songwriting
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Wanted/Needed/Loved: Weyes Blood’s Mysterious Kris
To this day no one really knows where my kris came from or whether or not it’s a significant part of my family history, if it’s a random object or an heirloom with an untold story.
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Sound & Vision: Leah Hayes
Allyson McCabe talks with Leah Hayes, acclaimed illustrator, graphic novelist, songwriter, and musician.
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Album of the Week: Molly Burch’s Please Be Mine
Torch songs, i.e. “sentimental love songs, typically one in which the singer laments an unrequited love,” were once the flagship of every respected crooner: with sultry lonesomeness, a smooth voice would dance above the elegant orchestra accompaniment, singing of lovers lost…
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Album of the Week: Allison Crutchfield’s Tourist in This Town
Allison Crutchfield has been making music her whole life: with her twin sister Katie first, then in bands like P.S. Eliot, Bad Banana, and Swearin’, founded with her former partner. Now, Crutchfield has just released her first solo album, Tourist in This Town, via…
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Swinging Modern Sounds #77: People Give Me Things, Part One
[T]he thing about receiving music from other people is this: there is always some grace associated with the transaction.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #76: American Songbag
In the broadest sense, I think of this work as being about the stuff of life: excitement, love, disappointment, pride, nature, cities, war, loneliness, work, class distinction, communication.
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These Small Little Containers
I think that poets and songwriters have a lot in common because a songwriter really has to be a poet first. That’s how we live our lives. It’s the same kind of thinking. … [W]e put our stories into these…
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Dylan’s Controversial Nobel
The Nobel Prize in Literature went to Bob Dylan this year, sparking debate around the songwriter’s legacy and whether song lyrics should be considered poetry. Those in the pro camp attribute the win to the persistent singularity of Dylan’s songwriting, in combination with…
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And the Nobel Prize in Literature Goes To…
Bob Dylan? At Electric Literature, Lincoln Michel acknowledged that no one is quite sure how to feel about the news. At Slate, Stephen Metcalf praises Bob Dylan’s genius, but argues that he’s a musician, not a poet: The objection here…
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Wanted/Needed/Loved: Lucy Dacus’s Journals
What I write in my journals is a personal record of the events in my life, and my reactions to them.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #75: The Petra Haden Story
At every turn, Haden’s decisions, while labor-intensive and rigorous, feel fresh, passionate, funny, and new.
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Wanted/Needed/Loved: Thao Nguyen’s Release
The thing I want to talk about is something I’m not in possession of anymore, but of all the things I’ve lost it’s the thing I think about the most.