January 2012
1 post
5 tags
important retraction / note on camp
The first time I wrote about Lana Del Rey, in a column, a few months back, I said I was pleased that when she invoked the name “Lolita,” she actually seemed to be talking about something like the character in the novel, and not whatever strange mincing porny thing people use that name to refer to today.
Now, having heard her song “Lolita,” I would like to apologize and...
December 2011
9 posts
projects that will have to happen later
I keep thinking about the sound of that Destroyer album we were discussing the other day, its supposed lite-jazz uncoolness. Something else occurs to me: There’s a reason I always wind up using the term new-wave to describe it. There was a period, in the later 80s and the very beginning of the 90s, when a lot of rock, indie, and new-wave types, mostly English ones, had grown up into making...
I joined a club.
Every year, I get very excited about reading Slate’s Music Club, in which some of my favorite critics bounce letters back and forth about the past twelve months. This year I’m slightly nervous instead, because I’ve been asked to join them. Starting this morning, you can follow along as I try my best to keep up with Ann Powers, Jonah Weiner, Jody Rosen, and Carl Wilson — the...
i am confused by certain descriptions of...
tomewing:
This makes a lot of sense - that the reason I felt frustrated by my inability to detect the “strata of semiotic meaning” is because it doesn’t exist and the people talking the album up in that way are basically wrong.
Which leaves… what? Well, the references to Stereolab, Yo La Tengo, and the Aluminium Group help clear things up as well, in that I’m not fond of any of those bands either...
i am confused by certain descriptions of...
tomewing:
My sense with Kaputt is that it doesn’t travel particularly well: at least some of its power relies on a particular past, and on that past having particular overtones, and if that’s not so familiar or resonant it doesn’t work quite as well. Like, I didn’t listen to sax-y soft rock in the 80s but I didn’t NOT listen to it, it isn’t something which could ever code as horrible or...
Anonymous asked: where are you from?
“feel like theres a real correlation between millennials raised in an overly...”
– Today in Real Talk With Joe Schoech (via celebraterickysargulesh)
obligatory but fun
I put together a Spotify playlist of 50 songs/artists* I enjoyed this year, which — if you’re interested — you can get to via this Vulture post.
* By “artists” I basically mean there are lots of tracks from people whose albums I liked, as opposed to just 50 hot singles full-stop. Rubrics!
you will be buried in lists
The New York Magazine year-end culture issue is out, with a list (in no super-meaningful order) of ten of my favorite records from the year (I am not great at the TEN BEST, IN ORDER OF OBJECTIVE BESTNESS part), and a short piece about pop music’s mostly glorious (for now) return to seeming really classically “pop” again, maybe. (That idea is partly a suggestion I’d be...
Anonymous asked: It's ironic that you write Skrillex off as "broed-out" when his music clearly appeals to girls as much as guys. The assumption that his music must be for bros because it includes aggressive use of bass seems sexist to me. Girls like bass too! The current "pop-rave" movement is arguably fueled by girls, who come out in droves to see Skrillex, Bassnectar, and Pretty Lights...
November 2011
10 posts
this week, in the magazine...
… a quick review of Rihanna and Drake
nthnsknnr asked: I was at powerhouse last night and am forgetting the name of the singer Will showed the video of singing in that stadium - can you point me in the write direction? Also, I've been a big fan of your writing for quite a while, always enjoy reading your POV. Thanks in advance!
Train's Pat Monahan Talks New Album, Acting Gigs →
perpetua:
When you ask someone in a band jokingly if they want to do something with burritos after they tell you that they want to bring San Francisco to the people on tour, you don’t ever expect them to earnestly say yes and tell you about their plan to sell the world’s best burritos at their gigs. Anyway, even if you totally hate Train, I recommend that you read this interview I conducted with...
tonight ...
… is the night I get to talk to Will Hermes about his new book, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire, about music made in New York City in the 1970s. The event runs from 7-9 at powerHouse Arena in DUMBO, where Hermes will read and then the two of us will sit down and talk about how he wrote the book, and what’s in the book, and also a little about music made in New York City today. I should...
prrr, halls of mirrors, and why it's good to just...
last night i went to a party for “The World’s Perfect Zine,” which is a zine that was just put out by a guy called “David Shapiro,” but who is actually named something else. a zine is like a self-made magazine. the party was at a downtown record store called Other Music, and it was sponsored by Tumblr, because David Shapiro writes a well-known Tumblr called...
