Published in The Riff·Feb 14, 2022Member-onlyLucifer on the Sofa is Another Damn Ring on the Finger of the Tom Brady of Indie Rock BandsThe Impossible Cool of Spoon With five years of recordings and over 40 new tracks to mull over as potential opener for their tenth album, Spoon, in true get-off-my-lawn fashion, chose a cover song — a hulked-out remake of fellow Texas weirdo Bill Callahan’s “Held” (released in 1999 under his…Music5 min readMusic5 min read
Published in The Bigger Picture·Aug 18, 2021Member-onlyMy Yacht Rock SummerMichael McDonald’s Guide For Finding Love In Uncertain Times — Covid turned me into a hermit. Michael McDonald set me free. A confession: I listened to a boatload of yacht rock this summer. Actually, it was far worse than that. I went to two yacht rock concerts in a nine-day span — a local cover band called the Buoys of…Music8 min readMusic8 min read
Published in The Riff·Apr 20, 2021Member-onlyIs America Ready for Ethel Cain?The Church of the Pop Fringe — The Florida panhandle is an uncanny realm. True Detective’s first season, the one about the unsolved murders of young women in a southern delta community, was filmed some 500 miles dead west, but its unsettling story feels like it could have happened here. Murky swamps and endless backwoods. Antler horns…Music5 min readMusic5 min read
Published in The Riff·Apr 9, 2021Member-onlyBros, Angry Pacifism, and M83A curious concert spectacle Right up until the moment the big guy punches me, the show is actually quite enjoyable. It’s my second time seeing M83 at Boston’s House of Blues in just five months. …Music11 min readMusic11 min read
Published in The Bigger Picture·Mar 16, 2021Member-onlyAnchoredWhat you prefer may depend on the order in which you heard it — Our debate took ten years to unfold, but it was over in ten words. “I’m not saying you’re wrong. I just believe something different.” Before I explain, let’s get one thing straight: Siamese Dream is peak form Smashing Pumpkins. This is not debatable. No alternative facts allowed. The Chicago alt-rockers…Music9 min readMusic9 min read
Published in The Riff·Mar 7, 2021Member-onlyRemembering RadioheadAn obsessive’s compendium — The ubiquitous crush of technology, climate change, a resurgence of fascism, the dread of isolation — Radiohead’s music has foreshadowed and survived it all. The British rock Emeriti are the closest living, breathing thing we have to the pop music royalty of the Beatles. They’re tunesmiths, sonic warlocks, unapologetic experimentalists…Music9 min readMusic9 min read
Published in The Riff·Mar 3, 2021Member-onlySmashgate: The Only Thing Separating Phoebe and David is 280 CharactersWe could all learn a lesson or two by avoiding the hot take. — In his book “Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now,” the technologist, scholar, and humanist Jaron Lanier offers ten reasons for trying the unthinkable and taking a luddite’s approach to connecting online — just don’t do it. He strikes a tenor similar to the Netflix documentary The…Music10 min readMusic10 min read
Published in The Riff·Mar 1, 2021Member-onlyThe Joy of Prince and Loneliness in the Era of COVID-19Shades of Computer Blue — (Note: In the spring of 2020, COVID-19 quarantine began and everything else stopped. Live concerts stopped. The world stopped. I wrote this piece during the first couple of months of the pandemic. The isolation was just sinking in. A year later, it still rings true. …Prince7 min readPrince7 min read
Dec 26, 2020The Best Music of 2020: #5–1Ten musicians who helped us pass the time in an interminable year 10–6 | 5–1 5. Moses Sumney Grae Whether lying nude on his album cover or standing six-foot three at a video shoot spattered in glitter, Moses Sumney’s physical form exudes a canonical masculinity—charismatic, chiseled, and imposing. It makes…Indie Music7 min readIndie Music7 min read
Dec 26, 2020The Best Music of 2020: #10–6Ten musicians who helped us pass the time in an interminable year It seems contradictory to even place those two words within earshot of each other: “Best” and “2020.” The fight for racial justice hit a painful cultural flashpoint, we sweated out presidential election results for ̶d̶a̶y̶s̶,̶ ̶w̶e̶e̶k̶s̶,̶ months, and…Indie Rock8 min readIndie Rock8 min read
