Few songbooks so consistently capture the post-2016 sense of life coming apart as Jeff Rostenstock’s poppy humanist punk.
Author Archives: Dancing to architecture
Emmagen Creek
A profoundly beautiful song in which love is nothing more or less profound than an act of nature.
Cool Calm Pete: demolition
My beloved Cool Calm Pete is back, and I took five months to write about it. It’s a strange and beautiful album that get’s better with every listen.
15 short films about Oasis
A few further reflections on Oasis after the reunion.
The Hold Steady and the story of 21st century America
A delayed 20th anniversary piece on The Hold Steady’s seminal 2005 album Separation Sunday, an album and band that, their way, tell the story, private, public and political, of 21st century American life.
Lyrical Wax: 2014 Forest Hills Drive
Brilliant beautiful, reaching just beyond its grasp, it might be J. Cole’s defining album.
Lyrical Wax: Odyssey
On aggressively tasteful, zealously pleasant, fanatically unobtrusive late ’70s pop and the world it conjures.
Bookmarks, June 2023
A long delayed and bizarrely personal return to collecting recommendations, recent addictions and subjects for further study.
Lyrical Wax: Dolemite (1974)
An incredible soundtrack to a beautifully bad movie.
Cool Calm Pete – Heart
The final song of a criminally underrated Korean-American indie rapper.
Dancing to Architecture 