UNBORN WHISKEY

No, this never happened. I was gone. Wrong: I was here, reaching for a white preserver. They pulled...

Mon, 20 May 2013 17:46:07 -0400

No, this never happened. I was gone. Wrong: I was here, reaching for a white preserver. They pulled...

I realized that my former desire had been more exacting than the requirements of the poet, the...

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:48:44 -0400

I realized that my former desire had been more exacting than the requirements of the poet, the...

The S.O.S. Band: Just be good to me This song builds out of my...

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:58:00 -0400

The S.O.S. Band: Just be good to me

This song builds out of my favorite synth sound, like a vacuum playing over a scale. You can find my second favorite synth sound here too, later, when the vocal enters and the track is completely reduced and clarified by something like a gently tuned breeze.

The National: Humiliation Finally, a song about where I live.

Fri, 10 May 2013 15:56:00 -0400

The National: Humiliation

Finally, a song about where I live.

Hard to tolerate Adulting or any project that deeply reckons with the idea of “becoming an...

Wed, 08 May 2013 16:51:00 -0400

Hard to tolerate Adulting or any project that deeply reckons with the idea of “becoming an...

What must it be like to slick the green hairs of algae across my kneecaps? to breathe in the muddy...

Tue, 07 May 2013 12:41:00 -0400

What must it be like to slick the green hairs of algae across my kneecaps? to breathe in the muddy...

There are fifteen Texas Is The Reason songs in total. A few of...

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:32:00 -0400

There are fifteen Texas Is The Reason songs in total. A few of the song titles (and the band’s name) refer to conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination. Though tied to a slew of simultaneous musical evolutions in hardcore and emo, their sound is very singular, easy to live in. The songs groove and twist intermittently, like a moving dark.

My piece about Texas is the Reason can now be read in a free issue of Maura Magazine. The free issue also serves as an introduction to the new magazines Exact Change, run by Damon and Naomi (formerly of Galaxie 500), and Tits And Sass, which is by and about sex workers.

I pulled my bike up onto the curb by the yoga studio and leaned it against the trashcan. I watched...

Wed, 01 May 2013 13:02:57 -0400

I pulled my bike up onto the curb by the yoga studio and leaned it against the trashcan. I watched...

Maura Magazine: Come To Life His own performance with jazz...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:49:00 -0400

Maura Magazine: Come To Life

His own performance with jazz drummer Milford Graves was set meaningfully among the abstract expressionists, particularly Jackson Pollock. Their expansive splatters matched; structure revealed itself along the way. Graves hunched with extreme focus over his drum set, seeming multi-limbed, becoming spidery. His drums were rainbowed with color, and every time he used his kick drum it would jump forward an inch.

John Zorn staged five performances in the Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday. I wrote about them for Maura.

Revelations inside: How museums make me feel like a cool and fluttery ghost; my savage hostility toward German expressionism.

Lapham’s Quarterly: Pet Cemetery by Miles Klee It is hard...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:41:00 -0400

Lapham’s Quarterly: Pet Cemetery by Miles Klee

It is hard to look a dog in the eye and see anything but an ignorance that amounts to fiercely protected wisdom. Every pet owner knows the feeling: somehow, this creature has domesticated me.

Ignoring the animal hair packed into the detail of my couch, this is my dog, a chihuahua/papillon mix named Cash. My roommate, his primary owner, named him after Johnny Cash. There is little resemblance except in their black and white plumage—he is a tiny, fearful guy who walks daintily across surfaces, at a near glide. At times he is excited into jumping by the merest implication of food or a walk; other times he is extremely reserved, only leaving his bed gingerly for a treat. He will walk on his hind legs if he feels he must impress you. I have no idea what he ever wants, and this makes me despair. But when he seems happy, when his eyes—extreme black marbles that sensitively quiver—express what I have with effort interpreted as happiness, I find myself smiling, as if I am a member of a pattern he initiated.

Miles wrote a great piece on the role of animals in human life and afterlife; it’s more of a direct continuum than we usually imagine.

Brandt Brauer Frick: Caffeine Maybe it’s a pure release,...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:55:00 -0400

Brandt Brauer Frick: Caffeine

Maybe it’s a pure release, into rhythm. We are so accustomed to the irregular shape of our bodies, our minds, the vector of earth, that when we see patterns they seem to have a kind of velocity to them. Look at the bee in his hive, his pretty organizations, his honeyed movements. Purposes categorize in his vision. What constitues the world upon waking? Light and depthless shadow, in an arrhythmic blur. Breakfast reiterates the world. The final effects of coffee and sugar feel fractured but they are in reality extremely composed. There is of course the danger of overflow. People like to characterize insanity as an aggressive, ultimate confusion but maybe it is actually the world threaded into ineluctable golden harmony. Buildings unpuzzle. The world reassumes a prehistoric logic where you are a giant shrugging off other giants. Nothing is a creature. The hand does not push or pull; things twirl beneath it. Why walk when you can leap gently through the brushes of gravity, precise as a dancer.

Maura Magazine: April Listening Early Katatonia is...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:59:00 -0400

Maura Magazine: April Listening

Early Katatonia is supermassive. Later they’d have gentler, gothy developments; then they’d get a better drummer and forget how to organize their songs. Here, though, is a kind of unrepeated achievement in atmosphere. People still call this doom metal, although it’s too restless to actually earn the classification. The riffs here aren’t isolated or mammoth. They aren’t even really riffs—they’re more like slight chord progressions that seem to endlessly advance. The movement is dreamlike, the momentum of the guitars and drums like overlapping waves.

Wrote in miniature about a few albums I’ve been fixated on.

Momoiro Clover Z: Fierce space symphony. 7th movement «Infinite...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 23:23:00 -0400

Momoiro Clover Z: Fierce space symphony. 7th movement «Infinite love»

Best song on this and other earths.

My grandmother loved butterflies, wore butterfly pins to every...

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 18:40:00 -0400

My grandmother loved butterflies, wore butterfly pins to every occasion, had glass butterflies suspended in the air of her home, so for her service we released fresh butterflies, just hatched out of chrysalis. This is my cousin’s daughter Kylee, lifting one.

Maura Magazine: Like a Phoenix But bearing all of these...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:46:00 -0400

Maura Magazine: Like a Phoenix

But bearing all of these looks inward and backward is music that is oddly liberated. The synth line on “Ain’t it Fun” snakes delightfully upward; it recalls Janet Jackson’s more effusive songs from the Jam/Lewis era. “Future” begins in a spare way but eventually spawns thrilling scales of guitar, in a slow and vivid fall. Its effect is a little like that of a river flowing abruptly into the ocean, heavy with mystery and darkness. The environment expands uncannily.

Wrote about the new Paramore and Fall Out Boy records for Maura. Issue also improbably features Andy Beta on Kurt Vile and a historiography of DJ Koze by Michelangelo Matos.

Photo

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 01:16:38 -0400

It is hard for me to read accounts of New York that tend toward the defensive and romantic. “Quite...

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:10:00 -0400

It is hard for me to read accounts of New York that tend toward the defensive and romantic. “Quite...

Fall Out Boy: The phoenix Tried to listen to this while outside...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 22:31:39 -0400

Fall Out Boy: The phoenix

Tried to listen to this while outside and felt as if I could walk directly through a car.

Creamed chicken specials, plates of fried vegetables, cheese sandwiches with soup. It was hard to...

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:07:58 -0400

Creamed chicken specials, plates of fried vegetables, cheese sandwiches with soup. It was hard to...

Rotation

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 02:04:00 -0400

She found herself lately remembering things in discrete images, like leaves who noiselessly forget...