Diamonds and Rust: Nostalgia, Form, and Noise
There’s always that longing to say everything and nothing at once, that yearning for the moment I forget I am myself.
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Music
578 posts
Off the Page and Into the Microphone
From Novels to Notes is a new blog by journalist Johnny Garcia chronicling songs inspired by fiction or poems. It’s still getting started, but it looks promising: there are already…
ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: RUN DMC’S RAISING HELL
It was a cassette copy with no case, and my dad gave it to me a couple of years after he’d moved out. I was about nine. I knew enough about…
Deep Throat #1: On Being and Unbeing a Singer
When I shut my mouth I lost a part of myself so ingrained, so accustomed, so integral I had not even known it was possible to lose it.
THE RUMPUS INTERVIEW WITH ERIN MCKEOWN
McKeown’s crowd-funded new album, Manifestra, is a dizzying ten-track blend of political blues and party songs, featuring radio-friendly handclaps, a New Orleans-style funeral march, and a jam she co-wrote with Rachel Maddow.
Race, Class, and Indie Rock Music
No teenager wants to listen to their parents’ music. For Martin Douglas, that music was hip-hop, so he gravitated toward the world of grunge and indie rock. The only problem:…
SONGS OF OUR LIVES: JOY DIVISION’S “LOVE WILL TEAR US APART”
She drew cartoon sketches of herself. I sent more mix-tapes. Within a few months, in the middle of a five- or six-page letter, she wrote that she loved me.
New Music from Thao & The Get Down Stay Down
Thao & The Get Down Stay Down’s new album, We the Common, comes out Feb. 5, and we definitely recommend giving it a listen. Stephen Thompson, in his NPR review,…
Why Country Music Loves Me
In a lace-curtained living room of a cabin by the Greenbrier River, four men I had just met picked up a banjo, a guitar, a mandolin, and an upright bass…
ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: NEKO CASE’S MIDDLE CYCLONE
The year 2008 tumbled out of itself and took with it the things that consumed my days. Within a month I had lost my job to the upholding of liquor…
ALBUMS OF OUR LIVES: PETER GABRIEL’S SO
The only thing that could put me back right was a long walk in the cold along the Danube, with Peter Gabriel singing in my ear.
Nick Cave Monday #5: “Bring It On”
In 2003, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds released “Nocturama.” I love almost every record The Bad Seeds have released, but with “Nocturama,” I was disappointed. I listened over and…