Music
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Song of the Day: “Paul”
As 2016 draws to a close, it is a time for both endings and beginnings. The electric folk of Big Thief is well-suited to such introspective moments—tinged with sepia-toned nostalgia and a shy sweetness that suggests hope for the future.…
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Sound & Vision: Arthur Fournier
Allyson McCabe talks with Arthur Fournier, an independent dealer of books, serials, manuscripts, and archives, about how he developed his niche, and how digital access has both enriched and complicated the work of archiving and collecting.
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Song of the Day: “Back Door Santa”
Soul—that mysterious orientation towards the world that seems to be frequently accompanied by a larger-than-life personality—is probably the first word that comes to mind when one thinks of Clarence Carter, that bombastic and passionate artist whose timeless music still echoes across…
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #63: Patrick Madden
Patrick Madden teaches writing at Brigham Young University and is the author of the essay collection Quotidiana. His essays frequently appear in literary magazines and have been featured in The Best Creative Nonfiction and The Best American Spiritual Writing anthologies. He…
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Sound Takes: A Charlie Brown Christmas
But what distinguishes Guaraldi from his superiors is his respect for the tried and true. If “O Tannenbaum” has worked for a few hundred years, maybe it’s worth kicking around the block a time or two.
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Album of the Week: Christine Ott’s Tabu
After many years of touring it as a ciné-concert performance, Christine Ott finally found a home for her Tabu, releasing it on Gizeh Records for its Dark Peak Series. In it, the French musician, who worked with Yann Tiersen and…
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #62: Julian Tepper
Upon publication of his first novel, Balls, author Julian Tepper received pointed advice from one Philip Roth: quit. What the elder statesman, on the verge of his own retirement, was trying to say is that the writing life is “just…
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Song of the Day: “The Frim Fram Sauce”
One of the most entertaining things about the early days of recorded jazz music is the clever way musicians worked around the conservative mores of the time. The well-loved etymologist William Safire, in a 2002 article, diligently attempts to decode…
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Wanted/Needed/Loved: Ian Svenonius’s “Principles of Modernism”
[T]he most essential thing is actually a kind of worldview, a mindset—or maybe it’s an ideology.
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This Week in Posivibes: Tis the Season
It’s getting to be year-in-review season, the time when everyone sits back and catalogs the songs that blew their minds, the album art that inspired the most memes, the top five tracks that clearly violated copyright, the ten best songs for driving down…
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Song of the Day: “Louder Than A Bomb”
“Rhythm is the rebel,” Chuck D raps on “Louder Than A Bomb,” one of many outstanding tracks from Public Enemy’s touchstone 1988 record, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Of all the controversial and heartfelt statements…
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Albums of Our Lives: Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity
Regardless of where or how I listen to the CD, I can still imagine myself in the car’s passenger seat, smell Tim’s cologne, or see the sun setting in a mix of fiery colors beyond us.