On Vulture this week...
… something on King Krule and Atlas Sound.
watching watch the throne
Kanye and Jay-Z,
sitting in Madison Square Garden.
Acting
L-A-R-G-E-R T-H-A-N L-I-F-E.
Their Watch the Throne show is fun! Fun in the way that a movie with lots of stunts and explosions is fun. It’s not quite the right context for Kanye’s artier tracks, but that’s a small thing. I wrote about it here on Vulture.
Buried in there is a very serious question that I actually want...
a couple things happening soon
This Sunday afternoon, in Williamsburg, I’ll be reading something of Lynne Tillman’s at a release party for New Herring Press. (Thanks to the invitation of the always-great Sara Marcus.)
On Thursday the 17th, from 7-9, I’ll be at powerHouse Arena in DUMBO, talking with Will Hermes about his new book, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire, which I have to tell you is sort of...
my mortifying month
This is mainly just a link to my latest Pitchfork column.
As a bonus, though — this month has been so mortifying that I actually have to tell you about it! It’s a story of heavy-duty teeth-gnashing, and the cautionary tale of a writer who slowly realizes that he has forgotten something basic about how to frame a piece. (Do me a favor and read this primarily as a “funny...
October 2011
4 posts
(Lou Reed + Metallica) vs. (Lou Reed) +...
This week’s nymag contains my review of the collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica. I guess at least 20 minutes of it are pretty good.
The Big Music →
tomewing:
New Poptimist! About Coldplay, epic rock, religion, half-remembered bits from my English A-Level, etc etc.
Another great Poptimist column, as happens about once a month!
On This Is the Sea, Mike Scott seemed to pull it back to its religious meaning, as an expression of your communion with a higher force. Not God, though: truth, meaningfulness, music itself. The Big Music rewrote...
elsewhere
Here are some links to things I’ve written elsewhere (in between drafting and not-publishing an actual post here on Tumblr about Gauntlet Hair and the Cocteau Twins and this one noisy radiator in my old apartment):
A short piece for the magazine about why I imagine people were rather invested in Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore’s relationship.
A longer piece for the magazine about...
SFJ, black metal
Frere-Jones’s article on American black metal reads wonderfully (“couture pandas”!), and is currently tempting me to dump an entire transcript here, of an interview I did with Hunter Hunt-Hendrix from Liturgy, for a New York piece that got axed. SFJ is certainly correct that there is a whole lot of thought and passion involved in people’s ideas of black metal — even...
September 2011
2 posts
one last thing I wrote
… is a quick vague question about the fungibility of Radiohead’s skill, which totally seems to have baffled and angered the first few commenters.
why we fight, with bonus links
I have a slight backlog of things to link here, things I’ve written that you, kind person, might feel like reading. Don’t read them all in a row, though; you’d get really sick of my habits and tics then, wouldn’t you?
New “Why We Fight” column, on Lana Del Rey
A piece for nymag’s Intelligencer, on whistling, and its use in loads of ads and crossover...
August 2011
6 posts
MTVs, VMAs, GLEEs, and pop culture that exists...
I get the feeling people will read this quick thing I wrote about the VMAs as me being cranky or old or anti-pop, but it’s not meant that way. I really like mainstream pop. Enough so that I like it to stay fairly distinct from Glee, when possible. You know, pop where music and image come together to create new aesthetics, instead of doing a lot of hairbrush-and-mirror dress-up with old ones.
why we fight #17
My latest “Why We Fight” column, at Pitchfork, is a touch more confessional than usual.
Das Racist
desnoise:
“a riff on Baha’i (“the Girl Talk of religions”)”
—
Das Racist on Their Latest Album, ‘Relax’ - Fall Preview 2011 — New York Magazine
Everything about this article is as wonderful as you’d expect from the people involved (Das Racist, Nitsuh Abebe), but I’m glad I came to check this out online, because upon reading the print version just now I was sure D.R./N.T.A....
the Weeknd, like One-Eyed Jack's, is Canadian
Now up at Vulture: a piece in which I figure Abel Tesfaye is basically the David Lynch of r&b. But do I mean that in a good way? You’re in suspense now, right?
3 tags
times, changing
tankboy:
You know what? I went to high school in the ’80s. I had a computer. I read sci-fi. I was super fucking smart. And I was what one would call a huge fucking nerd. The day “nerd” became sexy was also the day I realized everything that had caused me pain from age 0-19 had been coopted by jocks and diluted past the point of fucking no return.
