Listen Up: I Don't Know What I'm Talking About
I know it's possible for me to acquire this skill, but my ignorance is so wrapped up in my relationship with music that I'm not sure how I would function if I knew anything... read more
Listen Up: Arcade Fire, Lissie and the Scourge of Expectations
But maybe the strangest of all the feelings that music can provoke is the very distinct, often sad one of absolute and utter disappointment. read more
Listen Up: Run Rabbit Run
In the past month, I have run more, run longer and run further than I have in the past ten years combined... read more
Listen Up: Knocking The Suburbs
What whips the seven members of Arcade Fire into a lather these days? What are they building up to in those few would-be wonderful, fleeting outbursts of earnest, desperate musical passion? Not what they used to let loose on, not death or religion or rebuilding after the fall or fathers taking it as God's will to exploit his children or cars or space ships or anything else so ostentatious... read more
Listen Up: The Fixx, the Devil and the Dancing Babysitter
Much about the movie The House of the Devil seems utterly unlikely... read more
Listen Up: Miley Cyrus' 115th Dream
This—not the marauding bear cubs or the fact that downtown Atlanta was located at the bottom of the hill from my boyfriend's parents' house in Tennessee, but the large numbers of adults at a Miley Cyrus concert—was the first sign that I might be dreaming... read more
Listen Up: Is It Wicked Not To Care?
I am an editor and music columnist at a magazine that mostly covers music; I am supposed to know music, and have opinions about it. Yet the best I've been able to muster up for these artists new albums has been, like, “Eh.” read more
Listen Up: Souls, Slots and Other Strange Transactions in Tunica
Thirty-five miles or so north of where U.S. Highway 49 hits Highway 61—the crossroads where bluesman Robert Johnson allegedly bartered his soul off to the devil—sits a cluster of casinos, just three among many splashed out on the eastern banks of the Mississippi River, where on Friday night I watched an innumerable amount of perhaps even stranger transactions taking place... read more
Listen Up: Scorn on the Fifth of July
It was just after dark on July 5, 1998 and I was not where I wanted to be... read more
Listen Up: My Favorite Summer Song
Just thousands of palm-sized dude bugs calling out for ladyfriends, desperate and wheezing the moment it hits 80-something degrees whenever your temperate climate's global-warming addled summer begins... read more
Listen Up: Have You Ever Seen a Turtle Get Down?
The most excruciatingly dull six minutes of music involving a multi-platinum artist, four grown men in turtle suits and a keytar player in a mini-skirt ever committed to tape... read more
Listen Up: A Bend in the River
The city I grew up in grew up around a river... read more
Listen Up: On Crying and Having Absolutely No Idea Why
It wasn't all-out boo-hooing... read more
Listen Up: My Month of Rap, Pt. 5
I was wrong! read more
Listen Up: My Month of Rap, Pt. 4
Going into my fourth week of rap self-education, a moment of trivial triumph! read more
Listen Up: My Month of Rap, Pt. 3
As a person―and as a woman―it bothers me. As a student, though, I know it's just par for the course... read more
Listen Up: My Month of Rap, Pt. 2
I may have overstated my ignorance... read more
Listen Up: My Month of Rap, Pt. 1
I don't know very much about rap, and I am not totally sure that I actually like it... read more
Listen Up: Stumble Culture, Hype Machines and How Paste Rolls
Maybe you know Christopher R. Weingarten from... read more
Listen Up: The Inimitable Joys of Driving Alone
Cars are kind of killing the world... read more
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