Posts
- 4 September 2022
The recent sexual assault allegations against Arcade Fire’s Win Butler have been particularly tough for me to grapple with. Often I’ve found such situations are more complicated than they first appear, usually with mental health (on the part of the accused) playing a large factor, but in Bulter’s case it’s much more complicated. I don’t want to get into too much detail, but Pitchfork did a good write-up on it. When I say things are...
- 26 October 2021
That video games are or can be art has been justified many times over with examples such as Shadow of the Colossus, with its stunning visuals and atmospheric feel, or The Last of Us, with its riveting and emotional post-apocalyptic adventure. For me, though, the most outstanding example is not a 3D, triple-A action-adventure game, but an 8-bit RPG developed by one person with help from his friends—and which managed to become one of the...
- 7 August 2021
When people talk about the history of Cartoon Network programming, there’s two terms you’ll hear quite a bit: the Golden Age and the Revival. The former refers to the era of the Cartoon Cartoons, and runs from about 1996 to 2004. The latter began in 2010 with a rebranding (new logo, new slogan) and the premieres of Adventure Time and Regular Show. It’s not clear yet if that era is over or not, but at...
- 23 November 2020
I found Wheat by very strange means. The podcast Throwing Fits (at the time known by a different name) uses “Teenage Dirtbag” as its theme. The song is by the band Wheatus, and they had that band’s frontman, Brendan B. Brown, on the show. For whatever reason, I remembered that I had heard or seen somewhere of another band that was called simply “Wheat”, and decided to look it up. What I found is a...
- 8 June 2020
Parquet Courts’ Studio Albums, from Worst to Best Parquet Courts are one of my favorite bands of the 2010s, in no small part because they recall the best aspects of literate 90s bands like Pavement without sounding like mere imitators or revivalists. Over time their sound has evolved, but the strength of their songwriting and their general attitude haven’t changed a bit. (I’m not including their EPs, their debut cassette American Specialties, or their collaboration...
- 6 June 2020
This is a type of post I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I’m thinking of doing it as a series, and I wanted to test the waters with what I know best. I’m not going to do Pavement, because the list would be very close to backwards chronological order, so I decided on Death Cab for Cutie. They were my first favorite band, so I know their catalog really well, and it means...
- 6 June 2020
Death Cab for Cutie’s Albums, from Worst to Best Updated This is a type of post I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I’m thinking of doing it as a series, and I wanted to test the waters with what I know best. I’m not going to do Pavement, because the list would be very close to backwards chronological order, so I decided on Death Cab for Cutie. They were my first favorite band,...
- 22 May 2020
I only just gave the 1975 a chance last year, because I’d dismissed them after being unimpressed with their SNL performance a few years prior, but I was roped in by Brief Inquiry. Since then I’d been anticipating the singles they’d been dropping, and wasn’t disappointed—with the run of “People”, “Frail State of Mind”, “Me & You Together Song” coming out sequentially, they couldn’t have made the upcoming album look more promising. The release of...
- 1 May 2020
I’ve long been fascinated by the concept of generations, but since I learned about a year ago that I’m not considered by most to be a millennial (I was born in 2000), I’ve been thinking a lot about how the currently recognized ones are defined. For a while I’ve theorized that there’s a generation in between millennials and “Gen Z”, spanning roughly 1997 to 2001, which I like to call Generation Delta. The idea emerged...
- 10 April 2020
I like the Strokes. If you’ve listened to my show, you may have heard me say that I think Is This It is objectively the best album of the 2000s, and I stand by that. Now of course, when someone says they “like the Strokes,” they mean the first two albums. Plenty of people probably don’t even know they’ve done anything since their second, Room On Fire. The camps are nowhere near as split as...
- 28 March 2020
Since I started college I’ve been looking for an apartment to move into this coming summer. I’m going to Hunter College, which is in Manhattan, so I could, if I really wanted to, commute from home, but that would take an unseemly 100 minutes—and besides, I want to move to the city anyway. Up until the pandemic started and we transitioned to online instruction I was living in the 92nd Street Y, but in the...