via BroBible
I drink a lot of stuff and I listen to a lot of music, and apparently that’s now a new column I’ve decided to take on here in the back half of the year at BroBible.
It comes from a sense of rejuvenation after my wedding this past June, and also from hitting a wall on THINGS WE WANT, the column I’d been doing every Friday for about six months. I’m not a guy who wants for much, aside from a boat, currently, and I started feeling pretty gross about the hyper-consumerism I was basically running a weekly infomercial for. My inbox was also flooded with PR pitches across every category imaginable, and I have a real, working-on-it-with-my-therapist anxiety about disappointing people, so saying no to any of it felt impossible… So I just decided to cut bait and press the self-destruct button on the whole damn column instead.
It’s a good thing. THINGS WE WANT was all over the map. I’m a married man now. That means I yearn for focus.
So I was on a bike ride to the beach the other night and got to thinking. What are the things I actually like that I could commit to covering somewhat regularly that you, the BroBible reader, enjoy and find useful, and I find useful too? I narrowed it down to two: stuff to drink, and stuff to listen to.
Voila. Introducing 5 Things to Drink, 5 Things to Listen To. Welcome to the column’s maiden voyage.
The part I’m most excited about is that I probably won’t do this every week. Just every now and then, when I feel like it. Five things worth your money and five things worth your ears. If you don’t like one of the five, the good news is there are four others.
If there’s something you think I need to check out, email me: brandon@brobible.com
You can also:
A running list of what’s in the glass and what’s in the headphones.
1. Drink: Lyre’s Italian Spritz
via Lyres
Every non-alcoholic spirit on the market is trying to be Campari and most of them taste like somebody described it over a bad phone connection. They’re almost all nasty gutter juice.
Lyre’s is the rare one that actually earns the shelf space. Bright citrus sweetness, a little rhubarb bitterness, a dry finish. It drinks like an Aperol Spritz that skipped the 2pm nap. After a couple of them, I’m convinced it’s hydrating me and replenishing my electrolytes. But really, I don’t know.
The move, per my buddy who has strong and correct opinions about aperitivo hour: club soda and an orange slice. Nothing else. Don’t dress it up.
Lyre’s makes a whole NA spirits lineup beyond this one, gin, tequila, rum, whisky, amaretti, a coffee liqueur, basically the entire bar cart minus the part where you regret your night. But the Italian Spritz is the one that matters right now, because it is officially summer, which means every millennial you know is either in the Amalfi Coast, just got back from the Amalfi Coast, or lying about being in the Amalfi Coast on Instagram. This is the drink for people who did the trip and now need the bottle version at home without the added boozy oxidative stress to the liver.
One thing worth knowing: it’s built to be mixed, not sipped neat, so don’t be the guy nursing it on the rocks like it’s a fine scotch, you weirdo. It’s a mixer wearing a spirit’s clothes, and that’s the whole point.
Listen: Adriano Celentano, “Prisencolinensinainciusol”
This one played at our wedding dinner, and it was a bigger hit than I expected. My wife and I love telling people the entire song is gibberish. Every lyric. Celentano, an Italian pop legend, wrote it in 1972 to sound like American English to Italian ears who didn’t speak a word of it, and it works so well that people have spent decades trying to figure out what he’s actually saying. Nothing. That’s the joke. It’s also, by some accounts, the first rap song, which is a hell of a flex for a track that means nothing.
If it hooks you, the album to go back and actually sit with is Nostalrock, the 1973 record it came from. Celentano spends the whole thing doing loving, slightly unhinged homages to the American rock and roll he grew up on, Little Richard, Fats Domino, that whole era, filtered through an Italian guy who clearly had the time of his life making it. It’s a fun one to revisit start to finish, not just for the one song everyone already knows.
2. Drink: Highlandia THC Seltzer
via Highlandia
Every cannabis beverage brand wants to talk to you about milligrams and nano-emulsion technology. Highlandia skipped that pitch entirely and went straight for vibes, branding itself like a fantastical off-grid retreat, leaning hard on visuals, unusually noteworthy flavor combinations, and the general promise of escape. Think Iceland tourism board, but the destination is a beach chair in your own living room. The flavors alone read like fake vacation spots: Rocket Peak, Cottondew Clouds, Tangilime Grove. I’d book a trip to any of them.
In fact, they even have this nifty little travel guide. Who doesn’t love an intentionally designed and useful visual aid?
via Highlandia
Full disclosure on dosage: I’m a 5mg guy, tops. I don’t need the seltzer that turns your Tuesday into a full spiritual event, I just want the one that makes the couch feel 15% better. If you’re the same, read the can before you crack it, because this category ranges wildly and some of these things are built for people with a much higher tolerance for main-character energy.
Listen: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, “Level 5”
Feels right to pair this one with the THC seltzer, because King Gizzard just fully left rock behind and dove into a rave. Late last year the band ran a short tour of dance-focused shows, blending techno and drum and bass into loose, evolving live sets, and “Level 5” is the first studio evidence that it wasn’t a phase. It’s the lead single off their upcoming album Alien Metal, and it plays less like a song with a hook and more like a mood that keeps mutating on you, no clean start, no clean ending, just a groove that stretches out and never quite resolves.
They’ve flirted with electronic textures before, most notably on 2023’s The Silver Chord, but this is the first time they’ve fully dropped the guitars that have anchored basically every other era of their catalog. Which, if you know King Gizzard, tracks. This is a band on something like their 28th album who still can’t be bothered to make the same record twice. Not every era of theirs lands for every listener, but when it clicks, it really clicks, and this one clicked for me.
