Years before Lin-Manuel Miranda cemented his place in the pantheon of musical theater by creating an unlikely sensation with the adaptation of a weighty historical biography, he worked with playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes to tell a story that took place … Continue reading Now Playing — In the Heights
Sour isn’t an album for me, and I’m fine with that. Scratch that. Try again. I’m great with that. Olivia Rodrigo made her young fame bounding along the Disney treadmill, including a turn as one of the leads in the … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Sour
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. I was watching The … Continue reading Laughing Matters — Steven Wright’s first appearance on The Tonight Show
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. Because when one has finally found their way to the tasting room of … Continue reading Beers I Have Known — Central Waters Brewing Company Pilot Series Tangerine Wheat
341. Sonic Youth, EVOL (1986) In retrospect, it’s clear that EVOL is the album that marked Sonic Youth starting to grow up. Devotees of the band’s earlier anti-music roughhousing might have been more inclined to call it selling out, to … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #341 to #339
Making Waves by Gabriella Angotti-Jones This marvelous piece from The New York Times, largely a photo essay with just enough elaborative commentary to heighten the power and poignancy of the images, touches on the small and mutually devoted culture of … Continue reading Outside Reading — Waves edition
Lucy Dacus has already released a few songs from her forthcoming album, Home Video. They’ve all been strong examples of her impeccable songwriting and expressive performance style. Clearly, though, “Brando” is the one I was waiting for. Drawing on a … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Lucy Dacus, “Brando”
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. Loki, the trickster god, was certainly in plenty of comics that … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — Journey Into Mystery by Kieron Gillen and Richard Elson
The short description of the new album Daddy’s Home is “St. Vincent does soul music.” More specifically, the shape-shifting modern-art-rock maestro looked to the soul and R & B music of the early nineteen-seventies, citing Stevie Wonder specifically but clearly … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Daddy’s Home
These posts are about the songs that fell just short of crossing the key line of chart success, entering the Billboard Top 40. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 41. Like many of the acts that regularly … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Near Misses — “One Chain Don’t Make No Prison”
Coffee for Two 