Wednesday’s “Wasp”
Lately, I’ve been working on excavating my scream. I have a long history of letting anger decompose into anxiety—a natural byproduct of growing up around...
Teddy Pendergrass’ “I Don’t Love You Anymore”
Musically, the end of a romance usually lives in melancholy tempos and minor keys. Breaking up, so they say, is hard to do. No matter...
An Unexpected Eagles Cover
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...
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...
At the World’s End with Hurray for the Riff Raff and Adrianne Lenker
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...
Agnes Obel’s “Familiar” and Fred again..’s “ten”
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...
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...
Colter Wall’s Cover of “Evangelina”
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...
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...