Staff Picks: New Taskmaster and Katie Gavin's solo outing

Horrors Week has ended, so our tastes have shifted from the macabre to the deeply weird and folksy. This week, Features Editor Jen Lennon stumps for a perennially entertaining panel show and Staff Writer Emma Keates follows a member of MUNA into the spotlight.

What A Relief, Katie Gavin

Watching a member of one of your favorite bands strike out on their own is always a nerve-wracking experience. It’s hard not to worry you’re about to learn the hard way that an artist you really loved isn’t actually as talented or as good at not releasing corny vanity projects as you thought. You may find yourself asking whether or not this new venture is going to color your prior opinion of the group as a whole or, even worse, if that group will exist at all in the future. Was there drama that led to the album? So-called “creative differences?”

Luckily, Katie Gavin’s new album, What A Relief, is exactly that: a big fucking relief. But it’s a lot more than that, too; the word “relief” implies a return to some sort of baseline after a moment of stress, but the MUNA frontperson’s first solo project finds her baring her soul both sonically and lyrically in a way she’s never allowed herself before. “I want you to film me when you’re not recording/I want you to see me when you’re not looking,” the album opens via “I Want It All,” a lovely, meditative track that establishes two important things right out of the gate. First, this is an album filled to the brim with desire, and second, it sounds absolutely nothing like MUNA.

To clarify, I love MUNA and all their in-your-face extravagance. But it’s been pretty clear since the band’s “country version of Silk Chiffon (the gay way)” at Tiny Desk—a version I’ve actually come to prefer over the past year—that a part of Gavin’s soul has yearned for something a bit more folksy. “There is a part of me in MUNA that loves the ‘Brat Summer’ of it all, but it’s ultimately not exactly who I am—especially at this point in my life. I’m more like, ‘Let’s have a bonfire,'” she told Paste in a recent cover story, in which she also referred to the album as “Lilith Fair-core.” (And don’t worry—MUNA isn’t going anywhere. These songs just “aren’t in the MUNA world.”) It’s a pretty perfect description. Gavin’s forbears—Ani DiFranco, Alanis Morissette, Tracy Chapman, and the like—shine through on tracks like “As Good As It Gets” (a standout featuring Mitski), “Sparrow,” “Inconsolable,” and “Sanitized” (a personal favorite that recalls early Fiona Apple), but at the end of the day, the album is Gavin’s through and through.

If you’re as much of a MUNA fan as I am, What A Relief only adds to the story of the group. Even if you’ve never heard of them, the album is still a strong, intimate portrait of a songwriter coming into her own—one that deserves recognition solely on its own merit. “Time unfurls and you’ll understand/The baton, it will be passed again,” Gavin sings on “The Baton.” She took the lead from her elders and will inevitably continue the chain herself one day, but for now, it’s her time. [Emma Keates]

Taskmaster series 18

Even mediocre seasons of Taskmaster are still fun, but a great cast really makes it shine. The U.K. panel game show is now in its 18th season and has spawned spin-offs around the world, most notably in New Zealand and Australia. (We tried it in the U.S., too, but it only lasted one season here.) The premise is as outlandish as it is simple: Gather five comedians, ask them to perform increasingly absurd tasks, and then judge them on their performances. The deeply weird rapport between show creator and “Taskmaster’s assistant” Alex Horne and Taskmaster Greg Davies can bolster seasons where the cast, for whatever reason, doesn’t click. Season (or series) 17, for example, was a mixture of too competent and too normal. No one really stood out as being the particular flavor of weird that makes Taskmaster so special, and the cast as a whole never really clicked in the studio. 

But season 18 has fallen beautifully into place, with the cast taking on some classic, archetypal roles that have come to define a truly great season. Babátúndé Aléshé is the person who clearly wasn’t familiar with the show before he joined and had no idea what he was signing up for, Jack Dee is the veteran comedian who can’t believe he’s been reduced to this, Emma Sidi is the (relatively) grounded one, and Andy Zaltzman and Rosie Jones are the wildcards. Zaltzman has particularly shined in the studio segments, where he’s shown up in increasingly bizarre costumes, including with a pool cue and as a Roman gladiator-cum-cricketer. But I’ve been particularly loving the interactions between Jones and Dee, who sit next to each other in the studio and are paired together for team tasks. Dee is famously stoic, and Jones basically never stops smiling. She can get under his skin better than anyone, and it’s so funny to watch the corner of his eye twitch every time she calls him “Jackie.” The tasks have been on-point, too (episode three’s “Put a rocket in your pocket” and episode seven’s “Work out what’s in the box” are standouts), but it’s the chemistry between the contestants that has made this series really special. [Jen Lennon]