Archive (Page 4) • S/FJ • Buttondown

Dan Snaith + Caribou

We were sitting here, trying to figure out what to post, and Heidi said, “If something feels uplifting to you, pass it on.” That’s the new Caribou album,...

(Photograph by Leigh Ann Josephine.)Kiera Mulhern’s Silt was an album I leaned on last year. It doesn’t make any obvious or insincere moves, and it remains...

Herbie Hancock + Robert Ashley

Because people (including me) are tired and scared and freaking, I’m focusing on music that can both soothe and elevate. The third piece here is also...

Andrew Weatherall + Sorry + Dan Snaith

February 26, 2020

Andrew Weatherall was one of the greats. He was mostly great at being Andy Weatherall, one of the few people who could hear the dance music in everything,...

Andy Gill + TikTok

February 19, 2020

Andy Gill, the guitarist and co-founder of Gang of Four, died on February 1. I wrote this about him for The New Yorker. Also, Greil Marcus sent me this...

January 17, 2020

A piece on the commonalities between the Warp and ECM labels went up today at Artforum. I’ve been working on it for a year and I’m real happy with it. If...

the albums of the teens

January 9, 2020

Decades are enormous and insubstantial, like office buildings. How can you see? You have to cross the street and unstick from the day. You have to let go of...

December 21, 2019

This is an overview of music criticism I wrote for Bookforum, a list of ten pieces built to accompany the Penman column. This is a review of Unsound 2019 I...

Ian Penman + Ariana Reines

December 3, 2019

Two pieces came out this week. First, there is a review of a new collection by Ian Penman I wrote for Bookforum. It is about Penman’s career, specifically,...

helicopters + hair

November 24, 2019

Live television is unforgiving. The acoustics in halls built for filming are awful, the camera angles and lighting are out of your control, and the pressure...

A.S. Frere + Moritz Von Oswald + Mark Ernestus

October 21, 2019

Last week was the thirty-fifth anniversary of my grandfather’s death. The New York Times obituary is here and represented below. My grandfather lived in...

October 11, 2019

I want you to have the best possible weekend. Here are some suggestions.Listen to NTS every morning. I use their iOS app most of the time. (There are also...

Rozi Plain + Burpin' Horses + Jermaine Derpy

October 2, 2019

I don’t have much in the way of habits. I have everything in the way of habits. I want my habits to increase in utility. Today, I’ll ride my bike down to...

A Summer of Listening, Part 3

September 21, 2019

When I got home, in the middle of June, I decided to listen to one band for the rest of summer. (This plan lasted for a week.) I chose King Crimson because I...

Ric Ocasek + Shaun Cassidy + Tom Scholz

September 17, 2019

It makes sense that someone born in the 21st century would think music fans from the Seventies were dumb. How did you not know that half of Heatwave was...

A Summer of Listening, Part 2

September 16, 2019

Music in the psych ward was a relief. I drank it all in gratefully, even when it was just someone howling along to “Simple Man” (which I hate). It was not...

A Summer of Listening, Part 1

September 11, 2019

The most popular song on Unit B3 was “I’m Blessed,” by Charlie Wilson. By popular, I mean that two different patients asked for it. On Sundays, Diana took...

Feathers + Lizzy Grant

September 6, 2019

The playlist here corresponds to Feathers, one of the twenty-odd chapters in Flux Cake (FSG/MCD, TK). From the text: A feather implicates both bodies. A...

Hiroshi Yoshimura + Akiko Yano

August 29, 2019

Here’s a guest post by Sadie Rebecca Starnes (whose paintings are also fantastic, so touch that link):A few years ago, I used music from Hiroshi Yoshimura’s...

A Service-Oriented Robyn Post

August 21, 2019

ONE. I made a playlist. I listened to Robyn for three weeks straight, which isn’t unusual, except that I listened to the albums I don’t like. My Truth is...

August 19, 2019

The phrase I settled on was “club dancing.” I don’t think other people say it but I haven’t checked. For a long time, club dancing was my favorite way to get...

Roberto + Jean-Luc

On Sunday morning, I texted Roberto a photo of my ninety day coin. He sent back “love u.” I hadn’t seen him in ages. I biked between meetings until the...

Walmart Rat + Grape Lady + Lil Medic Beats

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I Thought I Was Taking Medicine

This piece was first published in July of 2018 by Popula. In the year since, I’ve watched people in drug treatment facilities being moved from opioids to...

Redlining + Barry Biggs

Is CitiBike a solution or a problem? A report commissioned by New York Communities for Change and carried out by McGill’s School of Urban Planning, using...

Bicycles + Rats + 6G Network

A rat’s tail is a long bone surrounded by tendons and skin. It’s an extension of the vertebral column, both a heat-loss organ and a balancing tool. When a...

Ways of Not Seeing + Prince Rogers Nelson + David Lee Roth

This Ian Penman piece on Prince in the LRB—of the “hang a life’s thinking on two new books” genre—is enjoyable and bonkers and insanely wrong when it’s...

Poughkeepsie + New York

There is no money in rehab, not that you can hold. Exchanges, which are common, are conducted with meds that people have cheeked (Klonopin) or wiped onto the...

Caleb Wright + Dolly Parton

A nice man named Caleb Wright has created a web-based “music discovery tool” called Shfl. It randomizes titles pulled from a variety of lists, including...

Rosalía + Paul Jacobs

Rosalía works in a rough continuum of popular singers—Beyoncé, with the same concentrated charm, the kind that fights perception; Missy Elliot, for whom...

Aphex Twin + Ann Petry

The Aphex Twin review is up at Artforum. The short version of my experience: the Spotify playlist of what Aphex plays live has been more useful to me than...

Abby Klein + The Velvet Underground

Did that sealed Velvet Underground album come from within the blast radius? Entertain this enticing but unlikely scenario with us as we listen to a friend of...

Lykke Li + Rick Ross

This is the widest wanna-feel-old gap I’ve seen (or felt) in a minute. There are ten years between this cover of “Hustlin’” and today. Who seems most like a...

Aphex Twin + Stephen O'Malley

(Photograph by Philip Prolo) The Aphex Twin show on Thursday night contained a ridiculous amount of information, including a three minute slideshow of New...

2019 + 2018 + 2017 + 2015 + 2016

My 2019 Spotify list is up and running. It is embedded below for your pleasure. Pretty much any kind of list I’ve ever cobbled together can be found here on...

Lil Nas X + Billy Ray Cyrus

SFJ: Genre is a way to form a cohort, assemble a playlist, get your recording misfiled, use your peers for a leapfrog, and mark change over time. What is...

The Boyboy West Coast + Shoshana Zuboff

For The New Yorker, Alex Ross wrote about Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power and...

Eugene McDaniels + Q-Tip + Alan Dershowitz

Last week, an eBay user known as “reallylivinretro” tried to sell a sealed copy of the first Velvet Underground album for $3,999. This was at least the...

The Minutemen had it right. Put up a flyer. This date, this place. Play at the specified time. Anything you do is a beginning and two years later you will...