Late one afternoon in mid-January, news about Pitchfork began trickling across Twitter before turning into a veritable flood. The screenshot initiating that outpouring captured a...

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...

Beginning in my early 20s, my experience of love became largely unrequited for a significant stretch of time. It seemed as though either I consistently...

Hiss Golden Messenger, the jam-heavy, indie folk-rock project from singer-songwriter MC Taylor, is one of my favorite bands for a number of reasons, including the...

What dark times we’re inhabiting. Hope—once “the things with feathers,” per Emily Dickinson—increasingly feels as though it has stretched its glossy black wings and departed...

I grew up moving around. Following my dad’s TV news career, we’d pick up and shift to a new city if not every year then...

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...