music commentary

To start with the pertinent facts: the new concert documentary Sunshine Daydream (just out on DVD) is the early-'70s Grateful Dead as I love...

What is music for? This question maybe seems too massive to be worth considering, but listening to the new MGMT album, my bandmate Melissa Dyne and...

The Icelandic group Múm has made a bunch of records that I can really sink my teeth into. The records have a distant, lo-fi, found-sound quality...

I was just going into high school when I first heard Mark Lanegan's soulful voice. It was 1992 and he was fronting Screaming Trees. Their single...

I saw Bill Callahan open for Joanna Newsom in December of 2006, a sold-out show at a 1200-capacity venue in Seattle. The house was pretty much full...

I always buy the new Doctor Who soundtrack releases, very much including the newly released Doctor Who: Series 7. It's my favourite...

A good friend of mine grew up attending punk and hardcore shows in southern California in the '90s. He’s got a ton of great stories, but one that...

In the middle of some summer during my pasty, ornery adolescence, my dad threatened to throw the book I was reading straight into the pool.

I like singles bands, bands that are more noteworthy for strings of arresting tracks than they are noteworthy for albums. Here are some bands, in...

"Don't be ashamed to weep; 'tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be...

I write fan letters to record labels. In the way that my pal Sean Doyle writes to poets and essayists he admires, just to let them know that they...

Embers in the burning sky linger, flirting in shadow. Remnants of a battle forever cycling beneath a blackened sun sigh in the wind’s…