Lucy Dacus writes songs as if her heart depends on it. On the new album Home Video, her third full-length studio effort, Dacus excavates her past. By her own reckoning, the lyrics across the album are almost entirely preoccupied with … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Home Video
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. Look, the kid’s got a point. Other entries in this series can be found by clicking on the … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — Dungeons and Dragons “Who Needs to Hang Around?” print ad
This series of posts is dedicated to the many, many six packs, pony kegs and pints that have sauntered into my life at one point or another. Thanks to the incessant prodding towards reminiscence perpetrated by the the various social … Continue reading Beers I Have Known — Birdsong Brewing Co. Jalapeno Pale Ale
I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. Among the many innovations to superhero storytelling in the foundational Marvel … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — Marvels by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross
320. Meat Puppets, Up On the Sun (1985) Any album describe as the “beer and pot” album in a band’s discography is sure to be a success on college radio, not that Meat Puppets necessarily needed the appeal of implied … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #320 to #318
The Superhumanity of Simone Biles by Will Leitch Simone Biles was abandoned by American Olympic officials, and the torment hasn’t stopped by Sally Jenkins I have zero patience for anyone second-guessing Simone Biles’s decision to withdraw from competition in Tokyo. … Continue reading Outside Reading — Simone Says edition
The quality of the new cut from Sleigh Bells that I admire most is the way it take the tried-and-true tricks the band has been plying since the jump and gives them a winning spruce-up. On “Locust Laced,” the jackhammer-burst … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Sleigh Bells, “Locust Laced”
It’s reasonable to surmise that no modern musician with an already well-stocked discography was better prepared to persist in their creativity through an extended lockdown than John Darnielle. The frontman of the Mountain Goats started his now-lengthy tenure as a … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Dark in Here
This series of posts covers my long, beloved history interacting with the medium of radio, including the music that flowed through the airwaves. General programming was taken seriously at the college radio station where I spent the bulk of my … Continue reading Radio Days — Programming Clocks
For at least a little while longer, every new album is going to feel like it carries the woozy hangover of the lockdown times. I don’t know anything about the genesis of Faye Webster’s new album, I Know I’m Funny … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — I Know I’m Funny haha
Coffee for Two 