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I wrote about Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 and the twilight of freakdom
The Sunday Review ☀️ Thinking Fellers Union Local 282's Strangers From the Universe
pitchfork.visitlink.me/JR21_…
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my roommate took out Beau Is Afraid from the Queens Public Library, where a librarian evidently tried out and rejected a few potential descriptors (“drama,” “depressing,” “3 hrs long,”) before settling on “comedy”
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Raymond Chandler owning all science fiction writers and casually inventing Google in a letter from 1953
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watched Blade Runner for the first time in many years last night and was surprised to learn it takes place in like a week
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Rolling Stone list should prob just exclude jazz entirely, to avoid stuff like the preposterous and surely unintentional suggestion that (to choose one particularly funny example) Drake's 'Take Care' is better than every jazz record ever made besides Kind of Blue and Bitches Brew
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obviously Cormac McCarthy isn’t underrated per se but one thing that gets lost i thinj in all the focus on the fire-and-brimstone aspect of his work is how fucking funny the small-talk type dialogue is in all his books
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not obscure but I’ve always found it cool and spooky that both Grateful Dead and the Velvet Underground called themselves the Warlocks before changing names and arriving at dueling west/east coast versions of how rock’n’roll could respond to the drugs and upheaval of the late 60s
deadheads - what's the most obscure / interesting piece of dead lore you can hit me with right now, as someone who knows little about the band's history
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stating the obvious: the last two Low records are among the wildest & most beautiful albums of our era, on par with Talk Talk for a band deciding in its final chapter to find something new in the unknown. RIP to Mimi Parker, traveling the raw edge of experience until the end
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played a selection from this freak classic while DJing last night, a guy came up to say he recognized but couldn’t place it, and refused to believe me when I told him it wasn’t Amon Düül or Popol Vuh and showed him the cover
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this exchange between Kim Thayil and Billy Corgan from SPIN's '94 Soundgarden cover story is very good spin.com/2017/05/soundgarden…
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what g/o is doing to deadspin right now is maybe the worst corporate mismanagement of a publication I’ve ever seen? taking one of the few lively, widely read, distinctly voices, and profitable sites left and actively working to destroy everything people like about it
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Late last month, I got a text from an editor asking if I’d be interested in interviewing all four original Talking Heads. We weren’t sure it was really going to happen but of course I said yes immediately. A few weeks later, we sat down to talk.
pitchfork.com/features/inter…
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I wrote a bit about the amazing new Cindy Lee album pitchfork.com/reviews/albums…
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here’s a piece I’ve been wanting to write for years, about Sonny Sharrock’s masterpiece final album ‘Ask the Ages’ and the Black roots of noise guitar pitchfork.com/reviews/albums…
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the coachella/urban outfitters suit reads like they're trying to convince the judge to put on a floppy hat and join them in the desert
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For this week’s Sunday Review, I wrote about a perfect album and the imperfect man who made it pitchfork.com/reviews/albums…
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as a working musician who worships at the feet of joni mitchell and neil young, i still think it's worth remembering that the concerns they've raised with spotify are not the same as yours and mine pitchfork.com/thepitch/the-m…
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RIP Phil. the greatest. it's like the moon died or something. doesn't seem quite real.
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contractor today was asking me about music and telling me how talented his son is. after a bit of convo he says do you know what he does now? I say what and he winces and grits his teeth and says “he plays [air quotes] noise. hooks a drill up to a wah wah pedal and shit.”
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time was a man could earn a solid paycheck by accepting the assignment to write the liner notes for a big-label jazz album and turning in some shit like “This fine quartet really knows how to swing.”
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billboard pwr bttm comeback article implies allegations are false based on the fact that an accuser was angry about the piece being published when the reporter contacted her and didn’t want to talk. that’s... certainly one way to interpret why she might feel that way!
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I could not be more pleased that my first p4k byline, after a decade-plus of reading daily, is a Sunday Review one of my favorite albums ever: The Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You, the last great record by the world’s greatest rock n roll band pitchfork.com/reviews/albums…
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for this week’s Sunday Review, I went deep on Pink Floyd’s ‘Meddle,’ an assignment teenage me would be amazed to learn he’ll one day be paid to write pitchfork.com/reviews/albums…
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the world is on fire but my passion for getting hammered and blasting free jazz records then putting on the twilight zone and passing out 10 mins into the first episode at about 1130pm remains undiminished
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ryder ripps rebranding the CIA feels like the logical endpoint of accelerationism as an aesthetic posture in so much art/music/design/etc from the 2010s. maybe performative indulgence in the spoils of capitalism was not the most effective critique of the system after all....
