There’s plenty to like about the music of Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, but I honestly don’t know that it would have ever occurred to me that the pair would make dandy collaborators. While they both exhibit an arch cleverness … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Lotta Sea Lice
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. In past years, our household has engaged in an exercise every autumn, performing … Continue reading Beers I Have Known — Southern Tier Brewing Company Warlock Imperial Stout
#32 — Essie Davis as Amelia Vanek in The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014) In some ways, actors in horror movies have it easy. There is a clear vernacular to the art of duplicating terror, honed through decades upon decades of … Continue reading Greatish Performances #32
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. “What is this? What … Continue reading Laughing Matters — Jerry Seinfeld on Halloween candy
36. The Smithereens, “A Girl Like You” As I’ve previously acknowledged, the Smithereens were the quintessential band of my college radio experience, so thoroughly in sync with the internal vibe of my station at the time I was there that … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 40 Cuts, March 16, 1990 — 36 – 33
As I’m sometimes wont to do in this weekly excavation of old words, I am opting to dip into the voluminous collection of “Five for Friday” posts at my former online home. Back in the end, I helped usher in … Continue reading From the Archive — Five for Friday, Happy Halloween edition
I suspect every person who’s sat behind a music-based radio station broadcast board — at least at a spot on the dial that confers the authority of music selection to the announcers — has a small cache of special occasion … Continue reading One for Friday — House of Freaks, “Sun Gone Down”
Columbus (Kogonada, 2017). The feature debut from filmmaker Kogonada, who has been justly lauded for video essays on other directors’ work, is an object of understated beauty. Empathetic and honest, Columbus is set in the Indiana city of the same … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Columbus, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), Miles Ahead
“Outside the house, a shadow moved, an autumn wind rose up and faded away. But there was something else in the silence that he heard. It was like a breath exhaled upon the window. It was like a faint drift … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
Since the release of Sleep Well Beast, the seventh studio album from the National, the commentary has settled into two camps. There are those who insist that the album represents a serious modification of the band’s sound, pushing into intriguing … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Sleep Well Beast
