving the project, like it’s a new lover or friend or someone I want to impress. For a little while I was writing songs with a friend of mine which was exciting, too.

In Biography of X, Connie Converse loomed large. Why Connie?

I started listening to Connie in 2016. I would put her albums on for anything, they felt so all purpose. I remember I was cooking dinner with a friend once and we wanted to put some music on and I chose Connie and she was like, “Connie Converse is really your go-to lately?” and I realized I’d been playing her nonstop for days. When I learned about her life story and found out how she had vanished, I took it really personally, and I wanted to imagine a different end of her life– not to sanitize her pain, but to give her a different ending.

Lastly, how would you describe the ideal dinner party?

The ideal dinner party happens at the apartment of my friend’s Brenda and Rich. They’re perfect hosts. Rich cooks and charms, Brenda mixes the drinks and lets everyone know when it’s time to go home.

Catherine Lacey is the author of The Möbius Book, Biography of X, Pew, Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, and Certain American States. Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, a fellowship from The Cullman Center, the Young Lions Fiction Award, an O. Henry, and the Brooklyn Public Library Book Award. Her books have been translated into a dozen languages including Japanese and Persian. She lives in Mexico.

Paid subscribers have access to the full Dinner Music archive (via Spotify and Apple Music), an after hours playlist, a “New York Grooves” playlist and more — hundreds of hours of groove, jazz, folk, samba, hi-life, disco, funk and more, lovingly selected.

Plus, paid subscribers get a monthly playlist (check out the playlist for May here), albums recs for new music, and access to the “for consideration” weekly playlists (2-5 hours of additional music!).

Monday

“This is an angry album. I'd listen to it while cooking by myself, not with other people.”

Portrait of a Lady - Shilpa Ray (2022)

Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services

Tuesday

“And Shilpa Ray might want me want to listen to Chavela, who still rages, but with more softness, more pleading. There's never been a voice more perfect.”

La Noche de mi Mal - Chavela Vargas (1961)*

Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services

Wednesday

“I love that Shauf makes narrative albums, but for that reason I like listening to his albums completely rather than putting songs on mixes.”

Wilds - Andy Shauf (2021)

Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services

Thursday

“I love these solo piano compositions. Solo piano is really my go to when I want a palette cleanser.”

Solo Piano - Chilly Gonzales (2004)

Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services

Friday

“Every time I remember this album I am confronted how absolutely all-purpose it is, at least for me. It's sexy, but also fun. It's neither too slow nor too fast. It sets a flexible mood, for the most part, or its good if you're trying to seduce someone.”

Voodoo - D'Angelo (2000)

Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services

From the archive

Dinner Music 128 | The women of yacht rock

I have been a long, long time fan of Laura Allen and wanted to do a deep dive on other women who were (or are) doing yacht rock, which feels, to me, so dominated by male-forward groups, like Steely Dan or The Doobie Brothers, both of which I love (especially Steely Dan). If you’re not in a good mood already, you will be by the end of the playlist.

Dinner Music 129 | ethio-jazz, samba, global psychedelia

The sound is soft — pulling from traditional instrumentation of Ethiopia, Haiti, Brazil, Anatolia and Guinea while melting the arrangements with modern and Western elements of jazz, funk, and soul. Many evoke “oceanic feeling,” drifting through genres and regions while moving above and beyond them.

Pair with:

Sheet pan steak and chipotle corn tacos. Always a happy day when tacos are on the menu.
Cucumber and avocado salad bean dip. Impress everyone at the party! Bring this dip!!
The Rolling Stones Play Zydeco. Loved reading this love for zydeco and Clifton Chenier. My father is a Louisianan, so both were very present in my childhood. When I was a teenager, we went to zydeco brunch in Breaux Bridge, an experience I will never forget and would encourage every single person to do.
Further reading on Connie Converse, like this book that came about in 2023 or this article in NYT Magazine or this one in the New Yorker.

Thank you, thank you. Have a great week. No “for consideration” playlist this week, since we had a guest curate the tunes, but I’ve recently added a lot of back playlists from the archive, which paid subscribers can see a list of here: dinnermusic.substack.com/chat. Thanks as always for your support of this project!

If any of y’all are in New York, I’ll be playing my debut gig on June 21 (!!!) in the city (as 1/2 of Horse Opera) at Jupiter Disco. Come say hi :)