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Hearing Things is a new independent music publication founded by Ryan Dombal, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Dylan Green, and me. Here’s a bit of what we’ve been working on:
hearingthings.co/
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maybe this has to do with millennials coming of age just as streaming makes a distant dream of earning even a modest living as a rock musician or securing a decent budget for your rock album, and insane rising rents and stagnant minimum wage make even DIY bohemianism untenable
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I performed my highest duty as a bartender the other night (introduced a patron who was having a rough night to the music of Jason Molina)
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10-15 years ago, my mom's stepdad—who has effectively been my grandpa my whole life—told me he wrote a song about skateboarding in the '60s that had some success as a single. over time i convinced myself i'd embellished this memory, because it seemed too cool to be real
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for Pitchfork, I wrote about the surprising rise of ambient music as a marketable commodity via chill playlists for studying/sleeping/watering your houseplants, the boogeyman of the ambient careerist hack, and what it all might mean for the music itself pitchfork.com/features/artic…
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programming note: as of this week I'm no longer a contributing editor at Pitchfork. I've got nothing but love for everyone there, and I'm so proud to have contributed to the legacy of a publication I've read daily since I was a teen. what a dream. more soon on what's next for me.
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misuse of "bemused" is so common bc the wrong definition is more useful than the right one. we have many other words that mean "puzzled" but none that so precisely convey the wry, detached, ironic amusement that people often mean when they use it. it's a better word that way!
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I’m in Cologne with my big brother @cushtom and he just won gold in the 1500m at the 2023 World Dwarf Games and I’m so proud of this fuckin guy I’m cryin
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hard to believe i'm saying this but uhhhh selena gomez's new song (w "psycho killer" sample!) is pretty sick piped.video/watch?v=YVtzQms7…
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hello! as of next week I will be a contributing editor at Pitchfork, where I'll be focused on producing + editing original reporting, but also doing my fair share of criticism. i can't wait to work on a site i've been reading every day for 10+ years! nitter.app/senari/status/12172069…
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if you’d have told teenage me that not only would Pavement be playing shows in 2023 but me and my bandmates would be opening one of them I would have told you to stop teasing me
dreams come tru baby 9/13 brooklyn steel
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My heart goes out to all of my brilliant colleagues who were laid off from Pitchfork today. Like the rest of my fellow contract workers on the masthead, I'm completely in the dark about whether I still have a position there. Don't know what else to say.
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i love how Fetch the Bolt Cutters builds its world out of things like room tone, audible changes of distance from the mic, noise floors appearing and disappearing—markers of a "bad" recording/mix, so we're told—just accepting those sounds for what they are and allowing them to be
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dude just walked in, bought a neat pour of the most expensive whiskey in the bar, didn’t drink a drop of it, didn’t tip, walked out
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for this week’s Pitchfork Sunday Review, I wrote about the Roches’ 1979 debut, a miracle of harmony and humor pitchfork.com/reviews/albums…
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cars should come loaded with a limited number of horn honks and to refill them you have go to the DMV and pay the govt money
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when the four guys in the band look like this you know it’s about the be the craziest shit you’ve ever heard in your life
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been a Pynch head since reading V. as a teen, read and loved all the shorter books over the yrs, but had been scared to surmount any of the truly big boys until picking up this one a few months ago for its 50th bday. finished last night. turns out it’s as good as everyone says.
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for the Pitchfork Sunday Review, I wrote about Richard & Linda Thompson's 'I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight,' and also about love, fate, booze, bad omens, and the tyranny of having a job pitchfork.com/reviews/albums…
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I spent a couple of days in Kansas City talking to Katie Crutchfield about the great new Waxahatchee album, the terrifying genius of Townes Van Zandt and Jason Molina, and the long and winding ascent she’s taken to arrive at the best music of her life pitchfork.com/features/cover…
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i wrote about "slowed + reverb," the DIY remixing phenomenon at the melancholy heart of YouTube, aka why the kids are listening to chopped and screwed Paul Anka pitchfork.com/thepitch/how-s…
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Stereogum blowup seems to me a symptom of the fact that hardly anyone in indie music (and media) can afford to get by. Both sides just sound like they are tired of feeling fucked with and desperate for recognition of how hard they are working for so little reward. It sucks!
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Four Tet rarely gives interviews, so it was a real privilege to talk to him about his week-long Spotify playlist of inspirations and aural anomalies, an oasis of joy and strangeness in the otherwise alienating landscape of streaming pitchfork.com/thepitch/four-…
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the very polite mom from Cincinnati with the "NAZI PUNKS FUCK OFF" sign was easily my favorite person I met
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I wrote this about Catalytic Sound, a group of experimental musicians who are envisioning—and actually building—a small-scale, artist-owned alternative to corporate streaming. inspiring stuff! pitchfork.com/thepitch/meet-…
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Here's Why Rob Ford Smoking Crack Cocaine on Video Is Good
On Smarm (It's Good)
The Underground Website Where You Can Buy Any Drug Imaginable Is Good
Even for a Minute, Watching Hulk Hogan Have Sex in a Canopy Bed is Not Safe For Work but Watch it Anyway, Because It's Good
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One cabbie stuck in traffic is loving it. Asked if he approved of march: “of course! We have to be doing this.”
