Category: Needle Drops

Growing up, the anodyne American rock of the Eagles regularly soundtracked my weekends. Not by choice. Like many children up until a certain age, I...

Fall is such a poetic reminder of life’s precious truth—namely, that it will end—so it felt like a spark of cosmic timing that Bon Iver‘s...

The year’s end always brings a flurry of lists rounding up and ranking 2024’s musical output. Amid the countless breakdowns—of songs and albums and artists—I...

I cannot shake this mounting sense of finality. Things are bleak on several fronts—geopolitically, environmentally, technologically—and alongside those tremors come study after study showing the...

Right around the time in the northern hemisphere when the afternoons darkened far too early—shortly before the days began growing longer in the light—I found...

The more I come to understand confidence, the more I see it stemming from a lovely internal stillness. If lakes existed somewhere in the core...

For me, it’s the way it starts. No, I don’t mean the sentimental sashay of an intro, with acoustic guitar and harmonica refracting like heat...

Some songs explode on stage. In the lead-up to seeing Andy Shauf perform at Toronto’s historic Massey Hall, I’d been spending time with his discography, including...

“Otis” begins, as some of the best songs do, unexpectedly. A guitar string reverberates ever so briefly, first plucked and then bent, echoing forth a...

I’ve done a lot of leaving as an adult. The poetic call it nomadic, the nihilistic call it lost, and I’ve been known to call...