3. Drink: Coffee mate Situation-Sip Mixed Fruit Creamer
via CoffeeMat
I’m a jet fuel black coffee guy. Cold brew if I’m feeling fancy. So a limited-edition creamer built around strawberry, citrus, and mixed berry is not exactly my lane, but I contain multitudes and also a sweet tooth, so here we are.
The bit is that this creamer is a “situationship,” no labels, no commitment, here for a good time not a long time, which is a lot of narrative for something you pour into a mug. Bravo’s Carl Radke is apparently the face of this romance, which tracks, and the whole thing drops for free online in two waves, July 20 and July 27, first come first served, while supplies last. Very on brand for a situationship to be gone before you can define it.
If you’re a black coffee purist like me, don’t overthink it. Add a splash to an iced coffee on a hot day and let the berry notes do something you didn’t ask for. Sometimes the fling is worth it.
Listen: The Rolling Stones, “Rough and Twisted”
I put on Foreign Tongues, the new Rolling Stones record, on a bike ride the other day and it genuinely rips. This is album number 25, they’re recording with Andrew Watt again after Hackney Diamonds, and somehow this far into a six-decade career the band still sounds hungry instead of contractually obligated. “Rough and Twisted” is the opener and the mission statement, snarling riff, Jagger on harmonica, the whole thing feels like a bar band that’s been playing dive bars since the 60s and still means it.
Bonus points because I’ve got the Stones x World Cup 2026 vinyl pressing of this one, which is a very specific kind of nerdy I will not apologize for. Whatever your format, get into this album, it’s the rare late-career record from a legacy act that doesn’t feel like a victory lap.
4. Drink: Old Grand-Dad 7-Year Bottled-in-Bond
via Jim Beam
Finally, some hard stuff!
This is the second year Old Grand-Dad has put out a proper Bottled-in-Bond release, which for the uninitiated means one distillery, one distillation season, aged at least four years, bottled at 100 proof, the whole legally-mandated deal that’s been around since the 1890s to keep people from cutting bourbon with whatever was under the sink. This particular batch was laid down in barrels back in the fall of 2018, so it’s had seven years to figure itself out.
And it shows. This is a high-rye mash bill, so you get real spice on top of deep copper color, caramel and vanilla on the nose, and a finish that sticks around like it’s paying rent. Full-bodied, a little charred oak in there, velvety in a way that a lot of $40 bourbons don’t earn. At that price point this is doing more than it needs to.
Skip the mixer on this one. Neat or one rock, max.
Listen: Billy Strings, “Burn the Other End”
Billy Strings just announced a new album, So Much For Goodbyes, out August 28, and the lead single “Burn the Other End” is the first taste. It’s a mid-tempo one, which is notable for a guy whose whole reputation is built on blistering speed, and it proves he doesn’t need to shred to make you feel something. Co-written with Paul Hoffman, it’s got a darker, more patient side of his playing than you usually get from him.
The backstory here is a heavy one. Strings lost his mother last June, and the album grew directly out of that. He’d talked about wanting to turn some of her poetry into songs, but couldn’t find a way to make that work yet, so instead the album carries her presence in a different way: the cover art is a piece she was working on the night she died, and the title comes from Strings never getting the chance to actually say goodbye to her. If that sounds like a tough listen, it also sounds like exactly the kind of record that turns into someone’s favorite album of the year. Sixteen tracks, T Bone Burnett co-producing, worth clearing your calendar for when it drops on August 28th. And don’t forget to see him while he’s on the road this summer.
5. Drink: Kirkland Signature Sparkling Energy Drink (Orange)
These Costco energy drinks absolutely slap. 💯 pic.twitter.com/rQAqKv2JaJ
— brandon wenerd (@brandonwenerd) June 30, 2026
My wife and I are fully in our Kirkland energy drink era. We grabbed some pizza the other day and noticed that Costco dropped a 24-can variety pack, Tropical, Orange, Peach, for $16.99, which works out to under 70 cents a can. Everyone on the internet immediately clocked it as a Celsius situation, 200mg of caffeine, zero sugar, same general playbook, and honestly, sure, fine, call it whatever you want. It’s good and it’s cheap and those two words rarely show up in the same sentence together.
Orange is my pick. In fact, I ran out of coffee a couple of days ago, and had one of these with breakfast.
It’s not trying to be a fancy craft soda, it just tastes like orange and gets you locked in, which is all I actually want from something in a skinny can. And because it’s Costco, you’re not buying one, you’re buying a case, which means you now have a small energy drink fortress in your garage. No notes.
Listen: J.P. Reali, “West L.A. Fadeaway” (from Grateful Blues EP)
I’m going to see a honky tonk Grateful Dead cover band this Saturday, and it’s put me down a rabbit hole of loving every genre-swap reinterpretation of that catalog I can find. Which brings me to guitarist J.P. Reali’s new EP Grateful Blues, six Dead songs run through a straight blues filter, out July 31, timed to land right before Jerry Garcia’s birthday on August 1.
“West L.A. Fadeaway” is a good one to start with. Reali takes the Garcia and Hunter original and turns it into a slow-burning minor-key blues number. He’s been a Deadhead since he was a teenager in the 80s, and it shows, this isn’t a novelty tribute, it’s someone who knows the source material well enough to bend it into something new without losing what made it good in the first place.
If you’re the kind of jam band fan who thinks a Dead song only counts if it sounds like the Dead, this EP will happily prove you wrong.
Full album out on July 31.