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wrote about a perfect album pitchfork.com/reviews/albums…
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I wrote about the endlessly strange and wonderful new album by Absolutely Fuckin Enormous Thief on ye olde Pitchfork dotcom :) pitchfork.com/reviews/albums…
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congrats to the Trump-loving internet bottom feeders for utterly playing yourselves on the issue of online privacy spin.com/2017/03/trump-suppo…
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wrote about jaimie branch’s spectacular final LP here. fighting music!
pitchfork.com/reviews/albums…
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here’s something I wrote for Pitchfork on the earthly music of Pharoah Sanders pitchfork.com/thepitch/pharo…
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got into it with a guy at the bar the other night who said sonny sharrock couldn’t play. came home and drunkenly/stonedly ordered this shirt. ✌️ 🎸
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for my first Pitch piece, I wrote about teen pop stans and TikTok freaks disseminating bootlegged music on Spotify via podcasts. pitchfork.com/thepitch/bootl…
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spent some time with the Mdou Moctar crew in New York recently pitchfork.com/thepitch/a-ver…
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wrote this story about how Ryan Adams successfully lobbied editors to delete even the tiniest criticisms of him from their websites, including a concert review that didn't give enough attention to his huge metal jam spin.com/2019/02/ryan-adams-…
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making public records requests can be a pain but it's all worth it when you get something as enlightening as this
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Love being on tour with William Tyler and the Impossible Truth, surely the only band working rn where the guitarist does two-hand tapping while the percussionist plays glockenspiel and drum kit at the same time
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last night I asked one of the deepest musicians I know what initially got him into playing music as a kid and he said “well I just loved the Roseanne theme song and really wanted to be able to play that” 🫡
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i thought for a long time on the question "how could streaming services be changed to pay musicians more money?" and came up with a series of increasingly depressing answers pitchfork.com/features/artic…
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playing tonight in Burlington, epicenter of some concerning new developments in jam band aesthetics and taxonomy
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revisited this 1 while walking to the bank to pick up rent. confirmed classic heatwave-in-the-city record. sounds like delirium—oops I mean humidity—rising up from the sidewalk to envelop and enter you. have the CD lying around somewhere. wish I still had my rainbow logo shirt.
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The way these guys pronounce "robot" on this Twilight Zone episode is legit the funniest thing I've ever heard
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presenting… 100 YEARS OF SOLID DUDES, a collection of new Garcia Peoples improvisations, recorded live in Vermont earlier this summer. 7 tracks, 100 minutes, all hand-picked local certified organic jams garciapeoples.bandcamp.com/a…
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...because, I learned after some googling, its chanted melody was interpolated on the Go! Team's "Huddle Formation," a song my friends and i listened to not-infrequently as teenagers. i had no idea about my familial connection to it until this weekend. whosampled.com/sample/373094…
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Super Bowl has me reminiscing about my favorite detail from me and @ashleyfeinberg's Trump voicemails Gawker story gawker.com/voicemails-appear…
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with Pitchfork’s legacy of giving sustained attention to difficult or unusual music in mind, here’s my review of Cloudward, Mary Halvorson’s beguiling new album pitchfork.com/reviews/albums…
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“Radiohead’s music is actually bad” is the most perfectly asinine music twitter opinion of all time, congrats to everyone involved
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cosplaying as a British guy from 1996 who says stuff like “acid jazz is the meeting of technology and soul”
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there's a dentist office with a funny hippie-ish vibe right outside Woodstock called Transcend Dental. gotta love it when life feels exactly like a Thomas Pynchon novel.
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friend who used to live in Carrboro tells me these are the tracks Eizabeth Cotten had in mind when she wrote “Freight Train.” hallowed ground! GP plays Cat’s Cradle back room, right behind them, tonight
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so happy to live in a world where @jiatolentino gets to write about large adult sons in the New Yorker newyorker.com/culture/cultur…
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for the last couple months, @ratsonly @ssodomsky and I have been working on LATE ERA, a new podcast on the @osirispod network about weird and wonderful late-career albums by classic artists. Miles making hip hop, Willie making reggae, Joni making synth music, and beyond. july 23!
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not sure what to do with this information but i just learned Raffi's 'Baby Beluga' (along w/ several other early albums) was engineered by a pre-fame Daniel Lanois
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I know very little about the cure (“the cure sucks” was driven into me by a cool older friend at an impressionable age) but every time I hear one of their songs lately I look forward to the inevitable period in my life when I become obsessed w them
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