620. Throwing Muses, House Tornado (1988) Hailing from Boston and famously signed to esoteric U.K. label 4AD, Throwing Muses spent the first chunk of their recording career adhering to a release model more typical of British acts. Over the course … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #620 to #617
Filthy Rich by Michelle Dean HBO’s Succession was amusing and sharp-elbowed in its first season. For the recently concluded second season, the series engaged a creative turbo boost that rocketed it to delirious new heights. Writing for The New York … Continue reading Outside Reading — Thank You for the Chicken edition
Way back when, I showed up at my college radio station convinced that I needed nothing more to achieve music fan bliss than a bunch of brutish, sloppy dudes banging out raggedy rock songs using the foundational combo of guitars, … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Hazel English, “Shaking”
At the beginning of Parasite, the new film from director Bong Joon-ho, the Kim family is so far down on the economic ladder that they’re literally underground. Their cramped, cluttered apartment is in the basement of a South Korean urban … Continue reading Now Playing — Parasite
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. After tapping out a … Continue reading Laughing Matters — The Ben Stiller Show, “Cape Munster”
There are many building blocks of the internet, but the cornerstones are think pieces, offhand lists, and other hollow provocations meant to stir arguments and, therefore, briefly redirect web traffic. Engaging such material is utterly pointless. Then again, it’s not like I … Continue reading Bait Taken — Marty and Marvel
These posts are about the songs that just barely failed to cross the key line of chart success, entering the Billboard Top 40. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 41. My Chemical Romance formed in Newark, New … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Near Misses — “Under Pressure”
624. Alphaville, Forever Young (1984) Initially, the music act formed in Germany by Marian Gold, Bernhard Lloyd, and Frank Mertens was called Forever Young. That name was instead reserved for the band’s first album — and one of their first … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #624 to #621
Why I Haven’t Gone Back to SCOTUS Since Kavanaugh by Dahlia Lithwick For a long time, Dahlia Lithwick was my favorite writer on the Supreme Court beat. Reporting on the goings on at the last depot for the nation’s rickety … Continue reading Outside Reading — Hard Court edition
It’s that opening sound, like the “Edge of Seventeen” riff infested with twenty-first century anxiety. And here we are, back in Haim territory, where the three Cali sisters draw upon the finest pop music inventions from a few decades ago … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Haim, “Now I’m In It”
Coffee for Two 