Category: Needle Drops

Bon Iver’s “AWARDS SEASON”

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...

Top Lyrics of 2024: Phosphorescent

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...

Rilo Kiley’s “Silver Lining”

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...

Andy Shauf’s “Halloween Store”

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...

The Durutti Column’s “Otis”

“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...

Julie Byrne’s “Melting Grid”

When I first moved back to New York in the early, wintry days of 2018, I was nearly a year into working nights for Pitchfork....