Everyone’s adolescence is painful, but the...
watch the throne, reviewed
Watch the Throne is about something more interesting than it’s getting credit for — so I wish it were better than just a “good” album.
Also, Kanye is really tiresome on it. Most of my commentary on Kanye was editorially excised from the Vulture review linked above, on the grounds that readers probably already know Kanye’s tiresome, but maybe you’ll enjoy some...
July 2011
3 posts
my obligatory thoughts on Amy Winehouse...
… appear here; please enjoy
Anonymous asked: Are you still passionate about twee pop? I think your Twee as Fuck article for Pitchfork is one of the most brilliant pieces of music journalism I've ever read, and I was curious if you still have a passion for that kind of music.
"we must be superstars"
I have a slightly odd and stat-packed essay about pop and narcissism in this week’s New York.
June 2011
3 posts
my slight problem with Bon Iver
Discussed over here —
in a few brief paragraphs.
Negativity!
why we fight #15
Is here, and spins off
from a piece I ran last week
which can be found here.
—Basho
trans. Kenneth Rexroth
May 2011
5 posts
on Gaga
I wrote a quick review of the new Lady Gaga album for the magazine. It’s not likely to have anything particularly mindblowing to tell you about the album itself, but there’s a small question at the end that I’m very curious about, and hope to see someone else talk about. And which I will probably write about here, later, if I get some time…
“From story to story or novel to novel the shapeless, nameless thing that I try...”
– The Paris Review let me interview Chris Adrian, a favorite since The Children’s Hospital blew the top of my head off. He reads here tonight at 7—you can ask him whatever questions I missed. (via mcnallyjackson)
Anonymous asked: I read that Tyler piece more or less the way you intended, but your writing about him has a strange kind of ambiguity. I keep having to reread bits to see that you end up on the side of not excusing his flaws.
I dunno, do you identify with him in slight ways that would make totally excoriating him feel like protesting too much? Or disidentify with him so much you forget not...
I dunno, do you identify with him in slight ways that would make totally excoriating him feel like protesting too much? Or disidentify with him so much you forget not...
OH MAN
throwherinthewater:
so, i hate odd future. i haven’t talked about it here before, because i really don’t feel like they need more e-ink than has already been spilled on them, from both sides. but i have to say something about this ny magazine post about tyler the creator’s new album, by nitsuh abebe (whose writing i usually really love), particularly this (insane) paragraph:
A lot of Goblin is...
on, yes, Tyler
This is me, either over- or under-thinking Tyler, the Creator’s Goblin, at some length — and sort of the way I’d once have written about it here on Tumblr. I’m probably wrong about a lot of it? Please enjoy!
April 2011
5 posts
why we fight, no. 13
A new Why We Fight column — about rock critic Ellen Willis, the alleged end of meaning in music, Tune-Yards, and more.
Poly Styrene
Oh, I know, it’s late now and you’re probably thinking about eating dinner or getting drinks or something, but I wrote something about the late Poly Styrene, of X-Ray Spex, and it’s up now right here! It even contains totally scientific information about the biodegradability of aromatic-polymer thermoplastics!
tUnE-yArDs →
A quick piece, finally up.
on TV on the Radio's new album →
Quickish review on Vulture.
On Panda Bear / Animal Collective →
Trying to do a better job of dropping links here to things I’ve written for Vulture. This one’s about a particular facet of the appeal of Animal Collective, and Panda Bear, and — get this — maybe why it would resonate for some more than others.
March 2011
2 posts
obligatory lcd recap
If you’d asked me, around dinnertime yesterday, “Do you know any members of the storied early-80s funk band Liquid Liquid?,” I would have said no, I do not, though I do think they’re great.
Then last night I went to see the first of LCD Soundsystem’s farewell shows, at Terminal 5, and Liquid Liquid came out to open, and I was like … wait, is that Sal from the...
1 tag
Odd Future, energy, inclusion, and exclusion
A little over a week ago, for work, I wrote a quick SXSW recap post involving Odd Future — which wound up being trimmed down to a post about Odd Future, and then, after more editors went over it, an article about Odd Future, and then eventually I started to feel like whatever vague point I’d had might have wound up dulled and unclear. So here’s a clearer thought, which is not...